Trev,
You could well be correct. Looking again, the hallmark stamp backgrounds are golden and this should be the least worn areas. So gold over silver does seem more probable.
In the image the silver plate appears to be worn through at the top to expose a brassy coloured base metal. Looks a bit like nickle silver. It looks typical of worn plating to me.
Seems obvious to me but I'm a complete novice so maybe I'm wrong as no one else has mentioned it.
Hi, I found this among my late Dads tools. It appears to be a Birmingham Sterling pipe tamper cleaner 1922. While the year cartouche differs from the one listed on the site, it does seem to follow the most common one used in that series. It makes sense that it belonged to my grandfather who emegrate...