BEWARE of fake 925 Sterling Silver claim

[melbourneclearance]

I see a huge amount of sellers on ebay claiming that the items they are selling are 925 sterling silver, yet the items cost less than $10 to buy.

925 Sterlng Silver jewellery is expensive, I would even be very suspicious of items priced at $20. Anything under $10 is almost definitely a fake. I realise that some of these sellers don't even have a clue that they are selling fakes. Although, c'mon, after the first 10 complaints you'd have thought they're getting the hint.

At the time of writing this, 1 gram of 925 sterling silver melt value is USD 0.47. That's 62 cents Aussie a gram, and sterling silver items are usually quite heavy.

I know that some Chinese items have a hallmark on them, most notably on chains. Real simple 925 sterling silver chains can cost more than $50, not $1. No matter how cheap the labourers are, no one can make a real 925 sterling silver at $1. These are definitely fakes.

I also see some sellers described their items as "925 Sterling Silver plated". 925 sterling silver means it is pure (or as pure as it gets - 92.5% silver), you cannot have something called "925 sterling silver plated". Their items are just silver plated.

When will ebay take a stand on obvious fakes like this? It is hurting the consumers and the marketplace and can only hurt ebay's reputation.

[sterling*n*steel]

I have REAL 925 Sterling Silver Charms that I sell for $2 and up to $30.
The $2 ones are alphabet letters.

[kopenhagen5]

Real 925 should be stamped 925 meaning it is 92.5 % silver.

However in recent decades, the Chinese have made fakes stamping them 925 when they have very little silver content.

[davewil1964]

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@sterling*n*steel wrote:
I have REAL 925 Sterling Silver Charms that I sell for $2 and up to $30.
The $2 ones are alphabet letters.

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But you don't sell much, on this account anyway. Which is not surprising, given you don't have any sizes listed on your ONE active listing, nor any photos of the hallmark.

Edit: Silver is worth 90c per gram, so with fees, your alphabet charms would have to weigh less than 1 gram to be worth the effort. Which is tiny.

[lucydwyer]

I just had this problem. Purchased items listed as 925 Sterling Silver and stamped 925. They felt incredibly light but was claimed to be authentic. Unfortunately I attached the findings to my fresh water pearls. When I checked again the listing is still the same but in the description it says (in very small writing), “plated”. The photographs show the 925 stamp. The price is a fair bit less than what you would expect to pay (I know, red—flag) but also far more $ than what I could have bought plated findings for. I can’t return as the pearls are attached and there is no option for this particular issue. I messaged the seller with no reply. Waiting to hear back from eBay. It’s frustrating not being able to trust what you’re getting is authentic. I started buying from eBay again because of their advertised stance against counterfeit items. Seems they are not quite on top of this issue yet.. 

Thank you for warning people. I hope it doesn’t happen to too many other people.

[kh-jean]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies.

Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.