Customer Reviews

The Book of Old Silver: English, American, Foreign with All Available Hallmarks including Sheffield Plate Marks

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a must have if you collect antique English silver. If you only want one book on the subject this is it. If you collect American or European silver, this book would not be my first choice. You can't get more info on antique English silver including hallmarks, history, and the different pieces of flatware and holloware that were made with any other Silver book I have ever read.

An excellent reference book for all your silver identification. Easy to read and far more comprehensive in information than its competitors. Highly recommended to identify your silver pieces.

I bought this one, along withe another (Sterling Flatware Identification & Value Guide) for my mom and she uses it a lot. I think she uses the other one more but she always has both on hand. It has a lot of good info on how to id a piece, great pictures of hallmarks etc.

The photography in this book is minimal, black and white and grainy. Extensive and interesting background information, though (126 pages worth). VERY extensive coverage of maker's marks for all countries. Some marks are so small as to need a magnifying glass, however. (Hence the four stars)

A little disappointed in this...not as useful as expected, maybe due to my ignorance, but the book info suggests it is much more comprehensive than it is. Good for very old silver, but not much use if your piece is dated later than 1820. Indexes are not particularly useful, as you have to search through for an alphabetical mark you may not be able to see that well on an older piece. An alphabetical index of makers would be incredibly useful, but alas, there isn't one. For some makers, marks listed cover only 1-2 years...not that helpful considering the number of marks an individual maker may use over the lifetime of the company. Also, some maker names appear to be listed incorrectly and don't take into account changes in company names that may take place over the years. I would say this is not a very useful resource if your silver or silverplate dating after about 1820. I got better information just searching various websites. That said, the beginning of the book is an interesting read for the history...it's just not good for identifying, valuing or dating a particular piece or set.

great book overall for identifying american coin silver marks along with english and pretty much all other countries marks which can be a hard task but this book makes life so much simplier the book to buy to identify old silver

Talk, talk, talk. So much information about city hallmarks and nothing about purity marks. No way to really identfy general items that a novice collector would have. Is it real or not? Talks about fakes and again nothing about standards of silver and what they are. High brow attitude toward the subject with little or no information on Continental European silver in detail. Too little to late!

The book was in or above the condition described and is the product I was looking for. I was glad that it was readily available through Amazon.