At Logan The Jewellers, we guarantee that every item we sell complies with UK hallmarking laws, including items that we make in-house. Items bought from suppliers are also checked for compliance with the laws. We guarantee to only stock genuine brands and we never sell counterfeit goods.

 

We are an Assay Assured Jewellery Retailer. Assay Assured status is only given to jewellers that have been independently audited and verified by Assay Assured. It ensures that all precious metal jewellery (except items exempt by weight) are independently tested and hallmarked. You can read more at www.assayassured.co.uk.

 

What is a hallmark?

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A hallmark is a series of marks applied to an item of precious metal by a government-appointed Assay Office. The marks are only applied after the item has been tested to verify the precious metal content. 

 

There are four Assay Offices in the UK - Edinburgh, London, Sheffield and Birmingham. We are registered with all of these offices. Our first choice for hallmarking our bespoke jewellery is Edinburgh, but we also submit items to Sheffield and London if necessary. 

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Testing is required because metals like gold, silver, platinum, and palladium are rarely used in their purest form to make jewellery. Instead, they are normally combined with other lesser metals to improve strength and wear characteristics or influence the colour. When different metals are melted together, the resulting mixture is called an alloy.

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It is virtually impossible to tell how much precious metal is contained within an alloy by sight or by touch alone. That is why the science of assaying (testing) precious metals began over 700 years ago. Even today, it is not possible, even for an expert, to tell how much precious metal is present in an alloy without the use of chemical analysis.

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In the UK, and many other countries, it is a legal requirement to have a hallmark applied if an article over a certain weight as being described as partly or wholly made of gold, silver, platinum, or palladium.

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Scroll down to learn more about hallmarking.

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