Tourmaline, October’s other birthstone.
Tourmaline is a beautiful gemstone that comes in many colors and shades. Silver City has many pieces of tourmaline jewelry in stock and on display!
Keep checking with us for more jewelry images and articles.
Opal is an amazing gem stone that represents October births.
Though opals are fairly soft, they make up for it in amazing color. Opals can show a kaleidoscope of colors brilliantly saturated for viewing pleasure. At Silver City we love opals and are always happy to show you our inventory of opal jewelry.
A true blue stone that everyone loves, sapphire is one of the most popular and historic gemstones.
If you’re in the market for sapphire jewelry, Silver City is always ready to meet your needs!
Peridot is the birthstone for August. A yellow-green colored stone that has been used in jewelry for hundreds of years. Less expensive then many other gemstones, peridot is a nice option for adding green in anyone’s jewelry box.
Do you have a silverware set that you think might be valuable? Heres a guide on how to tell if your set is sterling or plated!
#1- Look at the markings on the back of the piece.
For hundreds of years, silverware has been required by law to be marked whether its Sterling Silver or not.
Sometimes these marks can be complicated, and occasionally confusing, but most of the time the marks on the back of silverware will tell you exactly what is made of without any other testing.
Good Marks- Sterling, 925
Bad Marks- AAA, triple plate, EPNS, IS, silver plate, copper, pewter
Marks that might mean its sterling or lower purity silver- Lions, 800, 900, no markings at all
If your pieces are marked with either the good or bad marks, then you need to go no further. However, If you have one of the marks that are maybes, then continue reading on.
#2- Look at the color of the pieces
There is no difference in color between solid sterling silver and plated silver when the silverware is newly made or clean, however, plated silver will tarnish differently then sterling. Sterling will always tarnish with black and brown colors, plated silver will usually get a multi color tarnish that will be purple, greenish, and bluish like an oil slick. If your piece doesn’t have a good mark on it, and it has acquired a sort of chemical color to it, then the odds are that your piece is plated.
#3- Bring it in for us to acid test.
We don’t recommend that anyone do this at home, but the last step in determining if a piece is plated or sterling is to file into it a few millimeters and put a drop of acid into the cut.
Don’t bother with these tests for silverware-
Unlike jewelry, magnets are bad for testing silverware as no silverware should be magnetic, whether sterling or plated. Tests that rely on temperature are also unreliable with silverware, likely due to the thickness of plating. The presence of green residue is also unlikely to mean anything as plated silverware doesn’t age like plated jewelry, and it will instead get the aforementioned “oil slick” color on it.
We hope this will help you identify whether or not your silverware is real silver or not. If you liked this article or found it helpful, check back with us for more in the future!
Each piece will be photographed at all angles, with no retouches, so that you can see a detailed view of each product. We will also have all the information posted straight from the piece’s appraisal. If you find you love one of our pieces, you can come in to our store and see it in person or buy it safely without needing to do any messy internet transactions.
As Silver City has a very large number of jewelry pieces, we won’t be able to list our entire inventory, but we will regularly add more each month. Keep checking back with us, these pages should arrive soon! We will continue working toward being the best jewelry store experience in Ocala!
We hear all the time from our amazing customers that they wear their jewelry out in the garden while doing yard work, washing the dishes, or cleaning with chemicals. We know you love your jewelry, but there are many times you need to take them off. This article is here to educate you on how to properly care for your jewelry!
First, its important to explain that precious metals are all physically soft and can all be effected by chemicals. In addition to caring for the metal in your ring, your stones are typically held in only by a few prongs (tiny pieces of metal which can easily be damaged) and making sure you don’t expose your prongs to too much punishment is very important to keeping your stones secure.
Here are a list of things to do/not do to help you never physically or chemically damage your jewelry.
1. Take jewelry off right when you get home from work, safely placing it on your dresser or nightstand where you will remember each morning to put it back on. Don’t ever sleep with your jewelry on.
2. Do not where your rings/ jewelry while working in the yard. This is fairly self explanatory and will also be useful for keeping your pieces clean.
3. Do not wear your jewelry while doing house work such as cleaning bathrooms, washing dishes, or mopping the floors. The cleaners are often bad for the metal.
4. Don’t swim in your jewelry, the chlorine from the pool will slowly damage your metals.
Of course if your jewelry does get broken, we at Silver City will always be available to repair it for you, but any jewelry piece can only be repaired a certain number of times before it becomes completely ruined. Taking care of your jewelry is very important because we all want our pieces to stay clean and pretty, and last our whole lives!
Thanks for reading 🙂
Everyone knows that men like thick chains. This Father’s Day maybe its a good opportunity to surprise him with something special, something that he he will truly appreciate. On that note, we’re happy to announce our Father’s Day coupon for 2016, good until June 19th. Click the special offers tab in the top right of the page to sign up for a coupon good for 25% off the retail price of gold and silver chains. We have many sizes, lengths, and styles in stock, all brand new, solid, and quality made!
And even if this coupon is inspired by Father’s day, it doesn’t mean that you have to use this coupon for a Father’s day present. Anyone can appreciate a nice chain, whether its for a husband, wife, graduation gift, or just to reward yourself. With our already low prices on chains, this is a great opportunity so don’t let it pass you by!
Again, if you want this coupon look in the top right of your page for the blue special offers button. As always you can call us with questions at 732-0185 or email us at James@silvercityjewelers.com.
Classic and sophisticated, pearls are a nice addition to any jewelry box. Pearls come in many shapes, sizes, and colors, and are strung on necklaces or set in all types of jewelry. If you are shopping for pearls, we have many pieces you might like at Silver City.
It’s not uncommon to see 75% off or 80% off of a jewelry item in department stores, or certain jewelry stores- Is this really a good deal? Many of the times we see people pay far too much for a piece, it was because a dishonest store told them it was extremely marked down. Let Silver City jewelers explain why this happens and why those huge percent off “deals” are actually just a dishonest sales technique!
When a jewelry manufacturer sells pieces to a store, they sell it for a certain cost and usually suggest a retail price, starting at 2 times that value. For instance, a manufacturer may sell a gold wedding band to a store for $50.00, the store pays the manufacturer that $50.00 and then tries to sell the wedding band to their customers for $100.00. That is the normal behavior of retail stores. However, in order to entice customers into thinking they are getting a much better deal, there is a shady practice of putting a much larger price on the pieces sticker and then saying that its been discounted by a huge percent. The store can take the wedding band that they paid $50.00 for, put a price tag on it of 300$, and then say they are selling it for 66% off, at $100.00. When that happens and the customer buys it for $100.00 because they think they got a special deal, they really paid the full retail price. Worse then that, what happens more often is that a company will take a $50.00 ring, put a price sticker on it of $600.00 and then say they are selling it for 66% off, at $200.00. A customer who buys that ring thinks they saved 66% when they really paid much more then they should have.
As you can see, its easy for companies to put an extremely unfair sticker price on a piece just so they can say they are selling it at a huge discount. Don’t fall for it! Companies all over the world are trying to trick customers into thinking they are getting a much better deal then they really are by putting big %off signs on their jewelry while selling the pieces for as much or more then honest stores.
Of course for someone who isn’t a trained jeweler, it can be very difficult to understand what a retail price on a piece should be. Our advice is to look at the bottomline of the actual price they are charging for the piece, and ignore any discounts or % off signs. On top of that, we advise typically avoiding shopping at stores who advertise huge % off discounts because they likely have huge unfair prices on all of their pieces and the ones without discounts may still be priced at 5 to 10 times higher then what an honest store would charge.
We hope you enjoyed this informative article! If you liked it let us know, and keep an eye out for more like this in the future.