posted 06-22-2007 06:06 PM            

I have several silver items marked with WMFN (slanted) followed by 0 or 1/0. I have seen two different identifications of this mark. One says it is coin silver made by William F. Newhall of Lynn, Mass (19th Century), the other says it is WMF of Germany. Who is right?

posted 06-25-2007 09:28 AM            

You would more likely get an informative response if you take a few minutes and go back and read the guidelines for this forum at Guidelines

We are just a small group of people who like silver and as you will see when you read these instructions we ask new people to please introduce themselves by sharing a little information on their interest in silver in general and why they are asking about the particular objects in their posting.

posted 06-25-2007 12:56 PM            

One of the pieces is a porcelain serving bowl with a silver rim. I picked it up at a high end estate sale. I got it because it was pretty and one of the few pieces I could afford. The dealers seemed to pay little attention to it. I didn't even notice the silver mark until I got it home. I think I got a bargain at $15 regardless of the maker. I have spent hours online trying to research the mark. That's how I found this forum. I guess my curt question was the result of much frustration. Sorry.

posted 06-25-2007 05:11 PM            

In the meantime, from your description my first guess is that it is more likely going to be Württembergische Metallwarenfabrik (WMF) but until we see a photo or good drawing this should be taken with a whole shaker worth of salt. WMF is found mainly silver plated things, and there is a mark with an N on the end - WMFN which stands for Nickel Silver - which despite its name is a nickel alloy with no silver. Also, WMF is sometimes seen with an I/O supplementary marking that stands for '1 gram of silver was used to plate 100 square centimeters' which is not an exact measurement but was a marketing tool to encourage people to buy it. This may or may not be what you have and until an image is available there is no way to say with any certainty whether this is what you have.

If it were solid silver, your polishing would not have ruined it, though over polishing to the point of removing all patina is seen by many as 'ruining' nice old silver. Silver plated objects, especially ones that do not have very thick plating can, however, be damaged by enthusiastic polishing. You can literally polish the silver right off and wind up with nothing but the base metal. Your bowl may already have had its silver polished off of it in spots before you took to it though so don't feel too badly. That may be why the estate sale managers, who are usually pretty savvy people who miss very little, left the bowl as it was and offered it for a modest amount of money. One thing to keep in mind is that even very wealthy people buy or acquire some very inexpensive material over their lives. Buying from a high end estate sale is no assurance that things there will be high end. Also, many estate sale managers will 'salt' sales by mixing in some additional stock of their own to help move it and make some extra money.