Polish Assay Offices

Assay Offices work on the basis of a bill of hallmarking. It crated the requirement to measure and hallmark all products made of silver and other precious metals by Assay Offices.





Precious metals include patina, gold, iridium, osmium, palladium, rhodium or pure ruthenium and its alloys. Firstly, we should explain what a term hallmark means. It's the amount of pure precious metal in the alloy divided by the mass of the whole alloy. The product can be given a hallmark if the amount of pure metal isn't lower than the predicted hallmark.

Historical products, tools, cameras, medical products, orders and badges, coins and semi-products and scrap metals don't have to be hallmarked in Poland. An interesting thing and an exception are dentistry products because there is a requirement to hallmark them. There is no need, nor prohibition, to hallmark gold and platinum products lighter than 1g and silver products lighter than 5 grams.

In addition to that, products made of ordinary metals plated with a small amount of precious metal have to be marked with a special mark "metal" or "met". That is why a hallmark guarantees the clients that a given product is made of precious metal, and it isn't artificial. After all, clients should know what they buy. To cut it short, hallmarks guarantee a high quality of a given product. And there is no difference who is a client - whether it's a huge wholesaler or a person doing shopping at the jewellery shop.

We have to remember though that the Polish market isn't isolated and we should also know how it looks in other countries. Generally speaking, we can divide hallmarking into several categories: obligatory - in which products are measured in assay offices and it's required by the government, faculty - it allows a producer to choose whether to place his own mark or a authority given hallmark. There are also systems in which no hallmarking is required, a logo of the producer entitles to selling products.