What's the difference between silver and sterling silver?

Pure silver is a soft metal that is not very durable. Sterling silver is silver alloyed with other metals (commonly copper) to make it stronger and more ductile. Sterling silver generally tarnishes even more than pure silver though some tarnish resistant alloys have been made.

Sterling silver is 92.5% pure silver.

silver tarnish’s and sterling wont. when it tarnish’s it gets all black like and gross and you gotta have it cleaned. sterling is a lot nicer.

Fine silver is 99.9% pure or more, but unfortunately it can be quite soft and may not be able to be used most times for the purpose of jewelry or silverware. Sterling silver is usually approximately 92.5% pure or sometimes a bit higher than this.

The remaining 5 or 7% may be copper since it is a suitable metal that would not change its color and would serve to make the metal harder to be more useful.

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Sterling silver doesn’t tarnish and it is a brighter metal than real silver. It technically is not (pure) silver since it has some other metal added. But it is the best choice for jewelery if you don’t want to clean it all the time.

“There is a difference between silver and sterling silver. Silver is at its natural state 999/1000 pure. It is too soft to hold its shape very well, so that it is difficult to mould into everyday products. Sterling silver had been developed. It comprised of 92.5% is pure silver and 7.5% alloy which usually comes from copper, zinc or nickel but not always. The name of sterling silver comes from the Easterling area of Germany where the original silver craftsmen developed the sterling silver alloy. It is also called 925 and usually people look for the hallmark 925 to mean the 92.5% purity of silver for the items or jewellery.” – http://www.fashionjewelleryonline.com/jewellery/sterling_silver_info.html

thanks everyone :)

Silver always leaves green marks on my fingers when I wear silver rings… Sterling dosen’t :)