Buying silver · 4 August 2026 · 5 min read
925 vs 999 Silver: Which Should You Actually Buy?
One is for wearing, one is for keeping, and buying the wrong one is the most common and most expensive silver mistake.
Short answer
925 vs 999 Silver: Which Should You Actually Buy?
Buy 925 sterling silver for anything you wear or handle — it is 92.5% silver alloyed with copper, which makes it hard enough to hold a shape. Buy 999 fine silver only for coins and bars you intend to store, because at 99.9% purity it is soft enough to dent with a fingernail.
- 925
- 92.5% silver — jewellery, ornaments
- 999
- 99.9% silver — coins, bars
- Harder
- 925, by a wide margin
- Higher resale per gram
- 999
Almost every week someone asks us whether they should buy 999 silver instead of 925, on the understanding that purer must mean better. For jewellery it does not — it means softer, and softer means a piece that bends out of shape within a year.
What the numbers mean
The number is parts per thousand of pure silver. 925 silver is 92.5% silver and 7.5% other metal, almost always copper. 999 silver is 99.9% silver, with the remainder being trace impurities rather than a deliberate alloy.
The copper in sterling silver is not an adulterant or a way of cheating you out of metal. Pure silver is genuinely too soft to be useful: you can mark it with a fingernail, and a pure silver ring will go oval on your finger. The copper is there to make the metal hold a form.
Which to buy for what
- Jewellery you will wear — 925. Rings, chains, payal, kada, mangalsutra, jhumka. Anything that takes daily knocks.
- Deity ornaments — 925. An aangi or mukut is handled, removed for abhishek and put back daily; it needs to hold its shape.
- Coins and bars you will store — 999. There is no mechanical demand on them, so you may as well hold the purer metal.
- Gifting keepsakes — either, depending on whether the piece will be used or kept.
What this means for resale
999 coins and bars carry almost no making charge, so they are bought back close to the prevailing metal rate on the day. Jewellery is different: a sizeable part of what you paid is skilled labour at the bench, and labour cannot be melted back out. That is not a trick — it is what you were buying.
We buy back coins and bars bought from us at the rate on the day you bring them in, and we value old jewellery on recovered weight against new work. Either way you see the weight and the rate written down.
Questions about this
Is 999 silver better than 925 silver?
- No — they are for different jobs. 999 is purer and worth slightly more per gram, but it is too soft for jewellery and will bend and scratch in normal wear. 925 is the correct choice for anything worn or handled, and is not an inferior or adulterated version of it.
Does 925 silver tarnish faster than 999?
- Yes, slightly. The copper in 925 reacts more readily than pure silver, so sterling tarnishes a little faster. The difference is small compared with the effect of humidity, camphor smoke and incense residue, and polishing removes it from both completely.
Will a shop buy back 925 silver jewellery at full rate?
- At the metal rate for the recovered weight, yes — but not for the making charge, which is labour and cannot be recovered. Coins and bars are different: because there is almost no making charge in them, they come close to the full prevailing rate.
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