Spent today with a Jeweller, helping him begin the process of selling his products on ebay - designing HTML templates, showing him how take good close up photographs etc.
He makes earings, pendants and other jewellery out of sterling silver and has them hallmarked.
On looking at what was being sold on ebay, it became obvious that many sellers were abusing the term "hallmark" This is a strict standard that ensures (and has done since the 14th century) that all gold & silver sold in the UK is pure.
He told me the tale of how some impurity once got in the silver sheet he was making his jewellery from and they returned the 300 items he had sent for marking - crushed! I said that's a pretty severe punishment and he replied that in earlier times, you could have been put to death for abusing the hallmark system!
So do we get evidence that these sellers are misusing the term and:
a. Present this to ebay?
b. Report them to the Assay office (I don't think they still hand out the death penalty)
c. Contact the sellers and remind them of the laws that apply?
d. Try and explain in the selling description what the hallmark sytem is and how it works?
What would you do? The process is expensive and time consuming and some of this so called "hallmarked" jewellery are being offered at a lower price than the cost of the Hallmarking!
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