Hallmarking figures show improvement on last year

In stark contrast to the negative numbers of recent years the number of gold items hallmarked was up 30 per cent. Hallmarking of gold with a millesimal fineness of 999 was up 134.8 per cent on the year before, while hallmarking of 990 gold increased 850 per cent.

Silver articles hallmarked were down 9.6 per cent on last year despite the 40.3 per cent increase in the hallmarking of 999 silver.

Both platinum and palladium hallmarking numbers showed positive increases compared to the previous year, with platinum up 20.4 per cent and palladium up 22.7 per cent.

Overall figures show that the total number of units hallmarked was 794,107 – 56,084 units more than May 2011.