The Hallmark Act: then and now

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The Hallmark Act: then and now

The first coin fraud
Since immemorial time, gold and silver have been the ideal medium of exchange. These metals are imperishable, dense, rare and therefore valuable. Initially, exchanging or paying with a lump of gold or silver was quite cumbersome. The value of such a lump had to be determined again and again by weighing and finding out the actual amount of pure precious metal because it usually contained an admixture of base metal. To simplify trade, the idea came up to mark small pieces of gold and silver with a fixed weight and precious metal content on behalf of the reigning monarch. Money was thus born as a universal medium of exchange. The first known coins date from around 700 B.C. struck in Lydia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia

Most people who had become rich also wanted to make this clear. They had gold and silversmiths make beautiful objects from their money (coins). In a time of adversity, these objects could be taken to the Mint to be turned into money (coins) again. However, this also created a lucrative and simple opportunity for fraud: The dishonest silversmith put a number of coins in his pocket and, in order not to show this, he added a corresponding amount of copper to the coins, which he melted and processed into objects. This fraud was usually only noticed by the mint master when the objects were returned to be made into coins again.

Oldest hallmarks
To combat this fraud, King Philippe le Hardi (the Bold) of France decreed on December 20, 1275 that large silver works in Paris had to be provided with a 'contremarque' or town mark. The members of the Parisian guild had to propose deans for this purpose. The master mark was probably created around this time, although the first mention of a 'suum signum proprium' was only found in an ordinance of 1355, in order to recognize the fraudsters. In London, the town mark 'teste de leopart' was established in the year 1300 by King Edward Longshanks (Longleg). In 1363 the master's mark was made mandatory there. However, this turned out not to be enough, because an assayer could be incompetent or bribed. To end this, the assayer's mark, or the year letter, was later added next to the maker's mark and town mark, in order to also identify the assayer.

Hallmarks in the Netherlands
This example to avoid fraud was adopted in the Low Countries: in Utrecht the town mark and the master mark in 1382, in Amsterdam the master mark, the town mark and the year letter in 1469. In between and after that, other cities also drew up similar provisions. Initially, the hallmarking and stamping of gold and silver was a matter that each city arranged for itself. The first more or less national law for the Burgundian Netherlands dates from December 14, 1489. The largest part of this 'placard' concerns currency reform. Determining the mandatory precious metal contents and the hallmarking of gold and silver was inevitably linked to this. As a result of the ongoing fraud, corresponding edicts were issued in 1501, 1502, 1520 and 1551. After the Northern Netherlands had shaken off the Burgundian-Spanish yoke and had united with the Union of Utrecht to form the federative republic of the Seven Provinces, the old placards largely remained in force.

Further provincial laws were instituted in Holland (1661), Friesland (1695) and Zeeland (1696), which also ordered the provincial mark to indicate the highest standard of precious metal content. In the other provinces and the Generality Lands, the method of assaying and stamping was left to the local authorities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generality_Lands

End of the guilds
The Seven Provinces were conquered by the French in 1795 and the Batavian Republic was proclaimed. For this 'liberation', France demanded and received, among other things, compensation of NLG 100,000,000. To pay this amount, a lot of money had to be raised. To realize this, all citizens had to hand in their gold and silver, with the exception of certain amounts of spoons and forks, jewelry and watches.
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The shopkeepers and goldsmiths, on the other hand, were allowed to keep their stock. The guilds were abolished and banned in 1798. In order to maintain mutual quality control, a number of guilds were allowed to continue to exist more or less as so-called 'destroyed' or 'defunct' guilds. This applied, among other things, to guilds of gold and silversmiths, tinsmiths, bakers and butchers. In the year 1800, a law was published to bring the gold and silver contents and the method of hallmarking on the same footing. However, this law remained a dead letter, because no one adhered to it.

Kingdom of Holland
After the proclamation of the Kingdom of Holland in 1806 under King Louis Napoleon, a national hallmarking law was promulgated on March 11, 1807, which brought uniformity to the precious metal contents and hallmarks. This law was drawn up following a simplified version of the French hallmarking rules. From mid-1807, as in France, taxes had to be paid on new and old to be sold precious metal objects. Because King Louis was stubborn and did not exactly follow the orders of his brother the Emperor, he was forced to abdicate in 1810. The Netherlands was then annexed by France.
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French Empire
In 1811 and 1812, the French hallmarking law of November 9, 1797 (19 Brumaire year 6) was introduced here. In general there was not much protest against this, because the French tax on gold and silver was significantly lower.

Kingdom of the Netherlands
After the French defeat at Leipzig, our country was liberated between the end of 1813 and the beginning of 1814. William I was proclaimed sovereign monarch. He largely enforced French legislation, including the hallmarking law of November 9, 1787. However, in his decision of December 26, 1813, the precious metal contents were changed and the French hallmarks with Gallic roosters were replaced by marks with Dutch lions. After filling the vacancies and creating the new standard/hallmark marks, the existing assay offices were reopened.

With effect from January 1, 1853, the outdated French hallmarking law was replaced by a new Dutch law. This law of September 18, 1852 is still in force in an amended form. As a result of the Benelux Treaty, the hallmarking tax was abolished in 1953. At the same time, the gold and silver contents were adjusted to international standards. The inspection of platinum was also introduced. In 1987, the Waarborg (Assay and hallmarking) was privatized and has been concentrated in a single office in Gouda since 1988.

Falsifications
In the past, attempts were made to pass off objects as assayed by stamping them with forged hallmarks or by sawing hallmarks from an object to be demolished and soldering them into the new one. That helped avoid hallmarking fees and taxes. Moreover, these objects could be made of a low precious metal content. People made decent profits that way. These crimes were severely punished. In the year 1816, for example, a father named Reveille and son, in Leeuwarden were sentenced to a 200 franc fine, flogging, display on the scaffold, seven years in a correctional center and posting of the sentence throughout the province. Judgments of this nature were also posted in all assay offices to educate the 'silversmiths'. The Reveille's had forged the small sword standard mark. Such a conviction also implied a 'declaration of dishonor'. This meant the loss of civil rights and a guardianship.
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Around 1865 interest in antique gold and silver arose, especially in England. Various highly skilled silversmiths responded to this by 'making antiques' and providing these objects with imitation guild hallmarks. If these objects also bore a valid Dutch hallmark, the Waarborg could do nothing about it. During the French period and subsequently in 1816, all old hallmarks had been declared null and void, 'as being devoid of all hallmarks'. In Schoonhoven (after the assay at the Waarborg) quite a few objects were also provided with spurious guild marks, but these marks were at most sufficient to mislead English customs. In the United Kingdom, import duty and hallmarking fees had to be paid on new silverware, but not on antique silver. Since 1988, falsifications of this nature can be prosecuted, because in that year the old hallmarks were again recognized by the state.
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Hallmarking Act 1986
The 1986 Hallmarking Act was created with the same idea as before: consumers had to be protected against falsifications. The law prescribes that certain precious metal objects must be inspected by designated hallmarking institutions and that these objects may not be sold if they do not have a hallmark.

Protection of word choice when describing precious metal objects
When bringing precious metal objects to the public's attention, the permitted and prohibited names must be taken into account when describing the object.
An entrepreneur is prohibited from bringing to the attention of the public any object other than an object that at least meets the lowest standard of fineness applicable for the precious metal in question under Article 1, using the words precious metal, platinum, gold or silver, or in such other way that it can reasonably be deduced that it concerns a platinum, gold or silver object.
(Stcrt communication)

Enforcement of the Hallmarking Act
Failure to comply with the Hallmarking Act is considered an economic offense. Supervision of compliance with the Guarantee Act is carried out by the Metrology and Guarantee department of the Telecom Agency. VSL is the National Metrology Institute of the Netherlands and maintains and develops the national measurement standards
https://fhi.nl/weeginstrumenten/agentsc ... -waarborg/
https://magazines.rdi.nl/staatvandeethe ... n-waarborg
https://www.vsl.nl/en/
Precious metal objects are checked for the presence of legal hallmarks by means of unannounced visits. The designated officials are authorized to enter a home without the resident's permission. If it is found that the Hallmark Act has been violated, this can lead to high fines, among other things.

Current Hallmark Act
The current Hallmark Act requires that precious metal objects above a certain weight must first be provided with a hallmark by designated hallmarking institutions before they can be sold.
The current Hallmark Scheme differs from the previous one in, among other things, the way in which hallmarking filled objects must be handled (Guarantee Act 2019, art. 3 and 5). In the current law, the standard marks for platinum (900 and 850 ) have been added, whereby the iridium part may no longer be counted as platinum in the standard determination. Finally, the designated assay institutions must be accredited according to the ISO 17020 and 17025 standards.
Pursuant to Article 1 of the law, in addition to gold, silver and platinum, palladium is also a precious metal. However, the law states that there is only a standard obligation for gold, silver and platinum.

Peter.

Source: WaarborgHolland
https://waarborg.nl/waarborgwet/#huidig
https://hallmarking.com/