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Hello,
I've got this spoon from a friend who says it's Russian/Soviet. It is silver with gold plating on it. I did some research on your excellent site and I think the hallmark is a bit unusual. It has a kokoshnik mark with the woman head turned right, but instead of having the "normal" standard mark in zolotniki (x / 96), it has the standard 800 (in thousandth). It also have a mark (H) for the city of Odessa at the left of the woman's head. Then, there are two more marks "TФ4" and "Р" on the spoon.

Could someone enlight me and tell me if those are all real marks and what is their meaning? What can we learn about that spoon with these interesting marks.

Thanks a lot to help a beginner!

Hi -
the assaymark is no Kokoshnik, It is a Rabotnik - workers head looking right with a hammer on his shoulder. In use January 7th 1954 -1958. The townmark (letter) left of the head is cyr. H (lat.N) and stands for Tallinn (today Estonia). TФ4 stands for Tallinnskaja Juwelirnaja Fabrika, the lette 4 is the year of production = 1954. The silver content 800 was made for the "tourists from other social. brother countries" - Tallinn is and was a big harbour with much traffic. The letter P is in my opinion an intern mark to distinguish the silvercontent from the Soviet 875 0r 916.

Regards
Postnikov

Thanks a lot for the very detailed information Postnikov!
It is very interesting to know all this despite that the spoon is not rare or precious. Seeing all the detailed information that one can get from marks on a spoon makes me attracted to starting collecting Russian silver items and learn more on the topic. But I guess one has to be very careful with possibly a lot of fakes existing for the more rare items.