How Tiffany & Co marks its jewelry, and how we verify it

Tiffany jewelry is typically stamped with the company name, and gold pieces generally carry an accompanying karat or fineness indication consistent with the market the piece was sold into, for example a karat stamp for the US market. Tiffany silver has a long tradition of being marked with the word sterling or an equivalent fineness indication, often alongside a pattern name for flatware and hollowware, and sometimes with additional production or order numbers used internally by the company.

Because Tiffany has operated for well over a century, the exact wording, typeface and placement of its marks has changed over that time, and older pieces can look different from more recent ones while both being entirely genuine. A plausible-looking mark from an unfamiliar period is not itself evidence against authenticity, but it is a reason to examine the piece more carefully rather than to accept the mark on its own.

Some Tiffany pieces carry additional stamped numbers relating to the company's own design or production records. As with Cartier, we do not publish a public lookup chart for these numbers, since accurate interpretation depends on access to Tiffany's own archival records or specialist knowledge we would not claim to substitute for.

When such numbers are present and legible, we treat them as useful supporting information to record and, where a client wants a fuller history, as a starting point for a specialist or the company to investigate, rather than as something we would use to assert a specific year or production detail ourselves.

A stamped name is straightforward to copy, and the volume of counterfeit Tiffany jewelry and silver in the secondary market means a mark on its own is not sufficient evidence of authenticity for anything but the most casual purpose. Genuine assessment looks at the quality and consistency of the stamping itself, the construction methods and findings typical of the claimed period, the gemstones and settings where relevant, and whether the overall piece matches known Tiffany practice for its type and era.

For higher-value pieces, particularly signed gemstone jewelry rather than mass-produced silver, we consider verification through the house or through an independent specialist with direct expertise in Tiffany jewelry to be the appropriate next step, and we support customers who want that additional verification rather than treating our own review as the final word.

Our in-house gemologist examines the mark, construction and materials together as part of a full valuation and authenticity report before we describe any piece as Tiffany, and we say plainly when a mark is worn, partial, or otherwise not fully conclusive, rather than rounding up to a confident attribution the evidence does not support.