Silver, Grade Information
999 Silver (Fine Silver)
Fine silver, 99.9% pure — the bullion grade. Investment bars, Royal Mint Britannia coins, refined silver remelt, and high-purity industrial silver. Today's price per kg and per gram.
Written by Adam Moffatt · Last reviewed May 2026
Periodic Table Position
What 999 Silver Actually Means
"999" refers to silver fineness on the millesimal scale — 999 parts per thousand, or 99.9%, pure silver. The remaining 0.1% is incidental trace elements left over from refining, typically tiny amounts of copper, lead, or gold. Fine silver is the bullion-trade standard. The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) Good Delivery silver bar specification actually requires a minimum fineness of 999.0 with most bars hitting 999.9 — "four nines" — which is the highest commercially produced silver purity. There are three other recognised silver standards in everyday use in Britain: Britannia at 958 (95.8% silver, used in the Royal Mint's Britannia coin range and for hallmarked Britannia silverware), Sterling at 925 (92.5% silver, the historic British silver standard since 1300, see our sterling silver page), and 800 silver (80%, used in some European tableware). 999 silver pays at the top of the silver league because it requires the least refining to convert into bullion.
Where 999 Silver Comes From
Most 999 silver scrap we see is investment bullion that has come to the end of its useful life as an investment — owners decide to liquidate at a moment of strong silver pricing, or they have inherited bars and coins from a relative and want to convert to cash quickly without the spread of a coin dealer. The Royal Mint's Silver Britannia coin (1 troy ounce, struck since 1997, raised to 999 fineness in 2013) is the most common single product, alongside Silver Maple Leaf coins from the Royal Canadian Mint, American Silver Eagles, and an assortment of generic bullion bars from refiners like Umicore, PAMP Suisse, Heraeus, and Metalor. Cast silver bars in 100g, 250g, 500g, 1kg, and occasionally larger sizes turn up regularly. We also handle fine silver jewellery — much less common in Britain than sterling because hallmarking traditions prefer 925, but 999 silver chains, bangles, and decorative pieces are imported from China and India in some volume and end up as scrap when fashions change. Industrial 999 silver comes from electrical contact recovery, silver paste residues from photovoltaic manufacture, and specialist silver-bearing solder residues.
How We Verify Fineness
For any precious metal coming through the yard, we test before we pay. With bullion bars and coins from recognised mints, a simple visual and ping test is usually enough — provided the markings are correct, the weight matches the specification to within a fraction of a gram, and the item rings cleanly when tapped. Counterfeit bullion does exist, mainly tungsten-cored silver bars (tungsten has a similar density to silver but a different ring and a different magnetic response). For anything we have any doubt about, we use XRF (X-ray fluorescence) which gives a full elemental composition in seconds and is destructively non-invasive — it doesn't damage the piece. Acid testing on a hidden spot of jewellery is sometimes used as a back-up. Hallmarked British items carry a stamped fineness mark — 999 is occasionally seen but more often Britannia (958) or Sterling (925) are stamped instead. If you bring in unhallmarked silver claiming 999 purity, expect to be tested, and bring as much documentation as you have — original mint packaging, certificates of authenticity, refiner's assay cards.
How the Price Is Set
Fine silver scrap is priced directly off the LBMA silver spot price, which is published twice daily in London at 12:00 GMT (the "London Silver Price" auction). For 999 silver, a UK scrap yard typically pays between 92% and 98% of LBMA spot depending on volume, form, and verification cost. Bullion bars from recognised refiners pay at the top of that range because verification is fast and refining margin is minimal. Coins pay slightly below bar rate because of the small premium consumers paid when they bought them (which we cannot recover). Unhallmarked items pay lower because of the additional verification time. To translate to a yard price: with silver at £25/oz LBMA spot, 999 silver scrap at 96% of LBMA works out at roughly £24/oz, which is approximately £770/kg or £0.77/g. Volatility is built into the silver market — daily moves of 1–3% are normal, larger moves occur around macroeconomic events. The price you receive at the gate is the price posted that morning. Check today's price →
How Fine Silver Is Refined and Reused
999 silver scrap is so close to bullion grade that very little additional refining is required to put it back into the market. After verification and weighing at the yard, fine silver is consolidated and sent to specialist precious metals refiners — companies like Cookson Precious Metals in Birmingham, Betts Metals, or international refiners with UK collection points. Bars and coins of recognised provenance can sometimes go straight back into circulation as bullion product without remelting, depending on condition. Material that does need re-refining is melted in induction furnaces under controlled atmospheres, cast into anode plates, and either electrolytically refined or processed using the Moebius cell to lift fineness to 999.9. The recovered silver is cast into LBMA-spec Good Delivery bars (typically 1,000oz, around 31kg each) or into smaller investment bar and coin formats. Photovoltaic manufacturers, electronics fabricators, and silver-bearing solder producers also draw on the recycled silver pool — close to 30% of global silver supply now comes from recycling rather than mining.
5-Year Price Trend & What's Next
LBMA silver has had a turbulent few years. Through 2021, silver moved between roughly £16 and £24/oz, briefly spiking on the retail-investor "silver squeeze" episode in February 2021. The 2022–2023 period saw silver retreat into the £14–£18 band on dollar strength and rising real interest rates. From mid-2024 onwards silver has been on a clear upward trend, supported by record photovoltaic demand (solar panel manufacturers are the largest single industrial silver buyer, consuming around 200 million ounces a year and rising), continued investment demand, and tightening above-ground supply. As of early 2026, silver is trading in the £22–£28 range with brief moves above £30/oz during equity-market volatility. The bullish structural case for silver — driven by solar, EVs, and electronics — looks intact for the rest of the decade. The Silver Institute forecasts a sustained physical deficit through 2026–2030. For fine silver scrap sellers, that environment is supportive: spot prices well above the post-financial-crisis baseline of 2012–2019, with periodic spikes that create good selling windows.
Note: All scrap yard prices paid by QuickStop Metals are calculated as a percentage of the prevailing LME or spot market price, updated daily. Check today's prices →
Ready to sell your 999 Silver?
Drive straight in to any of our three depots. No appointment needed, same day payment. Bring identification — required for precious metals transactions under the Scrap Metal Dealers Act.
Ready to sell or have a question?