It’s that elusive number. 925. What does it mean? Is it an alien code about a date to invade the Earth? Is that why UFO’s are so silvery? Is it all going to end on September 25th? Or do the aliens have a totally different calendar so we really have no idea when they’re going to invade. Is the alien leader’s name Sterling? Is he 9’25”? That would make him really tall and totally redefine what a foot is in the first place, simultaneously.
The answer is stop freaking out about aliens. That 925 on sterling silver rings just means that sterling silver rings are only 92.5% silver. Then what’s the other 7.5% of a sterling silver ring? Usually some sort of flecch like copper that they stick in there to make it harder and more durable. But who is sterling? Is he the inventor of sterling silver rings? The answer is, nobody really knows who sterling is. There are theories though.
One thing you may like to know is that sterling silver rings, or at least sterling silver itself, may be your ticket out of the crazy stock market zigzags and instability. As paper money loses its value, real hard metals like those present in sterling silver rings start shooting up, for two reasons. People start losing faith in dollars and then trade them for metals. So first, the demand for sterling silver rings and other sterling silver materials goes way up, upping the price. Secondly, as the value of the dollar itself drops, more dollars will have to be used to purchase the silver. These two reasons reinforce each other to drive the price of sterling silver rings way up.
As for sterling silver rings themselves, they are very light jewelry pieces, and they require care and maintenance. Like any metal jewelry exposed to air, sterling silver rings have this obsession with chemically combining with oxygen. We have it to, which is why we’re all helplessly addicted to breathing. Luckily, our body has the machinery to enable us to combine with oxygen without violently exploding, unlike gasoline, which is why we have lungs and blood. When sterling silver rings combine with oxygen or its cousin element sulfur, the result is not that they continue to survive and do things like we do, but rather they tarnish. Tarnish is chemically silver sulfide, which when seen on sterling silver rings, is black shmuff. It can either be scratched off, dissolved off, or chemically reconverted to silver by ripping the sulfur off with a tiny atomic-sized ice pick. Or, more appropriately, by wrapping it in aluminum foil and baking soda so the aluminum will grab the sulfur away from the silver, giving you a polished sterling silver ring.
