Nickel Silver
Also: Alpacca, Argentan, Packfong, Maillechort, German silver
Nickel silver is a silvery copper-nickel-zinc alloy that contains no silver whatsoever; its appearance made it a popular silver substitute throughout history.
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Despite what its name suggests, nickel silver — also traded as Alpacca or Argentan — holds not a single gram of silver. It is a base-metal alloy built from copper, nickel and zinc, and its bright, silvery sheen combined with easy workability turned it into an affordable stand-in for real silver across industry and craft trades.
Composition and characteristics
The exact recipe shifts from one manufacturer and application to the next, yet it usually falls within these bands:
| Component | Typical share |
|---|---|
| Copper (Cu) | 45-70 % |
| Nickel (Ni) | 5-30 % |
| Zinc (Zn) | 10-35 % |
The result is a material with sound corrosion resistance, high ductility and a warm silver lustre. At roughly 8.5-8.8 g/cm3, its density sits well below that of genuine silver (10.49 g/cm3), which makes it straightforward to distinguish through a coin authenticity check or a density measurement.
Historical origins
The name traces back to the Chinese "Packfong" (white copper), which reached Europe during the 18th century. European metallurgists reverse-engineered the alloy and sold it under a shifting cast of names — Maillechort in France, Argentan or Alpacca in the German-speaking world. The label pointed at a freshly devised, silver-like alternative.
Where it is used
Nickel silver is a favourite for:
- Cutlery and tableware — often silver-plated (a coating of real silver) over a nickel-silver body
- Musical instruments — brass wind instruments, flutes, clarinet keys
- Jewellery and accessories — inexpensive costume pieces
- Electrical contacts and springs — thanks to good spring hardness and conductivity
- Coins and medals — historic low-value circulating coinage from several nations
Setting it apart from real silver
Nickel silver is not a precious metal and carries no standalone bullion value in the sense of the melt value calculator. Its market price follows its constituents — copper, nickel and zinc, all industrial metals. Silver-plated nickel-silver cutlery does carry a thin layer of genuine silver (signalled by plating stamps such as "90" for 90 g of silver per 12 pieces), but that melt value is modest.
Melt value of plated cutlery = gross weight x silver-plating share x silver price/g
(the plating share is often below 2 % of total weight)
When buying scrap silver, dealers therefore reach for a hallmark loupe, an acid test or X-ray fluorescence analysis to work out whether they are handling solid silver or plated nickel silver.
In brief
Nickel silver is a silver-free Cu-Ni-Zn alloy whose worth rests on the copper price and other industrial metal prices — never on the silver price. Anyone wanting to check cutlery or jewellery for genuine silver content should turn to a proper authenticity check.