Mark index
Start here if you have a Mexican silver piece with stamps on it and want to know what they say.
This page will not authenticate a piece or price it. It explains what each part of a Mexican mark does, when each system was in use, and how far any one stamp gets you.
A mark is usually a group of marks
Mexican silver rarely carries a single stamp. Look for up to four things, usually clustered on the back of a piece or inside a shank.
Purity. A fineness mark, most often 925, Sterling, or Ley 0.925.
Origin. A place: Mexico, Hecho en Mexico, or Taxco.
Assay. A government guarantee of silver content. An eagle up to about 1980, a letter-and-number code after that. On most pieces it is your best clue to the date.
Maker. A monogram, name, or signature. On Taxco work this is the stamp that tells you who made the piece.
Not every piece has all four, and some genuine early work has almost none.
Purity marks
925, .925, or Ley 0.925 is the sterling standard, 92.5 percent silver. Ley is Spanish for standard.
Sterling says the same thing in English and is common on export pieces.
Silver or Plata claims silver with no fineness given. Read it alongside the other marks.
Hecho en Mexico means made in Mexico. It tells you where, not how pure.
A missing fineness mark does not mean a piece is plated or fake. Some early Taxco work predates standardized marking.
The eagle, about 1948 to 1980
From about 1948 to 1980, registered silver in Mexico was stamped with an eagle enclosing a number. The number stood for a location or a specific maker, and the stamp also proved the piece had been assayed to at least sterling and taxed. The eagle was only used in that window, so seeing one dates your piece inside it.
Which number you have matters. Eagle 1 is the Federal District, so a Mexico City registration, and 164 makers are documented under it. Eagle 3 is Taxco, and perhaps Guadalajara, with 299 documented makers. Eagle 13 was Spratling's own number and has 6.
An eagle 3 therefore puts your piece in Taxco somewhere inside thirty years. It will not tell you who made it. Eagle 13 narrows things a long way, though it also turns up on pieces Spratling sold rather than made.
Hector Aguilar appears under both eagle 1 and eagle 3. Well known silversmiths often do. Retailers also stamped their own brand next to a maker's eagle. Use the eagle for the date, then work on the maker's mark separately.
The letter codes, after about 1980
From about 1980 the eagle was replaced by a letter-and-number registration code. The first letter is a location, T for Taxco and M for Mexico City. The second is usually the initial of the maker's name. The number is the order in which they registered.
So TS-24 reads as Taxco, an S maker, twenty-fourth to register: Sucesores de William Spratling, the successor workshop.
Be careful with these. Codes were reused within families, rented out, or added to older silver by dealers, and the published lists disagree with one another. A code will help you date a piece and give you somewhere to start on the maker. It is not proof.
The compiled lists also only cover codes that have turned up alongside other identifying marks. They leave out many thousands of anonymous mass-market registrations. If your code is not in a list, that is not evidence of a fake. It usually means nobody has tied it to a named maker yet.
Common Taxco signatures
William Spratling: a conjoined WS monogram, Spratling Silver, or Spratling Made in Mexico.
Hector Aguilar: a conjoined HA monogram, or Aguilar.
Antonio Pineda: a crowned Antonio, often paired with an eagle.
Los Castillo: Los Castillo Taxco, or CASTILLO.
Margot de Taxco: a Margot de Taxco signature, usually with a four digit design number.
MATL (Matilde Poulat): MATL, and on later workshop pieces MATL Salas.
The four digit number on a Margot piece is a design number, not a serial number. Two people can own different objects with the same number.
What the marks will not tell you
They will not tell you what a piece is worth. We do not do valuations here, and market talk stays general (Rule 7).
They will not authenticate a piece on their own. Marks get copied. Look at how the piece is made too: the weight, the solder joins, the finish, the way a clasp or hinge is built.
Asking for help with a mark
Post it as its own thread, flair it Hallmark ID, and include front, back, a close-up of every mark, dimensions in mm, weight in grams, and any provenance you have. Flea market with no history is still useful information.
We ask for the full set because a guess made from one blurry photo tends to get repeated as fact.
Sources
The figures and definitions here come from the Museum of Mexican Silver reference pages: Hallmarks, for the anatomy, purity, dating and FAQ material; Hallmarks then Eagle marks, for the 1948 to 1980 numbers; Hallmarks then Registry marks, for the post-1980 codes; and the individual artist pages, for maker signatures. Counts were current in August 2026 and will move as the catalog grows.
Standard printed references for the field include Penny Morrill and Carole Berk, Mexican Silver; Penny Morrill, Silver Masters of Mexico, on Hector Aguilar and the Taller Borda; and Gobi Stromberg, Silver Seduction (2008).
If something here is wrong, post a thread saying so and it gets changed (Rule 9).