Caring For Your New Silver Jewelry Pure Silver, a precious and malleable metal, is usually alloyed with copper to enhance its durability and prevent damage to the metal. Typically, sterling silver consists of 92.5 percent silver and 7.5 percent copper. Over time oxidation reactions will occur, especially with sulfur and oxygen, causing silver to become tarnished. Care should be taken to prevent this tarnishing, and many commercial products are available that will easily remove tarnish buildup that silver naturally acquires. When cared for properly, your fine quality silver will last a lifetime. Simply wearing your jewelry helps prevent, or at least slow, the oxidation process keeping your jewelry looking new. To minimize scratches, silver jewelry can be stored in cloth pouches, small ziplock bags, or in separate compartments in your jewelry box. If your jewelry appears to have dulled with age, or requires deep cleaning, we highly recommend using a jewelry cleaning cloth, followed by your jewelry polishing cloth. The cleaning cloth can be used on gold, sterling silver, and sterling silver finished with rhodium. Or you may simply wash the silver with warm water and a little mild soap, rinsing and then patting dry with a fine, soft cloth. Avoid exposing your silver to household chemicals when cleaning with bleach or ammonia, or when swimming in chlorinated water, as these chemicals can damage silver. Your professional jeweler should be able to provide you with silver-cleaning materials as well as directions for their proper use. Do not use silver dip as this will damage the rhodium finish and is known to remove color and polish from certain gemstones, including turquoise and onyx. Moreover, it will remove the oxidized antique look that is applied to give it the ageless appeal. Simply put, we do not recommend using silver dip on our jewelry. Never use toothpaste as it is very abrasive! Some have recommended using toothpaste to clean silver jewelry; we do not suggest doing this because toothpaste contains small abrasive granules which can leave scratches on your silver.