Can I sell my metal clay creations as .999 fine silver?
After firing metal clay silver, it is .999 fine silver. You can advertise and sell any product made from 100% metal clay silver as .999 fine silver.
If you introduce any other material other than .999 fine silver when creating your work, you would have to qualify the use of any sub-grade material used. For instance, if you created a pair of earrings using metal clay, but then used sterling silver ear wires. You could NOT advertise or sell those earrings as fine silver earrings. You would have to qualify the sterling ear wires as such. So the description would have to read something like: Fine silver earrings with sterling silver ear wires.
Another instance would be, if you soldered a jump ring to a metal clay pendant, the solder (not being .999 fine silver) would lower the assay, or the purity of the fine silver, and that pendant could not be advertised or sold as a .999 fine silver pendant.
There are exceptions where a material can be used in combination with metal clay and still be advertised or sold as .999 fine silver. Those exceptions as stated on the Federal Trade Commission’s website are:
(c) Exemptions recognized in the industry and not to be considered in any assay for quality of a silver industry product include screws, rivets, springs, spring pins for wrist watch straps; posts and separable backs of lapel buttons; wire pegs, posts, and nuts used for applying mountings or other ornaments, which mountings or ornaments shall be of the quality marked; pin stems (e.g., of badges, brooches, emblem pins, hat pins, and scarf pins, etc.); levers for belt buckles; blades and skeletons of pocket knives; field pieces and bezels for lockets; bracelet and necklace snap tongues; any other joints, catches, or screws; and metallic parts completely and permanently encased in a nonmetallic covering.