Pewter turns up in jewellery boxes, on mantelpieces and in house clearances: tankards, plates, candlesticks, figurines, buttons and costume jewellery, often grey, soft-looking and heavier than expected. The question people usually bring to it is whether it is “worth anything”. This page does not answer that with a number. It answers the question underneath: what pewter actually is, what the word legally claims in the United States, and how it differs from the precious metals the rest of this site measures.
Pewter is a tin alloy
Pewter is an alloy whose main metal is tin. Tin is a soft, silvery-grey base metal; it is the basis of pewter and of the soft solders used in plumbing and electronics. Pure tin melts at 231.928 °C, a defining fixed point of the International Temperature Scale of 1990, which is why pewter can be cast in simple moulds at temperatures far below those gold or silver need. The melting points table sets tin beside the precious metals. Tin is less dense than silver, about 7.3 g/cm³ against silver’s 10.5, so a pewter piece is lighter than a silver one of the same size; the metal density comparison works that out for any pair of metals.
The other metals in pewter harden it and change how it casts and finishes. Which metals, and in what proportions, has varied by maker, country and century, and no single recipe is “pewter” in a technical sense. That is exactly why the legal definition below matters: it fixes the one thing the word has to mean.
What the word means under US rules
The Federal Trade Commission’s Guides for the Jewelry, Precious Metals, and Pewter Industries cover pewter in 16 CFR § 23.9. The rule has two parts:
- It is unfair or deceptive to mark, describe or otherwise represent a product, or part of one, as pewter, or by an abbreviation of the word, if that misrepresents the product’s true composition.
- A product may be marked or described as pewter if it contains at least 900 parts per 1,000 Grade A tin, with the rest made up of metals appropriate for use in pewter.
So “pewter” on a modern product sold in the US claims at least 90% tin by weight. The rule does not list the remaining metals. It requires only that they be appropriate for use in pewter, and it says nothing about a mark’s form or where it appears on the piece.
What the word does not tell you
- It does not make pewter a precious metal. Pewter sits outside the precious metal marking rules altogether. The UK’s Hallmarking Act covers gold, silver, platinum and palladium; there is no assay office hallmark for pewter, and the hallmark reference on this site covers only the precious metals.
- It does not date a piece. The FTC definition governs how a product is described now. Older pewter was made to whatever standard its maker and place used, and some historical pewter alloys contained lead. A pewter mark on an old piece is not evidence of its composition, and only an analysis can establish what it contains. Anyone concerned about lead in an old piece used for food or drink should treat that as a question for a testing laboratory rather than a label.
- It is not a silver mark. Pewter can look like dull silver, and silver-coloured base metals are sometimes mistaken for it. A piece stamped 925, 800 or STERLING is making a silver claim, which is a separate thing entirely; the silver purity guide explains those marks.
Why this site gives no figure for pewter
Every value on this site is a precious metal’s weight multiplied by its fineness and a live price. Tin is a base metal with no live price feed here, and an old pewter piece’s tin content is not known from its mark, so there is nothing honest to multiply. Any number shown would be an estimate presented as a measurement, which is the one thing this site does not publish.
What can be measured is the piece itself: its weight on an accurate scale, its marks, and its dimensions. Where pewter pieces change hands, what they sell for usually depends on the maker, age, condition and design far more than on the metal, and that is a question for someone who deals in such pieces, not for a calculator. If a grey piece turns out to carry a silver mark after all, the silver calculator measures the silver in it at today’s price.