Toothpaste as Silver Polish?

When I first saw that someone had suggested that one can use toothpaste instead of specially made/produced/marketed silver polish, I thought it a dangerous joke. I had already ruined some good silver by using a cheap silver polish, Hepi instead of the Silvo.

toothpaste to the left and 
Silvo to the right

The other morning a friend came over to help me polish my silver. She is better at it than I am and really enjoys the chore. I could only find an almost empty Silvo, so when it got really empty, I asked her about the chances of using toothpaste. She said yes, so I first started to experiment on some less expensive items. Believe it or not, it worked! So we both worked on polishing. Then I washed everything, and she dried.

Then I replaced the cloth on the table/cabinet, and put everything back. B"H, that was easy.