Diamond & Jewelry News, Advice and Prices for Consumers
Diamond & Jewelry News, Advice and Prices for Consumers
March 5, 2010
I just graduated from college and I decided to get myself some real expensive jewelry since I'm an adult now. Anyway, I went shopping for gold jewelry and I have no idea how to read all the numbered code! Yikes, I didn't know jewelry shopping was rocket science!
April 9, 2010
March 6, 2010
Don't worry – buying gold jewelry is not rocket science at all! On the contrary, it is quite far from being so. When it comes to gold, there is not much you need to educate yourself about before heading to the stores. This is in sharp contrast to buying diamonds, for instance, which require a bit more than basic knowledge in order to make a good purchase. So, just like I said, there is nothing to worry about! So basically what you need to know is that gold in its pure form is a malleable metal, i.e. it is soft and therefore bends much easier than other metals. Just to put it into perspective, the Mohs scale of hardness (a chart used to determine the durability of all familiar metals) lists gold as low as 2.5, whilst diamonds are ranked highest at 10. Being considered a soft metal is not a particularly good trait when it comes to jewelry making, because jewelers aim not only to create a beautiful piece of jewelry, but also to create one that will last. Therefore, in order to enhance the durability of gold and hence to make it much less likely to display wear and tear marks (such as scratches), jewelers often use gold in an alloy instead of its pure form. An alloy, by the way, is just another way of saying a mixture of different metals. So in this case gold will be mixed with other more durable types of metals in an alloy and hence an overall stronger metal will be achieved. This is where the term "karat" comes in: Not to be confused with carat spelled with a "c" which measures the mass of a gemstone, a karat is actually a purity measurement of gold. In other words, the higher the karat value is, the more gold is present in the alloy. The highest karat value you could get is 24 karats, which is also referred to as pure gold. An 18 karat piece of gold is simply a metal which consists of a ratio of 18 parts gold to 24 parts overall. By the way, any piece of jewelry which is composed of at least 10 karats could be considered solid gold. And that is basically it – that is all you need to know when it comes to gold jewelry.
