All About Gold

Gold is a very soft precious metal when it is pure. Gold is often alloyed or mixed with other metals such as copper and silver to make it harder and less expensive.

Gold is measured in karats and 24 kt. gold is 100% pure gold, so 18 kt. gold is 75% gold, 14 kt. gold is 58.3% gold and 10 kt. gold is 41.7% gold.

Alloyed gold comes in many different colors. Yellow Gold is 50% silver and 50% copper. White gold consists of nickel, zinc, copper, tin and manganese. Pink or rose gold is 90% copper and 10% silver. Green gold has a high proportion of silver or cadmium. Blue gold has some iron in it and Grey gold is 15%-20% iron.

Electroplate is when one metal is coated with another metal using electricity. In making jewelry, sometimes inexpensive metals are electroplated with more expensive metals such as gold, silver, rhodium or chromium.

Gold Filled (G.F.) is when you have a thin outer layer of gold on top of a base metal.

Gold Plated (G.E.P.) metal has a very thin layer of gold on the surface and is usually electroplated.

Rolled Gold (R.G.P.) is a very thin sheet of gold that is laminated to a lesser metal and then the two layers are heated to fuse them together.

 

Gold Tone is jewelry that is finished with a gold color that has very little gold in it.

Gold Finish is jewelry that has the look of gold with no actual gold in it.