Among the several benefits that gold offers to jewelry aficionados, it looks beautiful, can be worked into just about any shape and rarely is a cause for allergy much like other precious metals.
One aspect that is taken into consideration when buying gold is its level of purity. You’ll always find a K preceded by a number on any item of gold that you buy, and which indicates the percentage of gold that is in an item.
Ranging from 24K to 10K, the former is pure gold whereas the latter and those in between, such as 12K, 14K and 18K, contains 14, 12, 10 and 6 parts gold and 10, 12 and 14 parts of other metals.
Simply put, the higher the number before the K, the purer the gold that is used to create a piece of jewelry. In the United States, 10K is minimum karat that will be considered to be “gold”.
In Europe, the jewelry is usually marked with the percentage of gold. For example, 18K gold is marked as 750, which is 75% gold while 14K is marked as 585, which is 58.5% of gold.
Apart from this, not only is a hallmark or trademark which identifies its maker on the jewelry but also its country of origin available.
A common question asked is why other metals are mixed with gold. The simple answer is that pure gold when shaped into jewelry is brittle. Hence, these types aren’t usable for daily wear unlike one that are mixed with other metals, and which is called ‘solid gold’.
So, based on this it is recommended that you consider ‘solid gold’ for daily use while buying gold that is of a higher karat value if you have allergies to other metals.
As for buying gold filled or plated jewelry, ensure that you buy it only if you intent to wear it occasionally.
