What We Buy
Many people are confused as to what is gold and what is not. For the normal person, it seems much more difficult that it is. Most gold is marked by the manufacturer for its gold content.
First we should define Karat Gold: The karat (abbreviation kt) is a measure of the purity of gold alloys. Gold may be alloyed with various other metals to give it special properties. In its pure form, gold has a metallic luster and is sun yellow, but when mixed or alloyed with other metals, such as silver (Ag), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), nickel (Ni), platinum (Pt), palladium (Pd), tellurium (Te), and iron (Fe), creates various color hues ranging from silver-white to green and orange-red. Usually, red, yellow and green gold are made by adding varying amounts of copper (Cu) and silver (Ag) to produce alloys of 10 to 14 carats. White gold has traditionally been made by alloying nickel (Ni), zinc (Zn) and copper (Cu) with gold, but more recently silver (Ag) and palladium (Pd) have replaced the zinc. These color variation treatments to gold are mostly used in jewelry.
Most often, gold is stamped with markings such as 10KT, 14KT, 18KT. But it can also be stamped with its gold content such as 417, 585, 750. They mean the same thing.
10K Gold is 10 parts gold and 14 parts other material. 10 divided by 24 equals .4166 and is stamped 417.
14K Gold is 14 parts gold and 10 parts other material. 14 divided by 24 equals .583 and is stamped 585.
18K Gold is 19 parts gold and 6 parts other material. 18 divided by 24 equals .750 and is stamped 750.
So, grab a hand held magnifying glass and study the items you have. Mind you, not all items are marked. Older jewelry pieces may have had their markings worn off, and sometimes when rings are sized, the markings get removed. So don’t leave those unmarked pieces at home. At the same time, there are fake rings that have all the markings that a gold ring would have.
In the end, it makes sense to bring everything in to Alpha Gold. We are happy to go through each and every item.