All that glitters is not gold
Well then! And not everything that’s yellow is gold – sometimes not even the stuff sold to us as if it were.
But how do we actually find out what that pretty ring is really made of, the one we bought on vacation last summer?
We could just do what the pirates in the movies do – take a bite! 😄 Crazy but true: there’s a grain of truth in that. Pure gold (24 karat) is so soft you could actually leave tooth marks in it.
So why wouldn’t I recommend it? Easy – jewelry is rarely made of pure gold, because it’s way too soft. A ring like that would look beat up after just a few days of wear. Normal alloys are much harder – so if you’d like to keep your teeth, better try another method. 😉
The simplest way is to look for a hallmark. With a bit of patience (and sometimes a magnifying glass) you’ll usually spot numbers like 585 or 14K. These tell you the gold content – in the case of 585, that’s 58.5%. And since hallmarks can only be stamped under legal liability, the maker is basically guaranteeing the claim.
And if there’s no hallmark – or you just don’t trust it? That’s where chemical tests come in. With special acids you can check if there’s gold at all – and how much. The way the metal reacts – discoloration, or none at all – reveals what the alloy is really made of.
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