Trusted Gold Buyers

Jewelry Hallmark Basics Part One

Jewelry Hallmark Basics Part One

A hallmark is a sign of quality and a guarantee of the level of purity of the piece which is stamped with the hallmark.  Hallmarking is used to guarantee the levels of purity of precious metal whether it be gold, silver, platinum or palladium but be careful, it is extremely rare to find any jewelry which is 100% pure – in practice, most pieces are in fact made up of an alloy.

You will usually find a hallmark, if there is one, on the inside face of a ring, located discretely inside a locket or marked unobtrusively on the clasp of a chain – hallmarks are not designed to be decorative in themselves though some people do like them to be featured prominently because they are a guarantee that the item is the genuine article.

The hallmark will also tell you what kind of metal is being guaranteed and in the case of gold, what type of gold is involved.  Many people are surprised to hear that there are different types of gold, but here are and the major classifications are:

•    Karat gold
•    Gold filled
•    Gold plated
•    Vermeil

Karat Gold

A karat is a measure of the amount of gold by reference to weight – one karat means the gold is 1/24th purity by weight and pure or “fine” gold is 24 karats (denoted as 24K or 24kt).  It is usual to find jewelry in the US to be 22K, 18K, 14K or even as low as 10K.  You read the last value correctly – for a metal to be classed as gold it only need contain 10K or 10/24ths by weight (less than half), so you can see immediately how important hallmarks are because there is a clear difference in value between a 22K ring and the equivalent design using 10K gold instead!

Gold Filled

Gold filled, sometimes known as “gold overlay” or “rolled gold”, is not the same as karat gold.  Gold filled pieces have a layer of karat gold which is affixed or bonded to another metal, usually brass or similar alloy.  Clearly, this is far less valuable than if the piece was made entirely from karat gold as the actual percentage of gold in the entire piece will be greatly diminished while the gold used is always less than the metal used in the bonding.

Nevertheless, gold filled jewelry may still possess a hallmark so watch for the suffix “GF” or “10K GF” – the GF obviously stands for gold filled.

Gold Plated

The hallmark for a gold plated item will use the suffix “GP” and if you see this on a piece it will mean that the gold is only applied in a very thin layer.  The minimum standard to be referred to as gold plated is 10K gold applied with a thickness of more than 0.5 microns – this is so thin you could not discern this with your naked eye – it’s about 20 millionths of an inch!

Vermeil

Vermeil is karat gold which is bonded to sterling silver but there is no hallmark used in the United States though the gold used must still be a minimum of 10K and be at least 2.5 microns thick (still extremely thin).

Conclusion

You have now been introduced to hallmarks and their use in describing gold types and purity levels, but gold is not the only metal which uses hallmarks – silver, platinum and palladium do too and we shall cover this in our next article.

Tags: Hallmark, Jewelry Hallmark, Sell Gold, Sell Jewerly, What is a Hallmark