How to Tell If Your Gold Is Real

Determining if your gold is real is not a difficult task in many cases. This article has some quick easy tips to determine if your gold is real.

In today’s market of record high gold prices, many people are looking to cash in. It is surprising how much money you can receive for a small amount of gold. Most people own gold in the form of jewelry. Everything from wedding sets to mismatched earrings, broken necklaces, old class rings, award & service pins and both pocket and wrist watches.

The first step to cashing in is determining if your gold is real. I suggest you go through your jewelry box or that place where you put those things that you don’t want to loose but do not intend to wear any longer. If you have a magnet get it now it will be a useful tool, the stronger the better.

Pick a well lit flat hard surface to begin our process. Lay your stuff out on the flat surface. Now pass your magnet across the material, it is OK to let it touch the pieces. If your gold is real it will not stick to the magnet. (Note: there is a steel spring in many of the clasp on most chains that will stick to the magnet ignore this) This is only the first screening; just because it does not stick to the magnet does not mean you gold is real. It means that your pieces are made of non ferrous metals. (That means they will not stick to a magnet and gold is a non ferrous metal)

If you have a magnifying glass it will be helpful in this next step. We are going to look for a hallmark stamp and a purity marking. The hallmark is a symbol or name that tells us where or who made the piece and the purity marking will tell us the gold content of the item. Pieces market Avon or Monet are not real gold. Kermit’s is gold plated silver.

There are a lot of gold colored pieces that have a purity mark of 925. These are gold plated Sterling Silver. They have value but not as much as gold. You will find the purity marks in different places if your gold is real. On chains look on the clasp and the end pieces of the chain. You are looking for numbers; sometimes they are written as a decimal like.417 or they will be stamped 10K. These mean the same thing, your piece is 10 karat gold. The numbers you are looking for are 417 for 10karat gold, 585 for 14karat and 750 for 18 karat.

Rings will usually have these stamped on the inside of ring. Sometimes if a ring has been sized the markings can be missing. If this is the case, the only way to determine if your gold is real is to have it tested by someone with the correct equipment. A note of caution here, just because a piece has these markings does not mean the gold is real. Unfortunately there are dishonest people who will counterfeit pieces particularly when prices are high like they are now.

Source by Lee Heavener

How to Tell If Your Gold Is Real