Gold jewelry is more than just a pretty accessory that adds to your outfit. If it's real gold, your jewelry is an investment. And it will accompany you for a lifetime. Here we explain what speaks for real gold and how you can tell whether gold jewelry is genuine.
Gold jewelry: real or gold-plated?
We humans love gold jewelry. You can see that when you stroll through stores and shopping streets. Because shiny gold jewelry seems to be everywhere. However, in most cases this is costume jewelry - and not genuine gold jewelry.
Instead of pure real gold, costume jewelry uses a different metal that is less valuable. Often it is silver or copper. To make gold jewelry, these metals are “gold-plated”: they are coated with a fine layer of gold, which can be as thin as 0.0001 mm, depending on the method used. This creates gold-plated jewelry, which is beautiful at first glance, but soon has its first disadvantages. You can find out more about the difference between real gold and gold-plated jewelry here.
Identifying genuine gold jewelry
There are good reasons why we use real gold at boops. Real gold jewelry is more durable, more valuable and simply timeless. This means that gold jewelry is also a good investment for young women. However, this requires that you actually buy gold jewelry that is genuine.
These tips will help you to distinguish real gold jewelry from gold-plated costume jewelry:
1. An engraving shows whether gold jewelry is genuine
Genuine gold jewelry is usually engraved to confirm its authenticity. The “alloy” is recorded, which reflects the proportion of gold in the piece of jewelry. You need to know that a gold content of 100% would not be suitable for the manufacture of jewelry: 100% pure gold is too soft to be worn as a piece of jewelry.
This is why the gold is mixed with metals that give it more hardness and strength. Nevertheless, once a certain percentage of gold is added, it is still “real gold jewelry”! You may have heard of carat in this context: 100% pure gold is 24 carat, for example.
To recognize whether gold jewelry is genuine, you should know the following alloys that are often found in engraving:
- 585 or 14 carat: This is gold jewelry that has a gold content of 58.5%. This gold jewelry can be melted down and reused. This means that 585 gold is real gold jewelry! Most boops jewelry is also 14 carat. You can recognize this by the “585” engraving on our jewelry.
- 750 or 18 carat: The proportion of gold in 18 carat jewelry is even higher. They consist of 75% pure real gold. As they contain more gold, pieces of jewelry engraved with “750” are usually a little more expensive. You can also discover selected pieces of boops jewelry with 18 carat in our boops store in Vienna!
2. You can recognize real gold by its higher price
As already mentioned, the higher gold content usually results in a higher price. This simply has to do with the fact that gold is a valuable material. Real gold jewelry must therefore also cost more. If the price is particularly low, you can be pretty sure that it is not real gold jewelry. A few euros for earrings or a necklace made of real gold is simply unrealistic.
With boops, however, we aim to make our real gold jewelry affordable for young women too. That's why we work with low margins to offer you the lowest prices for gold jewelry that we can make possible. Our customers in the boops store often even ask if it really is real gold. And we can promise: Yes, our boops jewelry is forged from real gold! You can tell by the 585 engraving. You can read more about how we make our prices possible while still being fair to our suppliers here.
3. You can test the gold jewelry
If you are still not sure, you also have the option of testing the gold jewelry for authenticity. This is a good option for inherited pieces of jewelry, for example. You can have the gold jewelry tested by experts who use nitric acid or test stones, for example.
However, there are also ways to test whether gold jewelry is genuine yourself. For example, with the bite test, the magnet test and the sound test. You can find out more about the various gold tests in this blog post. Because you can't rely on them one hundred percent, we would like to give you the following final tip if you want to buy genuine gold jewelry.
