Buying Gold Jewellery As A Birthday Gift

Have you ever stood at the jewellery counter marvelling at what all the inforamtion means?  There is karat weight, durability, craftsmanship and a whole array of things to look at.  Have you ever found yourself curious as to why it seems so complex, and why somebody can’t just make purchasing a piece of gold jewellery a trifle simpler to comprehend?  Well, take a deep breath and read a little further, since things aren’t as complicated as they may appear.

Karat Weight

What is a karat weight, exactly?  It’s elementary, really.  In past times, gold was weighed using the carob bean seed as a standard of measurement.  Nowadays, that very concept is still applied to weigh the quantity of pure gold used in producing a piece of jewellery.  According to this scale, whenever an item of jewellery carries twenty-four parts pure gold, then there are no alloys present and it can be classed as 'pure' gold.

Now that you understand jewelry-speak for pure gold, let’s analyze the eight most commonly used karat weights in gold jewelry.  

24 karat:  pure /no alloy materials
22 karat:  22 parts pure / 2 parts alloy materials
20 karat:  20 parts pure / 4 parts alloy materials
18 karat:  18 parts pure / 6 parts alloy materials
14 karat:  14 parts pure / 10 parts alloy materials
12 karat:  12 parts pure / 12 parts alloy materials
10 karat:  10 parts pure / 14 parts alloy materials
9 karat:  9 parts pure / 15 parts alloy materials

When you are buying a piece of gold jewellery, always make certain to look for the karat weight stamp on the item you are interested in.  This is federal law in the U.S.A., and it is the only way that you will be able to be sure you are getting what you are paying for.  These stamps most often have the karat weight measurement followed by a “K” for karat (e.g. 22K). 

When you understand karat weight as a measure of the purity of gold in a piece of jewellery, the rest is simply buyer beware issues.  Gold is not a hard-wearing material; hence, it makes good buying sense to get items of jewellery that are thicker in the right places, so that you will be able to relish them for a long time to come.  The “right places” simply means wear zones; for example, if you're buying a ring look for ones with a nice robust band and leave the fragility to the top for show.

Now that you have some background knowledge on purchasing gold jewellery, there are no more excuses for not stopping at the jewellery counter to choose a birthday gift made from gold.  Go, armed with this information, and confidently pick out the gold ring of their dreams for your friend or partner.