 Home |
| diamond |
| contacts |
The Bureau of Standards of the Department of Commerce and Federal Trade Commission are responsible for regulations and standards for precious metals. The regulations include what terminology can be used and how metals must be marked.
The term solid gold means the item must be solid as well as well as gold. It cannot be hollow. If the item is hollow, for example, it must be marked "14 karat gold-Hollow Center" or "14 karat gold tubing” or whatever description is appropriate. Such an item is fine gold, t is not solid gold. The point is that solid gold has to be solid, gold cannot be sold or advertised in such a way that consumers or prospective consumers could be deceived.
Abbreviations used in place of karat must also be clear. Both K. and Kt. may be used. In addition, the trademark or name of the manufacturer must be stamped or engraved on gold jewelry.
The standards for content are equally specific. The word "gold" alone can be used only for 24-karat gold. Other gold must show the number of karats, and fine gold can be called "fine gold" only if it 10-karat gold and above. Items containing 9 karats and below of gold are considered to have too little gold to be of a quality to be fine gold.
The basic karatages are 10-, 14-, 18-, and 22-karat gold, aside from 24-karat gold, which is not used in jewelry. Twenty-two-karat ;old is used only rarely for the most expensive jewelry. At one me, 12-karat and 15-karat gold were also used for jewelry, and . you may find old pieces of this content, but today 12-karat is seldom used and 15-karat is never used.
Twelve-karat gold may be seen more often, however, as the price of gold goes up. The most .common and popular gold is 14-karat gold. In all cases, any item described as gold and using gold in the description must be marked gold, preceded by the correct karat designation, with both the word "gold" and number of karats equally conspicuous, that is, of equal size. For example, "14 karat gold" is permissible, while "14 karat GOLD" is not because the word gold is more prominent than the number of karats.
Other descriptions of the gold, such as the percentage of gold to base metal, may be used but are supplementary. Percentages, expressed as decimals, in fact, are often used in other countries instead of karats to identify gold content. That is why you may see a marking other than the familiar karats on jewelry made in other countries, such as Italy and France, and sold in the United States.
