Gold filled jewelry is an attractive and cost effective alternative to karated gold jewelry.

What is karated gold jewelry?:

All gold castings start with pure 24 karat gold. 24 karat gold is too soft to use to make jewelry. For jewelry, this pure gold is mixed with an alloy to provide the strength needed for continued wear. These alloys may be copper, zinc, silicon, nickel, silver or boron to name a few. The mixture of metals then designates the gold as 18K, 14K or 10K and so on rather than pure 24 K.

The requirements to label a product as being gold filled:

Gold filled is a hollow tube of usually 14K gold (sometimes 10K is used) that is filled with another metal. The exterior of the gold filled jewelry is solid karated gold and everything you can see or touch is a solid layer of karated gold.

This tube of karated gold is approximately 100 times thicker than gold plate. It is made by bonding with heat and pressure - with normal wear and tear the karated gold will never tarnish, chip or wear off. By law this layer of karated gold has to be at least 1/20 of the total weight of the metal portion of the piece of jewelry.

In the USA this process is referred to as ‘gold filled’. In Europe the same process will be called ‘rolled gold’. Both terms are synonymous with each other. Many jewelry purchasers outside the jewelry trade mistakenly think 'gold filled' is the same as 'gold-plate'. 'Gold filled is a much higher quality product.

As less gold is being used gold-filled or rolled gold jewelry is a cost effective alternative to karated gold jewelry.

Plated-Gold versus Gold filled:

There is no legal requirement for the amount of gold that is ‘plated’ over the base metal. Therefore, your plated-gold jewelry can start to look bad after a few wearing or look good until you are tired of wearing it. It just depends on each manufacturer.

How to tell what you are buying:

Any manufacturers selling karated gold jewelry must designate its purity and stamp the ring with their hallmark (a unique symbol for their business). This hallmark and designation are usually placed on the underside of the jewelry and will be in extremely small script.

Check out any gold rings or wedding bands that you have to find the hallmark. You should see both a manufacturer’s symbol and a designation such as 10K or 14K punched into the metal.

If you have purchased some karated gold rings that only have the purity designation stamped into the metal - not to worry. This indicates that the jewelry was artisan crafted and not mass-produced by a manufacturer. Quite a few artisans do have their own hallmark but it is not a legal requirement for one of a kind jewelry rather than mass produced jewelry.