What do you know about GOLD?
 

I've some gold jewelry (I assume it's gold because of the mark) but the gold "color" varies wildly from piece to piece. Some of it's Italian gold, some Indian gold and some I guess you'd call "generic" gold. Does anyone know anything about why the color disparity?

I'm not entirely sure, but I think it has to do with impurities in the metal itself.

correct. the variations 12k, 18k, 24k describe the purity of the gold, the higher the number the higher percentage of gold/other material ratio. that will account for some color variation.

the rest is easily explained. different jewelers use different materials in varying amounts to mix in with the gold. (if they didn't use anything but gold, your ring would bend far to easily).

Found a nice link.

http://www.dyjewels.com/je_karat.shtml

another link

http://www.eternityweddingbands.com/education_gold.asp

This is why I can't wear any gold higher than 10K, because it gets bent, folded, spindled and mutilated quickly on me. Chains, rings, bracelets, don't matter. I destroy it.

This is why my wedding ring is aircraft grade titanium.

There's always platinum if you need rugged.

Or carbon fiber composite - it's the same material as diamond! Just less concentrated...

my wife's is platinum, mine is titanium. both rugged, and for the most part maintain their original look no matter how hard you are on them.

Easily damaged though, it wouldn't take much of a beating. :(

Ours are both platinum, and while they haven't bent we've both managed to scratch them up pretty badly. I'm still happier than if they were gold though. :)

If I remember correctly from my days as a goldminer, when I sent gold to the mint for assay and sale they would return a cheque along with an assessment of the purity. My gold was always 98.5%pure with the impurity being silver hence this was called queensland gold. Italian, french etc is designated by the level and type of impurity of the original gold before it's strengthened with alloys to achieve 18k, 9k etc.
Basically, gold is gold is gold and all thie fancy names they give it is just a marketing ploy to make you enamoured of an inferior purity of gold.
Like 'white gold', sheesh.

Red or rose gold is very cool, by the way. It's made with extra copper.

Black Hills Gold uses the alloys to make different colors of gold. The original design was gold vines with green gold leaves and pink gold fruit or flowers. :)

I believe it was ABC News that demonstrated how impure so much gold jewelry really is. After all, would you know if it was 14K gold? They even tested Diane Sawyer's earings given to her by her husband. Insufficient gold as I recall. Fraud in jewelry is rampant from what ABC News found.

How Can You Tell If Your Gold Jewelry Is Real?

When I was in college I worked in an antique store that did a lot of estate jewelry. Part of my job involved occasionally testing gold purity. I very occasionally wish I had one of those test kits, but for the most part I buy and wear silver. I have my own test for silver ... I can't wear German Silver or lower because my skin reacts with it, sometimes within minutes. I can only wear Sterling or .999

Do you have Hallmarking over there or is it just a British thing? Our gold has to be tested and stamped with a mark to indicate it's purity. 9 carat gold would be marked "375" and a mark to indicate which assay office stamped it. (375 indicates 37.5% gold).