24k Pure Gold Jewelry

We get asked a lot: what is the difference between white gold and yellow gold? Is there an advantage of having say a 24 karat gold earrings or 24 karat white gold jewelry? And our answer might surprise you. Because if you are looking for 24 karat gold jewelry or rings, you obviously want the very best gold that can be had.

Know this fact about gold: it is a mineral and when it comes out of the ground, it's almost always mixed with a little silver and other trace minerals. When miners find a gold nugget, it is normally 70 to 90 percent gold and the rest almost all silver. Gold is bright yellow from the ground - but the more silver in it, the whiter it is.

They don't find many nuggets. Most gold comes from ore and is hard to see until it is refined. So here's part of your answer: Gold is so soft when it is pure, 24 karats, that it would get bent, scratched and probably lost if formed into jewelry. What they do is add palladium and nickel to it to make white gold and it becomes harder as well.

Normal 18 k gold jewelry and 14 karat gold jewelry are pure gold (24 karats) mixed with copper, silver, and zinc. Rose gold is gold mixed with copper. Metals give gold various hues and hardness.

Pretty often in the industry, jewelers will electroplate their white gold pieces with a thin coat of rhodium, similar to platinum, so the piece is even whiter than normal. With these alloys, gold jewelers can come up with very interesting works. There isn't really an advantage of having white gold over yellow gold. It's a matter of taste and preference.

Buyers in the metals markets have been flocking to gold because the dollar is still weakening with the fluctuations in the housing and credit markets. Gold is seen as a great investment for investors when the markets are volatile elsewhere.

Just last Friday, Gold hit a 16 month high when US payroll data reported a lot lower than investors felt comfortable with. So the dollar went down.