Things to know before Buying Gold

Things to know before Buying Gold

Gold is a precious and costliest metal in India. Gold is used mainly during religious ceremonies especially during marriage ceremony. Females mostly wear Gold Mangalsutras and other jewellery made up of Gold in every festival in India. Being a precious and costly metal, Gold is purchased from a well known reputed jeweler as there are many chances of getting confused as the Gold which you are buying is a fake or pure Gold. Mostly people get confused in identifying fake and pure Gold. We will discuss here about various points to be considered while buying a pure Gold and what the different measures to identify a pure Gold are.

Gold is a soft metal and is very malleable and corrosion-resistant. Being a soft metal it is difficult for jewellery makers to make a Gold Jewellery and hence a maker mixes Copper, Silver, Palladium and Nickel to get some hardness level in the Gold. So first thing to understand is the jewellery what you see in a jewellery shops are not of pure Gold its all actually made up of Gold Alloy by mixing either of the Copper, Silver, Palladium or Nickel as stated above. Gold can be bought in the form of Gold Biscuits, Gold Bars, Gold Coins, Jewellery-Ornaments, and Gold ETFs in Stock Exchanges.

The Gold purity is measured in terms of Carats or fineness. One carat is one part of 24. The Carat will tell you the percentage of Gold and other metal. Jewellery standards specifies the benchmarks for gold to ascertain its fineness i.e., parts per thousand. So a 24 Carat Gold is considered as 999.999 parts per thousand pure. Similarly a 22 Carat Pure Gold is 22/24 i.e. 916.000 parts per thousand Gold and 84 Parts other metals, 18 Carat gold is 18/24th (gold is 750 parts per thousand and other metals have 250 parts). This system of calculation gives only the weight of pure gold contained in an alloy.

Now to identify the purity if Gold there is some Acid Tests and Electronic Testing Kits are available. But every testing of Gold with chemicals or acids losses some small amount of Gold during the test so electronic testing are used for testing the purity of the Gold. In India we have Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS) a sole hallmarking agency that certifies Gold Purity as per Indian Standard Specifications. BIS main function is preparation and promotion of standards and operations of quality certification schemes. So whenever you buy a Gold Jewellery check for the Hallmark seal on ornaments as well as in jewellery shops.

Hallmarking comprises of five elements

BIS Hallmark

Purity or Fineness number (corresponding to given cartage)

999 Corresponding to 24 Carat
958 Corresponding to 23 Carat
916 Corresponding to 22 Carat
875 Corresponding to 21 Carat
750 Corresponding to 18 Carat
585 Corresponding to 14 Carat
375 Corresponding to 09 Carat

Assaying and Hallmarking Center's mark
The Logo of BIS recognized Assaying and Hallmarking Centre where the jewellery has been assayed and hallmarked. Measuring the gold content is known as assaying.

Year of Marking
Denoted by a code letter and decided by BIS (e.g. code letter 'A' was approved by BIS for year 2000, 'B' being used for the year 2001 and 'C' for 2002).

Jewelers' Identification Mark

The marking is done either by using punches or laser marking machine. This is must to safeguard the interest and trust of consumers. The meaning of this mark is that the assayers (an independent body - assay office) guarantee the legal standard of fineness or purity. This mark applies for both buying and selling of ornaments and jewels.

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Things to know before Buying Gold

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