Pendant Jewellery

In buying any jewelry, it is of prime importance to know if the jewelry is fake or not. A magnifying glass or jeweler's loupe is all you need to check your gold necklace jewellery. In other words, to find out if your gold necklace jewellery is genuine or not, you don't have to go to a jeweler. Here are a few tips you can follow to determine if a piece of jewelry is genuine or not:

1. Get your gold necklace jewellery and prepare them carefully. Have a magnifying glass or a jeweler's loupe ready and observe each necklace carefully.

2. Read the markings on your gold necklace jewellery. Necklaces made out of gold have markings that represent purity. Locate the karat markings. Here are the karat markings that indicate the purity of your gold necklace jewellery:

24K: Pure gold 18K: About 75% gold 14K: About 59% gold 10K: About 42% gold

3. Find a well lit area and then look on your gold necklace jewellery near the clasp for a small metal tag. The tag should either be oval or rectangular and be the same gold color as the necklace chain and clasp. Use a magnifying glass or loupe and look at both sides of the tag carefully. It will be marked with the gold's karat marking. The mark can be 10K, 14K, 18K, 24K or a decimal, such as .750 to indicate 75% or 18K.

4. On the tag, if the marks EP or GP can be found, the necklace is plated, meaning the necklace is not solid gold but merely plated with gold over another metal to reduce cost.

5. If you cannot find a marking, another way to tell if a necklace is fake gold is if the gold tarnishes. Look to see if the necklace has tarnished. If the gold appears dull and silver in color, that means it has tarnished and is fake. Real gold does not tarnish and plated gold necklaces can also chip or flake. They can tarnish with time.

6. If you want to make sure that your gold necklace jewelry is genuine, the last resort is to take it to a jeweler. The jeweler will then do an acid test to determine the gold content.