About Gold - Some Delightful Discoveries

Our obsession with the yellow beauty of gold has led us to want to decorate our bodies with things made from it and we imagine ourselves made more beautiful and desirable with the wearing of a dangling earring or a gold medallion pendant. Gold has helped us build up a very viable trade in wearable gold jewelry because of its properties and the fact that it mixes readily with other metals, like copper, which render soft gold harder and more durable. Gold is a great mineral metal for making jewelry as it never tarnishes, has the properties of ductility, (can be beaten flat - one ounce can be beaten out to 300 square feet), sectility, (can be cut into thin slices), malleability, (can be stretched into a thin wire) and has a high density.

The term carat specifies the amount of gold present - 24 carat describes pure gold. Gold metal has a butter yellow color in a mass, but may be black, purple or ruby when finely divided. Gold easily forms alloys with other metals which will then act to increase the hardness or bring out extraordinary colors. If copper is added to gold, a redder metal is obtained; add iron to gold equals blue, aluminum produces purple platinum brings out white, and bismuth and silver alloys yield black. In addition heat, moisture, oxygen and most corrosive agents have little chemical effect on gold, all of which make gold very useful in making coins and in jewelry making.

The gold content of jewelry alloys is gauged in carats (K), 24 K being the utmost in gold. Most often, it is sold in lower measurements of 22K, 18K, 14K, and 10K. The lower the K, the higher percent of silver, copper or other base metals in the alloy. Copper is the more commonly used base metal. 18K gold appears yellow/green. White 18K gold can be made with 17.2% nickel, 5.5% zinc and 2.2% copper and is silver in appearance. Other white gold alloys are otainable based on palladium, silver and other white metals: the palladium alloys are more expensive than those using nickel, and nickel is said to be toxic and its release from nickel white gold is controlled by legislation in Europe. High carat white gold alloys are more resistant to corrosion than pure silver or sterling silver.
Resources:
http://www.OnlyGold.com
Blanchard, The Gold Standard for the Intelligent Investor

Margaret Heaps is a native born Californian who sees life as not long enough to fit everything in. She has grass roots in Petaluma, California and Nicasio, California, where her great grandfather bought land from gold that he mined in the Gold Rush of 1848 and created a high yield dairy farm. With this background legacy, she married and raised six boys, went back to school and became a registered nurse; this was her profession for many years. Now that she has retired, her energy level still high, she has undertaken to start a business on eBay. Her store is at http://www.stores.ebay.com/maggie6090watchesjewelry-4-you

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