What Is a Gold Karat?

You’re looking at gold jewelry in a jewelry store and you notice that most of the gold pieces have 14K stamped on them somewhere. What does that mean? What is a “K” and what does the “14” mean? What is a gold karat?

“K” is an abbreviation for karat. The purity of gold is measured in karats, or K. The karat weight of a gold item tells you how much pure gold is in that item.

A common misspelling of the work karat is “carat”, or “c”. However, the word “carat” refers to the weight of a gemstone, and not gold. We will be discussing gold karats in this article.

In the U.S. most gold jewelry is 14K, and some is 10K. School class rings are usually 10K. Europeans prefer 18K gold jewelry, often marked “750”.

What is the difference in the different karat numbers?

Pure gold is 24K. For all practical purposes, you will never see anything that is 24K because pure gold is too soft to really make anything out of. So, if pure gold is 24K, then it stands to reason that 14K is 14/24 pure gold, 10K is 10/24 pure gold and 18K is 18/24 pure gold.

The percentage of pure gold in different karats of gold jewelry is –

10K gold is 41.66% pure gold, or 417 fine

14K gold is 58.33% pure gold, or 583 fine

18K gold is 75.00% pure gold, or 750 fine

22K gold is 91.66% pure gold, or 917 fine

24K gold is 100.0% pure gold, or 995 – 999 fine

European gold jewelry is marked with numbers instead of karats that indicate their percentage of gold, such as:

18K gold is marked 750 = 75% pure gold

14K gold is marked 585 = 58.5% pure gold

10K gold is marked 417 = 41.7% pure gold

In the United States, nothing below 10K can be legally sold as gold or gold jewelry. Some other countries sell 8K and 9K gold items, but they cannot be legally sold as gold in the U.S.

Understanding the meaning of “karats” is one of the most important things you should know whether you’re going into a jewelry store to buy gold jewelry, or you’re going into a we buy gold store to sell your old gold jewelry.

What Is Gold Filled?

“Gold filled” jewelry is not gold jewelry, and it’s not “filled” with gold. Gold filled jewelry is made of a base metal like brass or copper and then covered by a very thin layer of gold by a mechanical bonding process.

U.S. government regulations require that in order to be called “gold filled” (as opposed to gold plated), the item must contain 1/20 real gold in order to be labeled gold-filled. So, if you see a piece of jewelry stamped “1/20 12K GF”, it means the item is gold filled, with 1/20th of its weight in 12K gold.

Gold filled items have no resale value in we buy gold stores or at any refiners because the amount of gold in any gold filled item is too small to be worth trying to recover.

What Is Gold Plated?

Gold plated items have even less pure gold content than gold filled items. And, the gold overlay is not permanently bonded to the base metal like in gold filled, so that it can flake off and is subject to turning green on you. Gold plated jewelry is typically inexpensive costume jewelry that is discarded when it gets old and tarnished.

Gold plated jewelry or other items have no resale value whatsoever at we buy gold locations or refiners.

Knowing the difference between karat gold (real gold) and gold filled and gold plated can help you to know what you’re buying and what you have to sell if you decide you want to sell your old gold jewelry at a we buy gold location.