Precious Metals

Precious metals are gold, silver, platinum and palladium. To guarantee and protect the consumer, to be

put on the market, the Law Decree n . 251 of 22.05. Of 99, dictates the rules in the sector of production and marketing of objects in precious metal which must necessarily bear the fineness, i.e. the degree of purity, expressed in thousandths (not in carats). (Au) >
375 - 585

-

750 - 999.9 thousandths SILVER (Au) > 800 - 925 - 999 thousandths PLATINUM (Pt) > 850 - 900 - 950 thousandths PALLADIUM (Pd) > 500 - 950 thousandths Imillessimi identify the quantity of pure metal present in each jewel or object.

Historical Notes on Punching

In the previous centuries the Unit à d ’Italia every state of the peninsula adopted its own system of punching the silver and gold artifacts, to guarantee the goodness of the works, the correct title (the tenor of the thousandth ratio between silver and copper in the alloy), the recognition of the master goldsmith or silversmith and their shops. In the context of the same State, this system changed over time according to specific laws governing the production and trade of precious metals and therefore, in more or less
rapid succession, different and new stampings appeared. third quarter of the nineteenth century, with the Unity of Italy, there was a first attempt to homogenize the system of marking silver and gold artefacts that was universally recognized throughout the territory

of the newborn nation.

Do you remember the canon old man from western movies who bit the coin to see if

it was gold? The reason is that gold and silver are

two extremely soft metals.This characteristic makes them very easy to work with but not very resistant to wear and therefore, to make jewels and / objects, it

is

necessary to bond them to other metals that give them greater hardness and stability. Let's take gold for example, the number imprinted in the brand identifies the quantity of pure metal present in each jewel, if we buy a 750 gold jewel, it means that out of

1000 parts 750 are pure gold, while the remaining 250 are copper and silver (sometimes even palladium). It is easy to distinguish

which

of the two metals is present in greater quantity by observing the color of the finished

product: yellow, white, red or pink. Commercially, the quantity of gold present in a jewel and / object can be measured in carats (for example 18 ct.)

What is the carat?

The carat has a history fascinating that has its roots in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean basin, the word derives from the Arabic ق ي ر ا ط, q

īr ā ṭ, i.e. ‘venti-fourth part ’, which in turn comes from the Greek κ ε ρ

ά τ ι ο ν, ker átion, diminutive of κ έ

ρ α ς, keras, ‘corn ’ which coincided with ‘ carob ’. Carob seeds, in popular tradition, (later scientifically disproved), were believed to have an exceptionally constant mass, so they were thought to have all the same weight. also the twenty-fourth part of the ounce). Later it was unified in the metric system as a legal metric carat, equivalent to g. 0.2 (the

fifth

part of the gram), this happened in 1832 in South Africa (which is the place of greatest production and export of diamonds in the

world); this connection with the metric system, was established by weighing with a balance with equal arms plus carob seeds and then performing the arithmetic

average, of the obtained values a value of 0.2 grams (the metric Carat). In gold, however, referring to the Arab tradition and

the subsequent system of imperial (British) units, the Carat becomes the proportional standard of purity measurement that quantifies the parts of

gold in an alloy on a 24 ⁄ / 4 basis

. In the case of gold alloys, therefore, a 'Carat ' is equivalent to one part of gold out of a total of 24 parts of metal that make up the alloy. For example, the wording 18 carats indicates that the alloy is made up of from 18 parts of fine gold and the remaining 6 parts of other metals. The Carat in gold is abbreviated with the abbreviations ct or kt or mainly with the only k often next to the number without any intermediate space, for example 18k. of maximum purity is therefore 24 carats and is indicated by the acronym 24k.