Not quite as soft as your pillow
Fine gold, also known as 24-karat gold, is a remarkably dense and heavy metal, but it’s also extraordinarily soft. It’s so soft that you can make an indentation in it with your teeth, and that’s exactly how people in ancient times tested coins that appeared to be made of gold to certify their purity. Lacking more advanced technology, it really wasn’t a bad way to go about doing business.
Gold Is a Girl’s Best Friend?
Gold is favored by fine jewelry designers and manufacturers due to its superior luster, malleability, and versatility. While more gold is used for the creation of jewelry than any other purpose, jewelry worn on an everyday basis that was made of pure gold would look like it had been through the ringer—literally—after a very short period of time. For this reason, gold is blended with other metals to create a metal amalgam called an alloy.
Alloy Away
Alloys are created when less expensive metals are combined with precious metals to give the blended metal certain properties, such as increased hardness and strength, and also to lower its overall cost. Since gold is alloyed to make it practical to use in jewelry, your 10-karat gold pendant that weighs two ounces will consist of a substantial amount of other metals, so it will literally not be worth its weight in gold.
The Rainbow Connection
Certain combinations of alloys will create tinted gold in an amazing rainbow of colors, including pinkish rose, blue gold that can be icy or almost cobalt in color, pale yellowish to deep grassy green, and luminous purple the color of amethysts. White gold is increasingly popular, and black gold—not the kind that comes out of the ground in Texas—is another surprising and striking alternative that was more recently developed.
The Technology Connection
Gold is not very chemically reactive, and pure gold will not corrode, oxidize or tarnish. There are few chemicals that will dissolve this most useful metallic element, and neither humidity nor salty sea air will affect it in any way. These properties make it an ideal material for electronics that must reliably conduct electrical currents over a long period of time. Nearly every electronic device produced today contains a small amount of gold. The computer you’re using right now to read this was manufactured using a teensy bit of gold in its circuits, wires, and relays.
Have a Little Gold With Dinner
While 24k gold jewelry is rare, pure gold actually has many fascinating uses unrelated to jewelry. Some upscale beauty product makers mix gold into their skin and makeup formulations. The space program uses gold, and so does your dentist. Your doctor even prescribes it in medicines. Coins and bars are minted for investment purposes, and gold flake is incorporated into certain alcoholic beverages and extravagant food preparations. For the record, you can consume pure gold without harm because it’s chemically inert in any of the biological processes that take place in your digestive system. Bon appetit!
Are you looking to sell your gold? Stop by Premier Gold Silver & Coin at our Cheektowaga, NY, location for a free appraisal today. You can also contact us online.
