People need to be careful about where they buy their jewellery from. A man came in just a short while ago with a broken chain that he wanted me to fix. It was apparently a gold chain, but as soon as I got just a glimpse of it, I could tell that it was counterfeit. Now, I could have fixed the item for him, charged him for it, and let him believe that what he had was genuine, but this would be unethical, and I refuse to put my name on the line like that just to make some quick cash. First and foremost, the color seemed off. The color could have passed for 10K gold, especially to the untrained eye, but something just looked definitely odd about it. Color is the first thing I look for when determining the authenticity of an item. However, when the man bought this chain, he was told that it was 18K. It definitely was not, as far as color is concerned. I went and sanded, and even polished a tiny part of the chain to see if the color would come off, and surprisingly, it did not. What ever this chain was made out of, it appeared to be solid all the way through. When this happens, it means that its one of the slightly better fakes, usually made from a type of brass alloy that mimics the visual properties of gold. That feature was meant to fool jewellers whose only means of testing an item is to remove the top layer and see if the color changes. Modern testing methods, however, cannot be outsmarted. Normally, when I suspect that a particular item is counterfeit, I run a series of tests, including the sanding test mentioned above, so that I can let the client see with his or her own eyes that the item has failed, just so that the client can be certain that there is no trickery taking place. However, with the chain appearing to be gold-color all the way through, there was no way that I could show the client that this chain was not made of gold through that method. When this happens, I resort to the acid test. The acid test consists of scratching the questionable item on a black stone, and laying a drop of acid on that mark. There are different types of acids, each meant for testing different karats of gold. A 10K acid solution will not dissolve 10K gold and above. A 14K acid solution will dissolve 10K, but will not dissolve 14K and above. An 18K acid solution will dissolve 10K and 14K, but not 18K and above. I scratched the chain on the stone and went straight to the 10K acid solution. I did this test in front of the customer, and sure enough, the mark dissolved, and quite quickly, too. The man was disappointed to find out that he had been scammed. All I could do was give him my sympathy, let him know that hes not the first and definitely wont be the last person o fall for such scams, and hoped that he did not pay too much for the chain. Unfortunately, he told me that he paid $400 for it, which was painful to hear. A chain like that, if it was real and 18K gold, would definitely cost over $1,000. He asked me if he could bring me a bunch of other items to have tested, and I told him that it was no problem. I certainly hope he had better luck with everything else that he bought. This mans misfortune only reaffirms what I have been telling people for years: ALWAYS shop for jewellery at a reputable and local retailer. Never buy jewellery online or from a foreign country that you are just visiting, especially if you cannot physically see the item or dont know anything about the shop selling it. Again, NEVER buy jewellery online (I cannot stress this point enough. More than 90% of the fake items I have tested over the years were from online shops). And lastly, the age old saying, if its too good to be true, then it probably is. -Joe
Posted on: Fri, 16 May 2014 21:09:26 +0000
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