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JEWELRY 14 KARAT : Jennifer-------------------------------- -------------------------------------Jus t hand over the chocolate, and nobody gets hurt.After Christmas, almost everything is on sale. The prices probably won'tgo up, anyway. Your best bet is to inquire locally for good wholsale jewlers, and avoid the chains.Karats are a rating of gold purity. 24 karat is pure gold, 12 karat is 50%gold, and so on. The lower karats are alloyed with copper and silver indiffering percentages, adjusted to keep the color approximately right.The higher the karat, the softer the alloy, and the easier the item wouldget damaged. The lower the karat, the harder it is, and therefore moredurable. (Offhand, I have no idea where karats originated.)Most decent jewelry is 14kt; I don't think much is more than 18kt exceptfor pendants that aren't likely to bump against anything hard. Even slapping a table can deform a fairly heavy 14kt ring.
JEWELRY 14 KARAT : A *carat* as in measure of weight for precious and semiprecious stonesis 200 milligrams. I am not aware of a similar reference for *karat*which indicates purity level of gold as opposed to weight. IMHO, 10 karat is NOT gold. ARGH!!!! In many countries, even14 karat is NOT gold. (In Saudi Arabia, I'm toldthat selling a 14 karat item as gold would get yourhand cut off. I guess selling 10 karat as gold would justifyexecution!!!) A 10 karat ring is only 41.67 percent(less than half) gold. It's for kids & drug dealerswho want to have "gold" w/out spending the money.14 karat is 58.33 percent gold. Gold is a soft metal,so for items like rings & bracelets that can getbumped, you need an alloy like 14 karat so it won'tget damaged too quickly. Fine jewelry is 18 karat gold(75 percent gold). Pure gold is rare, although I dohave a necklace that's 24 karat (100% percent gold).Pure gold is soft, must be handled w/ CARE, & usedonly in items like necklaces & earrings where it won'tbe bumped. (Percentages are from THE COMPLETE METALSMITHby Tim McCreight.)
JEWELRY 14 KARAT : A 14 karat wedding ring is fine -- hard enough tolast a lifetime, but w/ a decent amount of real goldcontent in it. You can find a zillionof 'em at the pawn shops for an OK price. Jewelrystores are generally ridiculously overpriced. Good luck. For a simple wedding band, I would definitelytry the pawn shops. And negotiate!!! They'vegot scads of these things, thanks to divorce statsin America. If one pawn shop won't give you a break,go down the street...and, yes, I think it would bewise to wait until January, when they've got no oneelse to haggle with....LeighP.S. Sometimes people have an allergic reaction to10 karat "gold" because of the other alloys. You cannothave an allergic reaction to real gold, only to an alloy,because gold is not reactive. However, even peoplew/ allergies can often wear 14 karat gold....My motheris one, & she can even wear 14 karat gold earrings despiteher metal allergies. So you do not have to go 18 karatjust to avoid allergies....
JEWELRY 14 KARAT : I must concur with this: pawn shops have 'em,and purchasing them new is like purchasingan IBM: your paying for perceived qualityinstead of "real" quality. Most pawn shopswill simply mark a percentage up from thegold value of the band, artistry be-damned.Also (this'll be a bit sour...) since Nov-Dec isthe season to get divorced, Jan-Feb happensto be the months that most pawn shops willhave the most bands (not to mention jewelryin general, due to people "selling" jewelryback for Xmas $$$ and after Xmas as heatingbill $$$). Large supply, low demand - it issimple economics, distasteful as it may be.10 karat gold will turn your finger green !!! Or, more precisely, theother metals in the alloy will do it. Don't buy 10 karat for something youwant to develop a sentimental attachment to !!!
JEWELRY 14 KARAT : May I respectfully suggest that you are full of it. My husband and Ihave been wearing our 10k rings 24/7/365 since October 8, 1995 andneither of us show any trace whatsoever of turning green. In addition,our rings are not scratched, bent, dented, or warped despite hard wear- and we're _very_ sentimentally attached to them.Leigh's somewhat rudely phrased diatribe aside, I've spoken to severalother jewelers since then and many of them have told me that 10k isperfectly sufficient and often even preferable for wedding bands andother such items that will be worn constantly and suffer much abuseover the years as the alloy is much harder - one jeweler admitted thathe pushed couples toward 18k gold wedding bands so that he could gettheir repeat business over the next upteen years buffing out scratchesand repairing dents that almost inevitably occurred. (Even though hecould afford to wear any kind of gold he wanted to, when I asked heshowed me the karat mark inside his own wedding ring - 10k.) 14k wasthe maximum proportion of gold they recommended for wedding bands, andeven then scratching and denting would be more likely to be a problem.
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