How soft is pure gold? A two year real world experiment.
Weiss
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We in America tend to think of gold jewelry in two or three standard purities: 10K (41.7% pure) for kind of low-end jewelry, 14K (58.3% pure) as kind of standard, and 18K if it's really good quality (75% pure). But much of the world, and especially India and Asia, would scoff at anything less than 22K (91.7% pure). Good luck trying to find that at your local mall or brick & mortar jewelry store!
That high karat Indian and Asian gold jewelry is known generically in many regions as "baht". Not coincidentally, baht is a unit of measure, about 15 grams. And it's also the currency of Thailand. But if you see an Indian or Southeast Asian fellow with a bright yellow gold necklace, it's probably the chunky, high karat type of jewelry known as baht. The great thing about baht jewelry is that it's bought and sold with very little markup over the value of the gold. While a generic 14K gold necklace at the mall may sell for multiples of the gold value contained within (200% to 300%, and often more), you can shop around and find a jeweler who makes baht-style pieces for 20%, maybe 25% above the value of the gold.
I got a 2-ounce gold baht necklace way back in 2005, when gold was about $500 per ounce. I wore it often and I still have it, though my son has co-opted it 
In August of 2018 I decided to pull the trigger on a new Baht necklace. I'd been watching gold prices and following an Asian jeweler who specializes in hand-made pure gold jewelry. I reached out to him to see what his thoughts were. We discussed patterns, styles, and weights, and I finally settled on a 28", 5-ounce .999+ pure gold necklace in a modified anchor chain style. It took just a few days for them to create this awesome necklace by hand and ship it to me:
The jeweler guaranteed his work 100% (even sent me a picture of the Apmex 24k gold shot invoice from which my piece was created). But I'm also a skeptic by nature and a precious metals fanatic. And I live just a couple of miles away from one of the leading material sciences colleges in the country. So I pulled a few strings and got to spend the better part of an afternoon watching my new necklace being analyzed by scientists with state-of-the-art equipment.
The result: my necklace is 99.957% pure gold.
And I've really enjoyed wearing it. I wear it nearly every day, and have since I brought it home about two years ago.
So after two years of 15+ hours a day with very few exceptions, and taking a beating from a pretty active person, how has the necklace held up?
This was the day I got her, just about 2 years ago...
...and this is the necklace today:
In terms of grams, the difference between 2 years ago and today is about 1/10th of a gram. But even that may just be a function of battery life, humidity, etc.
The necklace is "smoother"--the links aren't quite as squared off as they were when new. But there appears to be little if any actual loss of material even after 2 years of pretty hard daily wear.
This necklace isn't especially detailed--it's not like there were finely sculpted figures that could flatten. But there are talented jewelers who make intricate and beautiful pieces in this southeast Asian style, all in very high karat gold.
Just something to think about next time you hear the whole "it's mixed with alloys to make it stronger" line.
--Severian the Lame
Comments
Very informative! Thanks for sharing your story.
edited to add........... You are approaching 10k in value for that necklace. Tempted to sell?
Neat experiment. I’ve seen people on YouTube bit into pure gold and getting surprised that they couldn’t even make a dent in it. It’s true gold is a soft metal especially comparing it to other metals but it’s far harder than people think.
Collector
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Interesting.
FYI I read a while back that a number of pieces of Paul Revere silver were weighed relatively recently and compared to his original records of their weights. They had all lost some weight from use and polishing. But that’s over 200 years.
Interesting in your necklace what makes up the other minute parts: the elements scandium, chromium, samarium. Two out of three are new to me!
He who knows he has enough is rich.
I’m not a scientist. Is metal “strength” the same property as “resistance to wearing away”?
Interesting, Nd should be detectable if Sm is. Nd should be on average about double in abundance to Sm. Must be very large error bars associated with those low level abundances. It would be interesting to see how much platinum group elements are in there - probably alot more than the lithophile elements measured. One could target Os, Pt for example.
Best, SH
Hmmmm, The reason for the alloy is to make it less malleable. I'm surprised you lost a tenth of a gram...although your scales show no loss.
Cool post. There just aren't a lot of people in the USA that wear 5 ounces of pure gold around their necks these days...at least in my circle of people. I was a Muay Thai fighter for a long time and tend to carry something but I'm still not interested in making myself look like a target. When I was in my teens and twenties, I did wear a necklace and a really nice bracelet. Sold the stuff long ago though.
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I would ask not how much weight was lost, but how much longer is the chain today than when you purchased it?
9kt is popular in Ireland and England. I think it looks a bit fake.
Neat write-up--thanks for sharing!
I'm not sure I agree with your premise/conclusion, though. The softness of gold will result in shape changes, not necessarily lost of metal. Your comment about detailed designs is a good one: those would be likely to wear/smooth out faster. Additionally, it shouldn't take much effort to damage the necklace (dent it, for example); this will push the metal, but not remove it.
My class ring from college is 14kt gold. The rectangular bezel is much smoother and the corners rounded compared to when it was new. I once whacked one of the corners on a table, and that imparted a small flat spot. These are things that wouldn't have happened to the steel version of the ring, because steel is harder. Similarly, gold is alloyed with other metals to make it harder and less susceptible to wear, not to prevent gold from being removed. For the coins that circulated, this hardness was important to keep the coins from wearing too quickly. For the modern bullion that is .999+, the softness doesn't matter because the coins never see circulation or other situations where they may experience wear.
Nice!
I read that the US Federal Trade Commission says any jewelry less than 10K can not legally be called gold.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
@Weiss---Do you wear this chain under your shirt in public where it's out of sight. I'd be concerned about making myself a target otherwise.
As always, great report. Thanks for sharing with us.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
I agree with your strategy. I have been buying jewelry for a few years now as if your patient you can get it for close to spot, interesting and wearable instead of locked in the SDB. I like these and they replace Swiss watches (which I also collect) some days
Platinum is the thing to buy now I feel but here are two recent pieces
110 grams of European 750 (18k) for the gold
146 grams of platinum (960) from Beverly Hills
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
Great necklace, Weiss. Very tasteful! I echo the concerns of the forum about presenting yourself as a target, but we've got to live our lives, right? No reason why simple precautions cannot be employed to be able to enjoy the possessions you've undoubtedly worked hard to obtain.
That is a piece to be proud of!
Dead Cat Waltz Exonumia
"Coin collecting for outcasts..."
@Weiss Could it be that the necklace didn’t loose any weight because there was dirt or Something else on the necklace? Did you clean it before weighing it?
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That is a very nice gold chain....Plain, yet substantive. Thanks for showing us and the accompanying statistics and story. Cheers, RickO
FWIW there is a large jewelry exchange on Canal st.in NYC. The last time I visited I picked up some baht jewelry for my wife. It's been a few years since I fled the town but there was a lot of it available, not surprising because it's in Chinatown.
What did you do to confirm that it was real baht gold?
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
I spent some time in the gem business in the diamond district.
Suffice it to say it was.
Some great questions and I'm glad to see my fellow numismatists and metals fans appreciate this piece.
Unfortunately I didn't carefully measure the length of the necklace when I got it. I doubt that it has "stretched", at least not in any significant way.
Yes, I cleaned it (ez-est) before weighing it for the recent image above. Gold is about as inert as it gets, so any sweat or dirt was probably minimal but it did brighten up just a bit after a quick dip.
Yes, I wear it outside of my shirt most days and in most environments. As with anything, you need to have situational awareness. Most people don't give it a second glance. We're about as multicultural a community as you'll find in the US, so it's not unusual to see east Indians or Thai/Vietnamese people do a double take. Pure gold is much, much more yellow than alloyed gold. You know it when you see it once you get used to it.
But most of us plain old white folk have never seen 24k gold jewelry, so it doesn't register. It probably looks like costume jewelry to most people.
And no, it doesn't really look like a 1980s rapper "dukie" chain. It's very compact and I'm a big guy. It just looks like a necklace. Maybe a bit beefier or more masculine than most gold chains, but it's not out of scale, for lack of a better term.
The best reaction is when I take it off and hand it to someone. Without exception, their eyes bug out. It weighs at TON. It's a third of a pound (avoirdupois) of gold.
Here are some of this jeweler's other pieces. You can see that some get quite intricate. Note that these are all 24K, .999+ pure gold.
--Severian the Lame
Interesting post. I have taken quite few classes and seminars in metallurgy related to my career, all of it with industrial metals steel, aluminum, titanium, Invar. I have always asked the instructors about gold properties, and they have done little research on the precious metals. There is some info on the web about properties of gold, some from the jewelry industry. Gold is the most malleable of metals, but it does work harden slightly - and more with gold alloys depending on the gold alloy mix.
Info on hardness of 14K and 18K can be found on the web, both in annealed state and strain hardened state. Annealed silver and copper can be as soft as 18K or coin gold alloy, but silver and copper will strain harden to a greater degree. That is why high striking pressure is required to strike gold coins, the gold coin alloy is no softer than annealed copper or silver.
Gold deforms before metal is lost from wear, not surprising with your experiment. The property of toughness measures the degree of wear on metal (resistance to friction), a balance of strength with ductility. Industrial die steel must be very tough to resist wear. Worn gold coins F-VF show letters deforming as much as wear - they widen out.
My wife has a 24K ring, very nice pure gold color. I have done quite a bit of gold panning although placer gold is usually not pure - about 90% is typical.
There is no doubt that alloyed gold is harder and stronger than pure gold. That is not fake news. That is not a fiction. It is not some kind of conspiracy.
How hard or strong or malleable they need to be for a given application is really the issue.
https://sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/gold-alloys
The chemically inert nature of gold is irrelevant to dirt and grime sticking to it. [Not that it matters since you cleaned it.]
I wonder how often jewelry like this was used to circumvent the law when gold ownership was illegal in the US.
Very cool, Weiss! I remember you posting this same chain right after it was made.
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@Weiss
Nice thread
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Gold is so soft, in fact, that one gram of it can be beaten into a sheet covering nearly a square metre. Such sheets are used in the process of ‘gilding’
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It is a really nice chain. I have a few high karat pieces like (22kt) but nothing like that. And I agree it is startling how yellow it gets as you get purer.
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
Funny how people get nervous about 10k necklaces drawing attention while driving around in 100k cars without a 2nd thought. You’re right though, all you can do is insure it and live your life
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
During the gold and silver runup of the late 70's when the Hunt Brothers were active, the coin shop I worked in bought quite a few baht and 2 baht chains. Most of them had a triangular shaped holder that I believe had a representation of Buddah, but they were all missing, ripped out of the holders. I don't know if that was because they had some significance to the owner or because they weren't gold and we wouldn't pay for them in the mount. We always did the stone acid test on them even though they were very obviously 24 Karat from the color and feel. They all went to the smelter since, at $1,000 an ounce we couldn't afford to hang on to them.
It's a lot easier to steal someone's jewelry and get away than it is to carjack them and get away.
That must have quite the heft to it when worn or held! A beautiful piece.
I mean you’re right but both draw the wrong eyes in the wrong situation. Flashy is bad to robbers
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
That’s a dope chain man! 💯
Of course, but just because you attract attention doesn't mean it's easy enough and worth it for a criminal. The more an item falls into the categories of high value, easy to take/hide, and easy to convert to cash, the better it is to steal. I have easy access to tons of airplanes, but I have no way to steal them, extract value from them, and not get caught, so they're safe (also, I'm a good person).
Lol I just thought about trying to steal an airplane. Solid argument
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
A few months after I got my necklace, I commissioned a solid gold bangle bracelet for my wife. She's not gauche like me, so she doesn't wear it often (not like it looks especially blingy). Looks like a simple bracelet.
I sent him 2 Kruggerands. He sent back a 1.5 troy ounce, .999+ pure bangle:
--Severian the Lame
I like a modest white gold chain - very low key and look like silver & a bit brighter than platinum....Much smaller.
Yours is BIG, and quite beautiful when so pure!
Well, just Love coins, period.
One ounce of pure gold can be hammered out to cover 100 square feet!
Gold is one of the few elements on the periodic table without isotopes. Very stable.
"A little gold gilts a great surface", so if used to plate out coves a phenomenal surface.
Thinking about this post when I ran to the liquor store earlier today and I was reminded of something that happened about a year ago.
I'd gone to see a client in a town 20 miles away. An Indian national from Mumbai, his new liquor store had just opened and I was hoping he'd expand into one of my properties as well.
There was an older Indian working behind the counter. I asked for the owner, and he said he would be gone for a couple of hours. I thanked him and turned to leave.
He said "Lovely necklace! 150 grams?"
It's just about 156. Is that crazy or what?!
--Severian the Lame