Card Collector needs help with Gold ??

thedutymon

Evening,

From across the street over on the Card forums, have a question about some Gold. Was moving and came across a Not Gold Plated, but 24K "Gold Dipped" 2 Foot Rose from a wedding present about 25 years ago. It weighs at 5.7 ounces, is about as thick as your pinky at the bottom of the stem and has 7 leaves and a full bloomed flower. I cut the stem at the fat part in two places and it is almost solid with a little organic material, I scrapped it out with a file on the 3-4 inch section and it is now about pure Gold in that section, the section weighs 11 grams. I would imagine the Friend who gave it to me in 1987 paid over $1000 for it, it would be her style!!

Two questions, is there some substance I could soak it in to eliminate the orgainic material if I break it into a bunch of pieces? I called a shop in Denver and they weren't interested because it was too much trouble, I call BS, I just think they were lazy. This is labeled 24K Gold and is not some little wedding ring, it is Solid That's 3+ ounces of 24K Gold. This is worth a few bucks

Secondly, any ideas of how to best dispose of it money wise, I want to make a few dollars off it and am much wiser than send me an envelope and I'll send you my Gold so you can rip me off!!

Thanks for any Help !!

Neil

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Actually Collect Non Sport, but am just so full of myself I post all over the place !!!!!!!

thedutymon

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<< I bet the rose is dipped in some type of conductive material (possibly some type of copper powder with a plastic binder) and then gold plated at room temperature which means that the gold content won't be that great. The melting point of gold is very high and the rose would have burned if you just dipped it in the molten gold. This is just speculation on my part since I'm no expert of gold covered roses. >>



Let us know what happens. >>


Would it make sense to cut it somewhere with a jeweler's file to check how thick the gold coating is? If the gold is microscopically thin, you might want to just enjoy it as is or give it away as a gift. >>



Morning,

The flower was broken off the stem when I found it in the Box, so I had access to the inside through this break. I think your theories about some sort of preservative coating are probably correct. When I read the answer's this morning I was a t first disappointed figuring out that it was some sort of 1/128th coating or some such and worth very little. So I decided to do a little further surgery and pealed an inch of the top where its broken with some pliers. There is almost no organic material inside, just a teeny bit of debris. There is indeed a coating inside the outer Metal, it looks like a copper very thin Tin Foil, more coppery than the Gold. The Gold seperated completely from this inner coating in some places and one chunk in the scan is .07 ounces, and this is for one little piece. Its characteristics are like very thick Tin foil, maybe a 64th of an inch thick, very hard to bend.

Th Leafs scanned are at .25 ounces each and I have 7 of them, the stem weighs 3.80 ounces. The Flower is in a box somewhere, I saw it while packing, but not since, it was broken and seperate then. After my little surgery I feel my original estimate was a bit off, the Copper inner being wafer thin and almost no organic material makes me feel comfortable that it would pan out at 70-80% the outer coating of Gold.

I live in the Mountains of Colorado, Ski areas, other than Rich people Jewelry and Art shops in Vail, very remote rural so don't have access to Big City stuff, I will probably have to make a trip to Denver some weekend to get this resolved.

I've attached scans as somebody asked, now I need to find that flower because from my memory it weighs as much as the stem.

Neil











The three bottom and very top pieces are the inner what I am assuming is Copper lining, the middle two are the much thicker outer coating of what I am assuming is the 24K Gold.

ricko

There really is not enough gold there to bother recovering..... The plating is quite thin, over copper and/or nickel. That is why most will not bother with the process...sorry, Cheers, RickO

jmski52

I wouldn't expect a high gold content unless the pieces are stamped 14K or 24K somewhere on them. At that point, I'd begin to get excited but not until. Sorry

thedutymon

Afternoon,

Does this mean anything?



Neil

OPA

<< <i>There really is not enough gold there to bother recovering..... The plating is quite thin, over copper and/or nickel. That is why most will not bother with the process...sorry, Cheers, RickO >>





The c.o.a only confirms it

derryb

dipping is just an easy way of plating.

Amigo

I concur with others that believe it's only plated.


Gold is a noble metal, chemically inert. Don't think it's possible to (dip/plate) anything thicker than a cursory plating. Don't know what kind of funky thing they did do get a flower plated, but I don't believe it's possible to be pure gold.

Also agree, the fuddy duddy coa is just the typical P.O.C. that is used to milk naive consumers.

Take a torch to it, I suspect you'll get separation of the different layers they used to pull off this trick.

PerryHall

<< <i>I concur with others that believe it's only plated.


Gold is a noble metal, chemically inert. Don't think it's possible to (dip/plate) anything thicker than a cursory plating. Don't know what kind of funky thing they did do get a flower plated, but I don't believe it's possible to be pure gold.

Also agree, the fuddy duddy coa is just the typical P.O.C. that is used to milk naive consumers.

Take a torch to it, I suspect you'll get separation of the different layers they used to pull off this trick. >>



Agree. The bottom line---the cost of recovering any gold will most likely exceed the value of the gold.