emfederin
Elite Member
Thanks, cf!!
Excellent article, albeit a strange opening line: "Pure gold is 24 Karat or 24K or .9999 (also called four 9's)"
I've "heard" of .9999 (most notably in reference to canada's "maple leaf" coin) but never seen anything stamped that way with my own eyes. With both gold and silver ingots I've seen .999, and it's referred to as "thousand fine".
Another interesting aside I might mention here is something I rarely see mentioned anywhere, and a LOT of people have the wrong idea about. Most people think the gold we sell as junk gets shipped off to a refinery where it gets refined and turned into pure gold bars.
Not so. Separating karat gold from its alloys is extremely tedious and expensive, and just not worth the effort.
What happens is that most junk gold is melted down by assumed karat, i.e., 10k jewelry gets smelted in one batch, 14k in another and so on. Since there's always junk that fools someone along the line, these smeltings are often a little "off" when assayed, so they will either add copper or gold to the smelt to bring it to a true karat rating. From these smelts, the refinery then produces batches of certified 10K/14K/etc bars, rods and ingots.
When jewelers want to make "stuff", they just order these certified bars from the refiner. Jewelers, hobbyists and the electronics industry also make use of pure gold wire and leaf which ranges from thin to INCREDIBLY thin.
The only common place you'll see thousand fine gold used is in coins and small bars and ingots for citizen investment and commerce, and in large bars (a la ft knox stuff) for international gummint commerce.
So where does the ultra-pure gold come from that THEY are made of? That comes from the stuff that gets dug out of the ground by prospectors, miners and mining corporations. Nugget and vein gold is breathtakingly pure in its natural state, and rarely needs any refining at all.
Excellent article, albeit a strange opening line: "Pure gold is 24 Karat or 24K or .9999 (also called four 9's)"
I've "heard" of .9999 (most notably in reference to canada's "maple leaf" coin) but never seen anything stamped that way with my own eyes. With both gold and silver ingots I've seen .999, and it's referred to as "thousand fine".
Another interesting aside I might mention here is something I rarely see mentioned anywhere, and a LOT of people have the wrong idea about. Most people think the gold we sell as junk gets shipped off to a refinery where it gets refined and turned into pure gold bars.
Not so. Separating karat gold from its alloys is extremely tedious and expensive, and just not worth the effort.
What happens is that most junk gold is melted down by assumed karat, i.e., 10k jewelry gets smelted in one batch, 14k in another and so on. Since there's always junk that fools someone along the line, these smeltings are often a little "off" when assayed, so they will either add copper or gold to the smelt to bring it to a true karat rating. From these smelts, the refinery then produces batches of certified 10K/14K/etc bars, rods and ingots.
When jewelers want to make "stuff", they just order these certified bars from the refiner. Jewelers, hobbyists and the electronics industry also make use of pure gold wire and leaf which ranges from thin to INCREDIBLY thin.
The only common place you'll see thousand fine gold used is in coins and small bars and ingots for citizen investment and commerce, and in large bars (a la ft knox stuff) for international gummint commerce.
So where does the ultra-pure gold come from that THEY are made of? That comes from the stuff that gets dug out of the ground by prospectors, miners and mining corporations. Nugget and vein gold is breathtakingly pure in its natural state, and rarely needs any refining at all.
from me! I highly recommend them!
Even mentioned what a following they have here.
