You can find lots of gold jewelry online. However, in order to make a good purchase decision, you have to know what you are buying. One thing that you need to understand before you go online shopping for gold is karat value. If you don't understand karat value then you can't know if you are purchasing gold at a good deal or not. Below is some information to help you make informed decisions when shopping for gold online.
The word karat tells us how pure a piece of gold is. The purer it is, the more karats it is said to have. Karat should not be confused with the word carat. A carat is a measurement of weight reserved for precious gems. Gold is measured in grams and ounces. If you have a ring that is both gold and diamonds, it might be describes something like this: 3 carat diamond, 24 karat gold ring.
Gold found through mining or digging or anywhere else in nature is pure. It isn't until people start adding things to gold that its purity and karats start to go down. So why would anyone want to lessen the number of karats by adding impurities since purer gold is obviously worth more? I'll tell you.
Most of the jewelry made from gold is pretty hard, but gold is a soft metal. So, some alloys need to be added to gold to make it more durable. And of course, alloys are also added to make gold 'stretch'. With stretching, a person would get more goods from the gold but the gold would be of a lesser quality. However, there is a huge market for lesser quality gold.
The karat scale goes from 1-24 with 24 being the highest purity. Twenty-four karat gold is often called pure gold. In order for gold to be considered 24 karat, it must be 99% pure gold. Gold that is 18k must be 75%. Fourteen karat is almost 60% pure gold and 10 karat gold only is only made with 41.7%. These denominations of gold are what we are most familiar with because they are used in jewelry. They are the standard denominations from this link. However, a piece of gold could be any number of karats.
Unlike most of the things you buy, gold is an investment. If you were making any other type of investment, you would educate yourself about that investment. Buying gold is no different and understanding karat value is just the beginning. View website of gold and silver retailers here.