Assessing The Value Of Jewellery

By Syed Abedin
Carat (ct) : In the world of jewellery, carat has two measures; mass and purity of gold. First of all I will explain the mass part.

Carat (mass):
In terms of mass, if your jewellery weighs one carat, it is equivalent to the amount of 200 milligrams (0.2g). The higher amount of carat the jewellery has, or the heavier the jewellery is, the more expensive it will be. This is because more gold is used to make the jewellery, so as the weight increases, so will the price. However, this is not always true. Mass is also dependent on purity (the other type of carat).

Carat (purity):
In terms of gold, purity and mass go hand-in-hand. For example, you may have bought a piece of jewellery that weighed 10 grams (50 carats) for £25 and you may have thought you had grabbed yourself a bargain. The truth is you were probably conned for its value. The jeweller might have used cheap metals such as steel or iron and painted it gold to yield an easy profit. Or he might have put 0.01 carats of gold into the jewellery (2 mg) and the rest were worthless metals. To test gold you can buy gold analysers which will measure the weight of your gold and the purity of it too.

Cubic Zirconia (C/Z):
Cubic Zirconia (abbr: C/Z), is an extremely rare mineral that is often used to simulate the appearance of diamonds. It is usually hard, optically flawless and colourless and you would usually see advertised as costume jewellery and not real diamonds. It is a very good way of looking pretty without having to pay outrageous prices. It is usually quite expensive because it is a rare mineral but it definitely beats the cost of having to pay for pure gold.

An Investment in gold:
If you have a bit of spare cash (£10k+), you might want to invest in gold. The price of gold is increasing as we speak. Due to the ongoing extraction of gold, the amount of gold in the world keeps decreasing. If you can get your hands on some gold now, you are sure to get a profitable return in a few months time and a very profitable return in a year.

About The Author
Syed Abedin is currently a Mortgage Advisor. He owns a credit card comparison website called Credit Cards UK. His site will search the market for credit cards with the best rates to suit your needs. All you need to do is to go to http://www.creditcardsuk.org.uk/ and sign up for the credit card(s) the suits you best for FREE.
For any queries, email him at spzat8@btinternet.com
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