Is silver jewelry stamped China BJ 925 a real silver?
Its good to be cautious when buying any jewelry and best to visit a trusted jeweler but over 80% of all designer silver jewelry is manufactured in China now and if it contains the purity mark (925) country mark (中国) and makers mark (BJ) you can rest assured its purity is exact. Actually the BJ is a very common designer mark although I cant recall who that is but I do know it was QVC designer.
What do 925 and 7.5k mean on jewelry?
925 Silver is the international standard silver for silver jewelry in the world. It is different from 9.999 銀, because the purity of 9.999 silver is relatively high, it is very soft and difficult to make complex and diverse jewelry, そして 925 silver can do it. 925 silver jewelry is not 100% 銀, which is because the 7.5% alloy added in sterling silver improves the gloss, brightness and hardness of silver.
What is the easiest way to tell if your gold jewelry is fake?
There is no quick or simple answer to your question that will enable most persons who do not work with gold alloy items on a regular basis to reliably differentiate real karat gold items form lesser quality items or outright fraudulent fakes.
Even for most persons who do deal in gold items daily, there are no easy, simple answers. Over the last 40 years high grade fake jewelry items, designed to fool and defraud experienced businesspersons that buy used gold jewelry items from the public, have become more and more encountered.
In the past ten years China has produced some fine quality fake major gold bullion coins that have been used successfully, to defraud many professional coin dealers. Their die work is as good as any government mint. They measure and weigh correctly, The technology that will allow most persons to reliably detect them starts at about $700.00; which is more than most non-business users can justify spending.
If the item is a piece of jewelry or a vanity item (like a money clip) it should be and will likely be marked with both a maker’s trademark and a number like 14K or 585 if it is made of 14 karat gold. {The same is true for other karat gold alloys} しかし, marks alone are not definitive. High grade fake items are also encountered marked as 14 karat and other karat golds, like especially 18k (750) or 22K (917) 金. Reliably detecting such fakes is often not a simple thing to do.
頻繁 (but not always) if an item lacks any maker’s trademark, or if an item lacks any marks for gold, then usually it will not be gold. {しかし, I once bought an item, with no markings, in a antique shop for $20.00 that contained over $500.00 worth of gold. 時々, one gets lucky; but I had 40 years of experience when this happened}
If item is marked Gold Filled or RGP or HGE then it has only a very thin skin (usually no thicker than Aluminum foil) of karat gold over a substrate of typically brass.
The best advice that I can offer to most persons who are not “in the trades” is to get a competent professional opinion before you buy anything claimed to be gold from a private seller; unless the low asking price is typical of what you would expect to pay for used costume jewelry at a garage or yard sale. また, sometimes one gets lucky.