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Hallmarks of Precious Metals
There are three kinds of precious metals that are required to have hallmarks and these metals are gold, silver and platinum. Originally, only gold and silver were required to have the hallmarks but during recent years, platinum was included in the list of precious metals to be hallmarked.
These precious metals are luxury items which many people, especially the members of the upper class society, would like to own. Usually, the gold and silver items they owned are in the form of jewelry, plates, goblets, knives, spoons and forks, chandeliers, brooches and the like.
Gold and silver, in their purest and finest form, is too soft to be used for anything. So the usual practice is to add a base metal, usually copper to the precious metal and create and alloy. This alloy will be hard, as taken from the characteristic of copper while possessing the luster and beauty of either gold or silver.
When precious metal and base metal are mixed, the result will be a strong and lustrous alloy. This is ideal on the part of the manufacturer or craftsman but not necessarily so for the consumers or buyers. The final product will have no indication of the mixture of metals. There are no clear indications of which metals are used and of the ratio of base metal and precious metals. With this scenario, the consumer is susceptible to deception and fraud.
To address this dilemma, King Edward I of England decreed in 1300 that all goods made of gold and silver must have a specific fineness. For example, any silver products must be sterling or higher or else it would be considered a substandard product. To determine the purity of the precious metal in the alloy, assaying is performed on the products.
There are various methods in determining the fineness of the metals used. One of the most accurate, which is applied to gold is the fire assay. It is a destructive method which requires a few randomly chosen items to be melted. The base metal is separated from the precious metal and through this separation, the purity of the gold will be determined. Because of the destructive nature of this process, only a handful is picked to undergo fire assay while the rest undergoes non-destructive means.
Originally, the assaying were performed by guilds of goldsmiths. They would assay the products and mark the items with the proper seal within their guild halls. From these process, the term hallmark was coined. Today, not only England performs hallmarking. Other European countries practice their own hallmarking schemes as well. This creates security to investors and consumers of goods made of precious metals.
These countries have banded together in order to not only protect the consumers of the gold, silver and platinum products they produce but also to create a standard hallmark for the fineness of the products produced. With the standardized hallmarking system called the Common Control Mark (CCM), the trade of goods made of precious metals between these countries have become easier and faster. Importing countries are no longer need to re-assay the incoming products that bear the CCM.
For more information and readings on Gold, Silver and Platinum Hallmarks, visit :
http://www.hallmarks.com.au/
http://www.squidoo.com/hallmarkings
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