Gold is not only a used in ornaments but it is also an investment for many households in India. Therfore you need to be aware of the purity & quality of the gold that you would be buying.
Gold’s purity is measured in Karat. There are many types of Gold Karats like 24, 22, 10, 14, 10 etc.
To understand, 24 Karat gold is made of 100 (99.99) per cent gold. There is no mixed alloy in it.
However jewellery or ornaments cannot be made of 24 Karat gold (100 percent gold) as it is delicate and soft.
Most of ornaments / jewellery is made of 22 Karat to 10 Karat gold.
The purity of gold can also be measured in percentage / parts per thousand.
To convert karats into the per centage, you need to divide the karat number by 24 and multiply the result by 100.
To find the gold percent in your 22 karat jewellery, divide 22 by 24 & then multiply it with 100. This resultto 91.66 per cent which is the purity of your gold.
Also, an easy way to find out the purity of your gold jewellery is to look for the karat stamp on the jewellery piece.
It is mandatory for jewellers to mark all jewellery with HallMark and gold karat.
Thus if your gold bangle has “18K” stamped on it, that means it contains 18 parts gold and 6 parts of other metals.
You may also convert this karat value into percentage with above-mentioned formula.
It should come to 75 per cent gold content.
Here are some of the frequently used karat marks and their corresponding percentages with respective parts-per-thousand values:
Gold 24 Karat – 99.9% (999)
Gold 22 Karat – 91.7% (917)
Gold 20 Karat – 83.3% (833)
Gold 18 Karat – 75.0% (750)
Gold 16 Karat – 66.7% (667)
Gold 14 Karat – 58.3% (583)
Gold 12 Karat – 50.0% (500)
Gold 10 Karat – 41.7% (417)