Tips On Buying Gold Body Jewelry

by Jim Hofman

Gold body jewelry and gold belly button rings are increasingly popular women’s jewelry accessories. Gold body jewelry in particular is highly desirable, symbolizing abundance and prosperity. Before you purchase gold body jewerly or gold belly button rings, make sure you know how to choose and what to look for.

Primarily, you’ll want and need to know that your body jewelry being advertised as gold is really gold. There are specific ways to know for sure, so let’s examine what to look for.

Without question, 18 karat gold is the best choice for gold body jewelry. With any lesser karat content, there’s a good chance you’ll experience a jewelry allergy or that your body will reject the gold body jewelry entirely.

Usually this occurs because the gold used for body jewelry is an alloy that contains other metals in addition to gold. Often, gold body jewelry is only plated with gold; such jewelry should never be used in piercings even if the piercing is healed.

If your gold body jewelry is only gold plated, it’s best to look for another option. Most gold plated body jewelry contains a high percentage of nickel, which gives you a higher risk for allergic as we’ve discussed.

Even if you choose gold-plated jewelry, always check what kind of base metal it includes. For example, gold belly button rings advertised as 14 karat gold have only fourteen parts of gold in their entire composition. The other common elements are usually silver, nickel, zinc, and copper. Did you know that gold in its pure form is extremely soft, making it impossible to use as jewelry? That’s why other metals are needed to form a piece of body jewelry.

18 karat gold has a 75% gold composition. That’s why, when choosing body jewelry, you should always go with 18 karat. Most very inexpensive body jewelry is 14 karat gold, so to avoid painful jewelry allergies, go with 18 karat gold.

Consider these factors when buying gold body jewelry:

1. Buy jewelry from a store with a quality assurance and testing program. These stores test their own jewelry for purity.

2. If your jewelry has a trademark, for example a sports team, it must have a license stamped on the back. If it doesn’t, there are serious quality issues. Stay away.

3. Test your body jewelry at an independent lab if you have any questions about the gold content. Typically these tests are about $20.

4. Be sure to closely examine your body jewelry before purchase. Check for any defects. To be absolutely safe, look at the jewelry under a jeweler’s scope. to check for imperfections.

Lastly, you should understand gold terminology before you invest in body jewelry, especially belly button rings. 24k gold is pure gold, 18k gold is 75% pure, 14k gold is 58.3% pure. 10k gold is the lowest purity allowed to be labeled gold, at 41.7% purity.

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