A precious metal is a rare metallic chemical element of great economic value. The notion of precious metal fluctuates over time and across civilizations depending on supply and demand: if we think mainly today of gold, silver, platinum, rhodium and palladium, we will notice that they are not necessarily the most expensive nor those that have always been the most appreciated by all peoples.

Gold

Gold mining is one of the most polluting and destructive in nature. Recycled gold makes it possible to infinitely refine already extracted gold, such as old jewelry that people no longer want to wear. They will therefore sell them to shops specializing in the purchase of gold, which will themselves sell them to these refineries, which will put the recycled gold back on the market without a single gram of gold having been extracted from nature. A real virtuous circle!

Fine gold, that is to say 99.99% pure, is a golden yellow metal. Too malleable, fine gold is very rarely used in jewelry. It is then mainly alloyed with copper, silver to make it more pleasant to work with and to give it different colors such as lemon yellow gold, champagne yellow gold, pink gold, white gold, and even the mixture of fine gold and silver gives green gold!

Alloying fine gold with other metals will reduce the percentage of fine gold in the alloy. The most common alloys, which are called titles are 18 carat, and 14 carat and 9 carat gold alloys. Today we must rename 18 carat gold as 750/1000 gold because it contains 75% fine gold in the alloy, 14 carat gold as 585/1000 gold because it contains 58.5% fine gold in the alloy and 9 carat gold as 375/1000 gold because it contains 37.5% fine gold in the alloy.

The oldest gold jewelry discovered to date dates back to the 5th millennium BC in Bulgaria, in the Varna necropolis.

Gold investing is very popular nowadays as gold is considered a safe asset protecting against inflation. Us residents who wish to invest in gold can do so through a gold IRA account, that let them own gold bullion kept at a custodian financial institution. This is particularly interesting as gold IRAs provides tax benefits within retirement savings.

Additional information

The melting point of fine gold is 1064°C. Even the human body contains gold. A small amount, about 0.2 mg, but still! Gold is very ductile, so it can be stretched very easily. With 1 gram of gold you can make a wire 2 kilometers long.

Fine gold is also very malleable. It is so soft that you can mark a piece in fine gold with your teeth if you bite it. Like in westerns! King Midas gets from Dionysus that everything he touches turns into gold, including what he wants to eat or drink. Hungry and thirsty, he begs Dionysus to cancel this gift. Dionysus tells him to bathe in the Pactolus River, which cancels this gift and becomes loaded with gold.

Croesus is the last king of Lydia, a region where the Pactolus River is located, which since Midas’ bath has been full of gold flakes. This is the origin of the expression rich as Croesus. Pyrite is also called fool’s gold because of its yellow color resembling that of gold. This characteristic has deceived incompetent gold prospectors who believed they had discovered gold nuggets.

Silver

Silver is a white and shiny metal. The etymology of the word silver comes from the Sanskrit ar-jun meaning shiny. This precious metal is very ductile and malleable, it is used pure to mint coins or in the manufacture of goldsmith pieces.

There are 2 main alloys, also called titles which are used for the manufacture of jewelry. 835/1000 silver which contains 83.5% pure silver and 16.5% pure copper, and 925/1000 silver, also called Sterling silver which contains 92.5% pure silver and 7.5% pure copper.

Mexico is the largest silver extractor with 3 main deposits in the Mexico City region, the Sierra Madre and in the Mapuni desert.

Additional information

The melting point of fine silver is 960.5 ° C. In common language we say that silver oxidizes. In fact, it reacts with the sulfur present in the air and not with oxygen. It should therefore rather be said that silver sulfurizes.

The term having silver comes from the fact that silver metal was rarer than copper but less than gold, the latter not being abundant enough for everyone to have silver. By a chemical process, a thin layer of silver can be deposited to make mirrors, CDs and even Christmas decorations. Silver is the most conductive metal of heat and electricity, but for cost reasons, copper is used instead to make electrical wires.

Platinum

Platinum is the third precious metal used in jewelry. It is the densest of the three. It is white in color and does not oxidize. It is malleable so it scratches more easily than gold, it often needs to be repolished, about once a year for a ring that is worn daily.

To make it more pleasant to work with, it is alloyed with pure copper. There are 3 main alloys or otherwise called titles. There is platinum 850/1000, platinum 900/1000 and the most commonly used platinum 950/1000 which contain respectively 85%, 90%, 95% pure platinum and the rest copper. Thanks to the evolution of jewelry manufacturing techniques in the 1930s, platinum was the flagship metal of the Art Deco style.

Additional information

The melting point of platinum is 1772 degrees. When we want to extract it from its natural environment, platinum is always associated with 5 other metals. Ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium are part of the platinum group metals. They are just as rare and rhodium and palladium are also used in jewelry.

Platinum is the “chemist’s gold”. In the past, chemists had platinum wedding rings made because gold in contact with mercury creates an amalgam, which makes it brittle and impossible to wear. As chemistry techniques have evolved, contemporary chemists are no longer in direct contact with mercury and therefore have the pleasure of being able to wear yellow or pink gold.