Red or White?
… or Yellow?
Or precious metals 101.
There are so many metals out there that there is sure to be some confusion….heck I’m confused half the time. (but that’s pretty normal for me). Oh, but I digress. White being so predominate the last few years, there are lots of choices out there, and more to come. Most of you know about sterling silver, which is sort of the step-child of white metals. Bench jewelers don’t like it because its dirty and engravers fear it because it’s soft, but when it’s polished to a high shine, silver is a great choice for jewelry. Its one main downfall for the average person, is keeping it clean. It does get tarnished and require a little special attention from your jeweler from time to time. (polishing cloths in between do a fair job).
Platinum is also a very well known white jewelry metal and considered the king of all of them. The biggest drawback to platinum is its price. Precious metal prices are already through the roof, and that makes the price of platinum kind of scary right now.
White gold is my personal favorite on the white list. The one thing to know about white gold is that, someone took a yellow metal and made it white. How? Well it’s tricky, and it really still wants to be yellow. So after gold is alloyed with white metals to make it look white, it’s plated with rhodium. That’s a process that takes place every time its’ worked on and adds an extra step to all white gold work. But the bright side is the bright side! Gold has a high shine that you only have with platinum metals immediately following a good polishing.
The last one on my little list here is palladium. There are six metals in the platinum metal group, palladium being one of them. It’s strong and tough like platinum but not as heavy, so the price compares more to gold than platinum. That’s a nice plus. Unfortunately, right now, even though there has been considerable chatter about the virtues of palladium, I still don’t see much but wedding rings and wedding mountings being made from it. However, I read articles daily about how it’s the metal of the future…so I’m waiting for great things to come of it. The one thing about platinum AND palladium is that even though they are tough and strong, that doesn’t mean they are hard. Therefore, you will notice dents and scratches almost immediately upon wearing it, and those dents are harder to polish out than with gold. A nice plus for palladium is that it is a pure metal and is considered hypo-allergenic, unlike gold, whose alloys tend to bother sensitive people.
Yellow gold has been making a comeback for the last year, and this season there are many new choices with yellow gold. Great looking yellow gold necklaces with matching bracelets, and cool new hoop earrings are all showing up in yellow. They look great on and yellow gold is so rich and warm looking. It looks very flattering on most people and it’s the easiest for the jeweler to work on.
I hate to admit, there isn’t a “Red”. I usually drink my red…usually from the Russian River Valley while I’m wearing my yellow. But that’s another story!!
February 18th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
What a lovely site. Here I am trawling the Florida Jewelers for a Tag Ladies Watch (by the way I am in England) I shall be over with you in April this year, playing golf and shopping. I come across this little gem, so interesting. Looks a great jewelry shop, do wish you sold Tag watches.