The pendant in my hand looks like gold, feels cold and heavy like gold and was described as ‘gold’ when I bought it. It is real, but how do you know?
Today I’ve taken this Radley London necklace, which I bought from Amazon for £29.99, to the London Assay Office to test how much gold is actually in it.
The experts here suspect it may be one of thousands of pieces of imitation gold jewellery currently on sale online in the UK — a market estimated to be worth in excess of £1 million.
Purity: Reporter Rosie took this Radley London necklace, bought from Amazon for £29.99, to the London Assay Office to test how much gold is actually in it
Under the Hallmarking Act 1973, it is illegal to describe anything that isn’t officially gold as the real thing.
It is possible to mislead online shoppers by not explicitly stating in product titles or advertisements if an article is made of a metal that has been coloured, or plated.
But there has been an explosion in cheap jewellery falsely marketed as ‘gold’ since the start of the pandemic, with a study for the British Hallmarking Council finding a 17-fold rise in suspicious online marketplace listings between 2019 and 2021.
Such products are usually made from cheap base metals coated with an incredibly thin layer of gold — as little as 0.25 microns (a millionth of a millimetre) thick.
‘If you were to buy a piece of cheap costume jewellery you know is only gold-plated or gold-coloured and you’re happy with that then that’s fine,’ says the London Assay Office’s customer services manager Adam Phillips.
‘The issue is when shoppers pay more for something as they perceive it is a higher-value piece because of the way it is described.’
The law says shops must include the word ‘plated’ in a product title with the same prominence as the word ‘gold’ — but many websites don’t. It means it’s easy for people doing their Christmas shopping for loved ones online to be drawn in by adverts showing gold jewellery for prices of around £30 to £150.
But there’s a strong chance it is actually worth no more than a few pounds.
Real deal? Rosie watches Adam prepare the Radley locket for testing in a London Assay X-ray machine
Ruth Mary Chipperfield is a jeweler who remodels and resizes jewelry. She’s increasingly discovering that people are being mis-sold jewellery. ‘One client didn’t know whether her ring was nine or 18 carat gold. In fact, it was 80 per cent nickel and therefore dangerous to wear.’ she says.
The necklace I bought is called a ‘Ladies Gold Floral Etched Locket’ and there is nothing in the product’s title or description to suggest it isn’t gold.
But when I scroll down the Amazon page I see the ‘material type’ is described as ‘brass’. What is this actually made from? It’s time to put it to the test.
Real gold can only be seen with x-ray vision
Adam takes me through a maze of security gates and back corridors within the imposing Goldsmiths’ Hall in London, where gold experts have been testing the quality and purity of gold for more than 700 years.
Although the Assay Office lab has a 21st-century feel, it is equipped with modern machinery and workbenches.
These experts employ XRF (X-ray fluorescence) spectrometers, which send Xrays through jewellery surfaces. The machine reads the unique frequencies of each metal element that reflects the Xray energy back to it.
Adam places a real, gold ring in his machine. The graph on the attached computer screen shows two clear peaks in the ‘gold’ range — it contains 91.6 per cent gold, which means it is 22ct, the finest quality used in jewellery.
Experts warn that fake gemstones can be sold to customers for a fraction the price of genuine ones.
You will also find small peak areas for some other metals like silver, copper, and zinc.
‘Gold is too soft to be used in its purest form so even 22 ct gold is only around nine-tenths gold. It is an alloy, with small amounts of other metals to give it strength and colour,’ Adam explains.
My necklace is about to get the final approval. Adam holds the pendant on the X-ray beam. We wait about 20 seconds.
The peak for copper shoots up immediately but there’s nothing more than a small blip for gold.
‘There’s basically no gold in here,’ Adam exclaims.
It was found that the pendant is almost completely made of zinc and copper, with a gold content of 1.2 percent. A quick test of the chain shows it’s not much better, it contains 2.6 per cent gold.
Manufacturers who want to save money sometimes put cheaper metals in parts which aren’t as visible, Adam says.
He tests the inside of the locket and his hunch is proved correct: it’s just 0.6 per cent gold in there.
‘To sell something as “gold” by law it must be at least 9ct gold, which means the metal alloy contains 37.5 per cent pure gold. This contains just a trace,’ he says.
Gold has a set minimum price which fluctuates according to the markets every day but 24 ct gold (the purest kind) is usually around £42 per gram.
Adam calculates that if my necklace were 18ct, the gold alone would be worth around £350.
That doesn’t include the cost of designing or manufacturing the piece, or the retail mark-up so the maker can have a profit.
It’s likely the metal deeper inside has even less gold content than we found on the surface.
Even if it were the same quality throughout, it would contain a maximum of 0.16 g of pure gold — around £6.72 worth. It will actually be much less valuable than that.
Amazon didn’t comment on our findings, but they are understood to be investigating the matter. Radley London didn’t respond to our requests for comment.
As gold is a commodity, it has a set minimum price which fluctuates according to the markets every day but 24 ct gold (the purest kind) is usually around £42 per gram
Make sure to check the mark
To hallmark jewellery, and other pieces made of precious metals such silver and palladium, the Assay Office inspects their quality.
No hallmark can be given for anything gold or of lower quality than 9ct.
But hallmarks can be faked — and I suspect this might be the case with the next piece of jewellery I’ve brought for testing. It appeared in a Google Shopping advert when I searched for ‘gold rings’.
The ring was called ‘Song Gold’ on the website of jewellery brand Ana Luisa, and displays a picture clearly showing a hallmark-style stamp. Adam uses a magnifying glass and instantly says its hallmark is ‘nonsense’.
It’s just the letter ‘A’ and a tiny clear stone — there are none of the official marks, numbers or shields necessary.
A quick test under the machine reveals it contains 22.6 per cent gold, far below the minimum standard allowed to be sold as ‘gold’.
Although the website’s headline for the ring only mentions ‘gold’, the description immediately below says it is: ‘Plated: 14k gold’.
As Ana Luisa is a U.S. company with a ‘.com’ address, British hallmarking rules don’t apply. Buying from a British supplier with a ‘.co.uk’ website would have offered more protection as these websites must comply with UK standards and laws, Adam explains.
Ana Luisa has not responded to any requests for comments.
What can consumers do to avoid being scammed?
The key thing to remember is you can’t tell if something is real gold by looking at it, says Adam.
Look out for words such as ‘gold coloured’, ‘plated’, ‘gold filled’ (or ‘GF’), ‘vermeil’ or mentions of any other metals, as these are all clues it is plated cheaper metal.
Websites in UK should display the trademark or provide details.
Real hallmarks will contain a series of letters and numbers within shields and carry a mark to show which of the UK’s four Assay Offices assessed the item: a leopard for London, rose for Sheffield, anchor for Birmingham or a castle for Edinburgh.
Be wary of fakes
Customers are not only being ripped off by cheap jewelers.
The trade of fake luxury watches has become such a problem that last month eBay launched a free post-sale verification service for watches sold for more than £2,000 on the auction site.
Bogus: The trade of fake luxury watches has become such a problem that last month eBay launched a post-sale verification service for watches sold for more than £2,000 on the site
Whenever a high-value watch is sold, the seller now sends it via eBay’s Authenticity Guarantee programme to be checked by Stoll & Co watchmakers.
Luxury watch resale site Relleb says customers should look out for the words ‘custom’ or ‘aftermarket’ included in the description of the watch parts on eBay listings. These words indicate that replicas were added to the watch parts.
Another red flag is if sellers have a ‘no returns’ policy — genuine sellers should let you return the watch if you have any concerns.
eBay’s director of luxury goods, Kirsty Keoghan, says: ‘Our number one goal is to bring more trust to our marketplace for our entire eBay community which is why we are investing in authenticity guarantee for watches.’
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