I’m sure it’s not made by Cartier, but I do like the way it looks. My only doubt is about that 4-5 microns of gold plate. How much is that? How much ware do you think a ring like this could have before the gold comes off? Two years or twenty? Perhaps any of you has some experience with gold plated jewelry.
Thanks very much!
Steven
P.S.: perhaps there even is an expert jeweler in this forum. For you I have this question: What do think is a fair price for this ring?
This is probably some jewelry term I’m not familiar with, but assuming it’s not, 5 microns is one-fifth to one-tenth the width of a human hair, depending on whom you ask.
Four or five microns is evidently the thickness of the plating. A micron is a micrometer, or a millionth of a meter, or a thousandth of a millimeter. Without knowing the surface area of the ring I can’t say exactly how much gold it contains, but my best guess is slightly less than one dollar’s worth.
I don’t know what a “faux diamond” is, but I’m guessing cubic zirconia, which is not very expensive. You can get rings with similar sized cz stones for $20 or so. The current bid on your item is $100, which I think is almost certainly more than it’s worth.
Just to add to what bibliophage said, 5 microns of hardened jewelry grade gold will plate in literally about 5-10 seconds in the electroplating bath, and leave you with coating that will wear off in days. Based on a guess of the amp minutes, I’d say the dollar guess is close.
Better to get (in order) solid gold (even as low as the 10-14c range), gold filled, or gold plating at a minimum of 25 microns.
IANAEJ (I am not an expert jeweler), but the question intrigued me, and I did find this page on thickness of gold plating. It pretty clearly explains (like bibliophage already did) the meaning of the micron thickness designation. Also note that “heavy gold plate” is a minimum of 2.5 microns (or [symbol]m[/symbol]m), well under the 4-5 [symbol]m[/symbol]m you quote. What does that mean in terms of wear? I haven’t the faintest idea.
Waverly: You sure that a coating of that thickness will “wear off in days”? That seems surprisingly quick, to me. What would be a reasonable plating thickness for a ring so it’ll last for a while, or is that a nonsense question?
Also, about cost (figuring this out appeals to my anal retentive nature, so bear with me): price of gold is $11.31 (US)/g Density of gold is 19.3 g/cc, which gives a gold price of $218.37/cc. Assuming a 5 micron thickness, one cc of gold will plate 2000 square cm; $1.00 worth of gold will plate just over 9 square cm. Just guessing, looks like the ring is ~1cm in diameter, and probably has a surface area of 2 square cm or less. So, about 20 cents worth of gold, ignoring the fact that it’s not 24k.
Zut, whoops. Good catch, I answered the first part as if the units were microinches. My experience is in electronics, so it was force of habit. 200 microinches is fairly wear resistance for casual use, but I still would not count on this to last beyond a few years. For reference, a very heavy gold filled watch that I own lasted about 10 years with moderate wear.
I got a bit more surface area than you did, but there are lots of variables, so I’d say that anything +/- a couple dollars is close.
Thank you, Waverly, Zut and others. I think I sort of misstated my question. I wasn’t so much interested in how much gold would actualy be on that ring (the weight), more how much ware there would be in it. But you’ve answered that anyway…