Toothpaste can damage your diamonds, gemstones, gold and silver. Toothpaste is abrasive and has a hardness of around 3/4 on the Mohs Scale of Hardness. Metals such as gold and silver are softer, so toothpaste can actually scratch damage your gold and silver jewellery.
Fill a cup or bowl with water and carefully drop your gold piece into it. If the gold is real, it will sink to the bottom of the cup. If it's fake, it will float to the top or hover in the middle of the cup.
Never use toothpaste, baking soda, or a commercial metal cleaner on gold. If you use these abrasives, you may scratch the gold. Never use bleach. Bleach reacts with gold and will eat away at gold alloys.
Toothpaste can damage your diamonds, gemstones, gold and silver. Toothpaste is abrasive and has a hardness of around 3/4 on the Mohs Scale of Hardness. Metals such as gold and silver are softer, so toothpaste can actually scratch damage your gold and silver jewellery.
Don't use silver polish, toothpaste, harsh chemical cleaners, or abrasive scrub brushes on gold-plated jewelry.
Vinegar is very destructive, so when you apply the vinegar to a fake piece of gold, the vinegar will cause the jewelry to tarnish. Gold is a non-reactive metal, so real pieces of gold will not react to vinegar.
Take an unglazed ceramic plate or piece of tile and scrape a piece of gold across its surface. Real gold will leave a gold mark or trail. Other metals will leave a black trail.
Mix together about one cup of warm water with just a few drops of dish soap. Soak gold jewelry for up to five minutes. Put small jewelry pieces into a strainer before placing in the solution. Swish the items around to dislodge dirt.
Scratch test.
If you cut deep enough that you expose underlying metal, you can assume that it is plated. If it appears to be made of a uniform composition throughout, then it is probably solid gold.
It's simple - over time, your jewelry comes in contact with moisture, acids, oils and air. They react with the metal in the jewelry, causing it to eventually wear down and tarnish.
This is a handy and maybe unexpected tip, but Coke does indeed clean gold. You can dip your gold in a small bowl of Coke and make sure that it is completely covered. Leave the gold plated jewelry in the solution for 10 minutes and then rub with a soft cloth and rinse.
Washing your gold in warm water and dish soap is the best way to remove tarnish. As mentioned above, a jeweler can also do a great and safe job of removing tarnish. We also recommend getting a gold polishing cloth like this one.
Hallmarks are imprinted numbers on most authentic jewelry items to showcase their karat percentage. You can expect to see a marking of 24K-10K written somewhere inside of a ring or on the side of a bracelet. These markings may also be written as “750” for 18K gold.