Sometimes the clasp of a piece is made of a different metal than the chain, so definitely confirm with the store clerk or jeweler that the entire item is made of the metal from the stamping. Does that mean the whole thing is made of precious metal?Īgain, not necessarily. The clasp/closure/earring backs on my piece are stamped, but the rest of the item is not. This could be via discussion in the store upon purchase, on a tag attached to the piece, or on the receipt for the product itself. However, they do require the manufacturer or retailer to disclose any precious metal content. The legal guidelines on stamping don’t require all pieces made of precious metal to be stamped. Does this mean it’s not made of precious metal? This is legally required if the item is stamped and serves as a guarantee of sorts that the manufacturer/retailer vouches for the accuracy of the stamp on the metal. Most likely, the stamp you are seeing here is the manufacturer’s trademark or the trademark of the retailer selling the piece. There’s another symbol next to the metal content stamp that isn’t on your list. So now that we have the basic stamp meanings down, let’s go through some of the most frequently asked questions that we hear from customers: GF – this stands for gold-filled, which is a term that means a thin layer of gold was bonded to a base metal to make this piece.These pieces also generally display the karat fineness of the gold. HGE – this is the abbreviation for high grade electroplate, which is another way of denoting that the jewelry you are looking at is not solid gold.It almost always has the karat fineness of the plating listed, i.e. GP – pieces with this stamp have been plated with gold, but have another metal underneath.Legally, to be considered sterling silver a piece has to consist of 92.5% pure silver, with only 7.5% other elements mixed in. 925 – a piece with this stamp is made of sterling silver.900, 900PT, or PT 900 all signify that the metal used is 900 parts per 1,000 pure platinum, while 950, 950PT, and PT950 denote 950 parts per 1,000 are pure platinum. 900, 900PT, PT900, 950, 950PT, PT950 – all of these stamps designate that the piece is made of one of the two most common platinum alloys.For 14K gold jewelry, 585 parts out of 1,000 are pure gold. So when you see 750 that means 18K gold jewelry because the metal is made of 750 parts per 1,000 of pure gold. So for 10K gold jewelry, 417 out of 1,000 parts are pure gold. However, instead of referring to how many parts out of 24 are pure gold, this number is now out of 1,000. 417, 585, or 750 – this is just another way of telling us the gold content.