A Gold Ring!.. Maybe? Fools Gold

[runecaster]

I found what I think is my first gold ring...Problem however, The ring looks like a wedding type band, has two hallmarks inside, a crown and a 14 in a square. so far so good. I pulled it from some highly mineralized soil. it had lots of corrosion on it. In fact I thought it was a copper fitting of some type and tossed it in my junk pouch. At home I decided for the heck of it to clean it up before tossing. That when I saw the hallmarks. Well long story short, it is badly pitted on the outside with what appears to be rust? in the pits. The inside is clean and smooth with the hallmarks very easy to see. I really don't think is plated, as when I polish the rust away from the areas not pitted it still looks like gold underneath. It also looks like it was sized at one point by a professional and re-soldered with gold solder. Has anyone else found a gold ring that looks rusted? I plan on taking it to a jeweler to figure out what is up on Monday. My excitement is somewhat tempered thinking it might be "A Fools Gold".

 

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[cruiserkev]

I found this coin ring a few years ago and thought it was gold until I cleaned it up. Thin gold plating over brass that had been mostly polished off and was resized once but starting to corrode. Did some research and found that the coin is a fake 1855 California gold 1/2 dollar made if copper. Wish it really was gold but still consider it a good find anyway.

HH!

 

[runecaster]

That is a great find! too bad on the fake stuff but great history to it

 

[Skippy SH13]

14K is only 58.5% gold. It's entirely possible the ally wasn't great, and the pitting you're seeing is the corrosion of the non-gold metals in the alloy. While Pure gold will not corrode, 14K is not pure.

Best bet, is to clean it up as best you can, then run an acid scratch test. The funny thing is, by weight, if you've removed a lot of corrosion, you might actually have proportionally more than 14K. In the end, it's the same amount of gold that you'd have had in a 14K ring with all the metals intact... just now the "weight" to "gold" proportion will be slightly off. Not a big deal.

Skippy