Gold Jewellery Buying Guide And Tips: Wasting Charges, Making Charges, Karat, 916 Purity

Published on 2018-05-31

If you are in a position where you want to buy gold in India, or even other countries worldwide, reading out Gold jewellery Buying guide and tips below. You will learn the meanings of the jargon used in buying and selling gold worldwide. Jargon such as making charges, wasting charges, 916 purity, gold purity and so on.

What is KARAT, 916 Hallmark of Purity?


Always remember the facts, the jargons, the symbols and what they mean. Never assume that gold buying transactions are the same as other precious metals or stones. Words used are mostly completely different.

Karat is Karat and not Carat. We are dealing with a precious metal, we are not dealing with a gemstone, diamond. Karat has a short symbol used worldwide as the letter 'K' or 'Kt'. Karat is a measurement of the purity of gold. Currently, the well-known purity out there known to us is 24K, 22K, 18K, 14K and 9K. 24 carat is considered the purest gold of them all.

Gold Purity


Gold purity is an important option to think about when choosing which type of purity is suitable for you. Since pure gold found in mines before any work has been done is too soft and can easily break off or bend.
Depending on the gold purity, in order to make the metal more durable, certain other metals are mixed in the gold. Other metals such as Silver, Cadmium, copper etc is mixed with gold to enhance the durability, shine, shape and sturdiness. The Karat value of gold calculates in accordance with how much extra other metals are used in conjunction to harden gold. The Karat value would then be reduced to 22Kt, 18Kt, 14kt, 10Kt or 9Kt.

Gold Purity Calculation

Gold purity calculation is quite simple to calculate. You would need to take the Karate value and always divide into 24. For example, gold with a purity of 18Karat (Kt) is just 75% of pure gold. This is calculated by dividing 18k by 24k (Kt/24k), that equals to 0.75 which is 75%. This means that 75% is pure gold and the remaining 25% (100%-75%=25%), is of other metals.
*Always remember that you can apply this calculation to all gold purity. For example, 14Kt gold has 14/24=0.58 (58%) of pure gold with 100%-58%=41.6% being of other precious metals.

Gold Purity Hallmark

From the example above, working out the gold purity can easily produce the hallmark fo the gold in question. Example, a 22Kt jewellery means it has 22kt/24kt= 0.916 (91.6%). From this calculation, we can now say that the hallmark or symbol for the piece of jewellery is [916]. This symbol or hallmark is normally engraved/indented inside the price of jewellery.

In India or most countries, 22K gold is considered the most valuable for jewellery and has more resale value. 22Kt gold jewellery means it has 22/24 =91.6% pure gold.

Making Charges

The Making charges are charges applied to the buying and selling of gold in India and most other countries worldwide. It is the cost of transforming raw gold into jewellery. This is usually expressed as a single unit, in Rupees per gram of gold. In most cases, the Making Charges per gram of gold fluctuate from 22 to 35 rupees.

Wasting Charges

Wasting charges sound like stealth tax, hidden charge. Guest what? It is, these charges were normal charges back in the days where goldsmiths use to find it difficult to save tiny pieces of gold that were lost during the process of making jewellery. I guess the technology was not there at the time and therefore, wasting charges were just reasonable to have as part of the cost of gold.
Nowadays, mostly all goldsmiths are smart enough and use well-equipped technology to prevent wastage to its bare minimum. The charge is expressed as a percentage. Although wasting charges are legal, there are regulations put in place by the government, for studded jewellery (both gold and platinum) the wastage charges set by jewellers cannot exceed 9 % of the net weight of the precious metal and for non-studded designer jewellery, the wasting charges cannot exceed 3.5%. As for coins, bullion coins, rare gold coins, medallions and biscuits, the wastage cannot be claimed to exceed 1.25 %.

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