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Gold-plated Jewelry
When a piece of metal such as brass or copper is placed in a special electroplating solution with a piece of gold, and then an electric current is sent through the solution, the base metal becomes coated in a fine layer of gold. This gold-plating process can be used to make jewelry that looks like solid gold but is much less expensive. Sometimes this kind of gold-plated jewelry is marketed as gold vermeil, but it is not. The metal used for gold vermeil must be sterling silver.
Definition of Gold Vermeil
According to guidelines issued by the Federal Trade Commission, a product should not be described as gold vermeil if the metal it is made of is anything other than sterling silver or if the silver is covered by an additional layer of some other metal such as nickel. In addition, the gold coating must be at least two and a half microns thick, which is equivalent to one hundred millionths of an inch, and the gold must be at least 10k.
The Karat System
The karat system is a system for measuring the relative purity of gold. Each karat represents one part of gold per 24. A piece of gold jewelry marked 24k would be 100 percent gold unmixed with anything else. A piece of gold marked 1k would be made of one part gold mixed with 23 parts of some other metal, so it would be only 4 percent gold. In the karat system, 14k is 58 percent gold and 42 percent some other metal or combination of metals.
Sterling Silver
Sterling silver is an alloy of silver and another metal such as copper, in which the silver is at least 92.5 percent pure, or .925 as it is sometimes expressed. For a piece of jewelry to legitimately be described as 14k gold vermeil, it would need to be made of a piece of 92.5 percent pure sterling silver coated in a layer of 58 percent pure gold at least two and half microns thick.