How to tell if gold jewelry is real: five checks that take one minute
Five checks you can do at home in under a minute to tell solid, filled and plated gold apart — no tools beyond what's already in your kitchen.
Solid, filled and plated gold can look identical in a listing photo and behave completely differently within a year. None of these checks need special equipment — they take about a minute combined and will save you from the worst surprises.
Check the hallmark first
Genuine solid gold is stamped with a purity mark — 14k, 18k, 585, 750, or similar — usually inside a ring band or on a clasp. No mark at all is a real warning sign, though not absolute proof either way on very old or handmade pieces. This is the fastest check and the one to do before anything else.
The float test
Drop the piece gently into a glass of water. Real gold is dense and sinks straight to the bottom. Gold-plated base metal is lighter and tends to float or hover partway down. This will not distinguish gold-filled from solid — both are dense enough to sink — but it catches obvious fakes immediately.
The magnet test
Gold itself is not magnetic. Hold a strong magnet near the piece; if it's pulled toward the magnet at all, there is enough iron or steel in the base metal to tell you it is not solid gold. This does not catch every fake — some counterfeiters use non-magnetic base metals specifically to dodge this test — but a positive pull is a definitive no.
Look at the wear pattern, not just the surface
Check the highest-contact points — the underside of a ring, the clasp of a chain. Plated pieces show a color shift at exactly these points first, usually within months, as the thin gold layer wears through to reveal a different-colored base metal underneath. Solid and gold-filled show even wear because the color goes all the way through, or is thick enough not to matter.
The skin reaction test
Wear the piece against skin for a day, ideally somewhere it will get slightly damp — a ring finger, not a necklace. Genuine gold at 14k or higher rarely causes reactions. Green discolouration on skin or a rash points to a high copper or nickel content, meaning either low-karat gold or a base-metal fake.
If it fails
None of these confirms authenticity on its own, but two or more failing together is a reliable signal. For what a genuine everyday piece should feel and look like, our jewelry edit covers the real thing in detail, and 14k vs 18k explains what the hallmark number actually means once you've confirmed it's real.
Reading the stamp properly
The stamp is the first thing to check and the most commonly misread. A number alone — 585, 750, 916 — is the European millesimal mark, and translates to 14k, 18k and 22k respectively. A number followed by "K" is the karat system. Both are legitimate.
What matters is the letters after it. GF means gold-filled: a thick bonded layer, genuinely durable, often decades of wear, but not solid. GP or HGE means plated or heavy gold electroplate — microns thick, and it will wear through. GB is gold-bonded, effectively plating. And 925 with a gold color means gold-plated sterling silver, sometimes sold as vermeil, which is a real and reasonable category as long as you know that is what you are buying.
A piece with no stamp at all is not automatically fake — very old pieces often predate stamping requirements, and some pieces have had the stamp polished away. But on anything modern, no stamp is a reason to test before you trust.
Two more tests worth knowing
The density check. Gold is remarkably heavy — 19.3 g/cm³ against about 8 for brass. Weigh the piece, then measure how much water it displaces in a narrow measuring jug. Divide grams by milliliters. Solid 14k lands around 13, 18k around 15.5. Anything under 11 is not solid gold whatever the stamp says. This is the most reliable home test there is.
The magnet test, done properly. Gold is not magnetic, but neither is brass, so a fridge magnet proves very little. A rare-earth magnet is different: pass it slowly past a suspended piece and watch for any drag at all. Steel and nickel cores show themselves immediately. Clasps often are magnetic even on genuine gold chains, so test the body of the piece.
The tests you should not do
The scratch-and-acid test destroys a small patch of the piece and is genuinely dangerous without proper handling — nitric acid causes serious burns. The ceramic scratch test damages the surface for very little information. And the bite test tells you almost nothing except that lead is soft, which is a different problem entirely.
When to stop guessing and get it tested
If the piece cost real money, or you are being asked to pay real money for it, an XRF test at a jeweler takes about a minute, does not mark the piece, and typically costs very little or nothing if you are buying from them. Any home test gives you a probability. XRF gives you the actual alloy composition, and on anything above a couple of hundred pounds that certainty is worth the trip.
