The Dirty Truth About Indian Gold
January 21, 2011 7 Comments
Here is an article that appeared in the TOI in Jan ’09.If you invest in Indian gold jewellery,this article might just persuade you to have a fire assay done on your hoard to determine its fineness.
ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD
Your wedding jewellery may not be as pure or as precious as you think it is. Several goldsmiths across India have taken to adulterating the precious metal with iridium and ruthenium,and are getting away with it, as until recently the metals failed to show up on all purity checks. It’s an alchemist’s dream, and the practice is becoming increasingly commonplace if you go by the stocks of the ‘duplicate’ metals at even the smallest of karigar workshops.
Both iridium and ruthenium belong to the platinum family of metals, and when mixed with gold, do not form an alloy but sit tight in the yellow metal.
What makes the adulteration even more alarming is that the metals do not replace silver and copper, which are added to the gold during the jewellery-making process to harden the soft, malleable yellow metal. As Saumen Bhaumik, general manager (Retailing) at Tanishq put it, “The two metals manage to camouflage as gold.’’
TOI tested several pieces of jewellery, and all had some amount of either iridium or ruthenium lurking inconspicuously with the gold. A 22-carat gold bangle bought in 2003 from a century-and-a-half-old jeweller—who has since then expanded from Mumbai to other parts of the country—when tested at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, had 3% iridium in it.
A gold chain bought from a shop in Bangalore in 2002 when tested at another citybased centre had 2.39% ruthenium, while a pair of earrings from Kerala was found to be adulterated with 4.65% of iridium.
On an average, a piece of jewellery or a bar of gold contains nearly 5-6% of the adulterant, and manufacturers—wholesalers and retailers across India—are aware of how rampant this notorious practice is. Consumers, however, are the biggest losers as they have been kept in the dark. Read more of this post
If you are a typical Indian,and have some spare cash,you probably buy gold and that too as gold jewellery.The jewellery might be for personal consumption but it is still going to have to do double duty as a safe,low-risk and liquid investment . So the jewellery is going to be bought with a sharp eye on its resale value.Purity and grammage will be important considerations.Also getting a good price will be a major consideration and there is bound to be a bit of bargaining.
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