How Can You Tell If Your Gold Jewelry Is Real – Travel
How Can You Tell If Your Gold Jewelry Is Real
Monil Salisti
* Tips For Buying Gold
1. Buy from someone you know or with a solid reputation.
2. Look for a store with a quality-assurance program that tests its own pieces for purity. You don*t have to shop at Tiffany*s to go for the real gold. Many major stores have testing programs, too.
3. If the piece has a trademark, like Nike or a sports team logo, it must have a license stamp on the back. If the jewelry maker is willing to steal a trademark, experts say, they may be willing to short you on gold.
4. Look at the workmanship. If the edges are frayed, or it just looks cheap, it probably is under-karated.
5. And if you really want to make sure you*ve got legitimate gold, you can have your pieces X-rayed at a quality- assurance lab, like the one *20/20* used, for around $20.
* Under-Karating Now Rife Among Discount Jewelry Offers
In many countries the US for example anything less than 10 karats -- or about 42 percent real gold -- can*t legally be sold as gold.
Yet the reality is that with gold sales rising rapidly *under-karating* is a very common problem even though it*s not widely known.
The worst cheating occurs with the less expensive 10-karat and 14-karat pieces, and the problem isn*t easy to resolve because by simply looking at a piece of gold there is really no way to tell the difference between 10-karat and 8-karat.
Recently *20/20* bought several *discount* gold jewelry articles in New York and had them tested by the American Assay and Gemological Office - the lab that does quality assurance checks on jewelry from Tiffany*s.
The result: None of the 3 jewelry pieces they tested actually met the minimum 10-karat as advertised!
* Here*s A Quick Guide To Gold *Purity*
24K gold is pure gold.
18K gold contains 18 parts gold and 6 parts of one or more additional metals, making it 75% gold.
14K gold contains 14 parts gold and 10 parts of one or more additional metals, making it 58.3% gold.
12K gold contains 12 parts gold and 12 parts of one or more additional metals, making it 50% gold.
10K gold contains 10 parts gold and 14 parts of one or more additional metals, making it 41.7% gold. 10K gold is the minimum karat that can be called *gold* in the United States.
European Markings European gold jewelry is marked with numbers that indicate their percentage of gold, such as:
18K gold is marked 750 to indicate 75% gold
14K gold is marked 585 for 58.5%
12K gold is marked 417 for 41.7%
About The Author
Monil Salisti is the owner of Full Jewelry, a great online jewelry resource. For more information, visit: http://www.fulljewelry.com/.
Do You Really Need a Friend Quiz To Tell If Someone Is Your Friend – Kids
Do You Really Need a Friend Quiz To Tell If Someone Is Your Friend
Brian Fong
Q. I took a friend quiz in a magazine and it says that I dont make a very good friend. Can that really be true
A. First, let me say congratulations! If the quiz said that you dont make a very good friend then you must have answered the quiz honestly, at least from the friend quiz authors point of view.
Now lets delve into the content of the quiz. The bad thing about a friend quiz is that it is automatically biased by the authors opinion of what makes a good friend.
For example: There might be a question that asks:
Your friend wants you to cover for her by telling her mother that she is sleeping at your house when she is really going to an all night party with her boyfriend. Do you say:
A. "No problem." B. "Ill do it but Id rather not." C. "No way, youre on your own girlfriend."
Whats the right answer Well, the morally right answer is obviously "C". Would that make you a better friend that either "A" or "B" Yes, actually, it would. There is a very good chance that something bad is going to come out of the all night party. Your friend could get drunk and become a victim of date rape, get injured or killed in a car accident, or get arrested if the police raid the party. As a good friend, you should care more about your friends safety and security than her having a good time doing something that she has to lie about.
However, if the friend quiz rates you a snitch because you answered "C", then, according to the author, youre not a good friend.
Look. You dont need a friend quiz to know if youre a good friend, or if someone else if a good friend to you. Take the quiz for the fun of it, but dont take it seriously. Your heart knows if you are a good friend and what it means to have a good friend. Trust your instincts and not some strangers value system. A persons friendship is far to valuable a gift to trust the results to a friend quiz.
About The Author
Brian Fong runs the popular quiz site http://www.QuizFaq.com
Quiz Faq - Your solutions for the quiz.
Cmon Rich, Tell Me What To Do… – Online Auction
Cmon Rich, Tell Me What To Do...
Richard Grady
I get hundreds of emails per week and as you might expect, many of the emails contain similar questions. There are probably ten questions that I get asked most. I will save nine of them for another time as I want to talk about just one of the top ten questions today.
The basic form of the question varies but essentially it is the same and here it is:
I have read everything I can about marketing online.
I understand how to get traffic to my website.
I know how to make my website appealing to customers.
I know about generating income with backend products.
I understand everything you have taught me over the past X years....
BUT WHAT DO I ACTUALLY DO
Yup, the question is simply What should my online business actually be - what should I offer - what do I do
Of course, this is the $64,000 question and there is no easy answer. If I could pluck guaranteed business ideas out of the air every time someone asked for one, I would be a rich man. Unfortunately, I cant and neither can anyone else. Even if someone did have a pool of surefire ideas, would they really be willing to share them with others for nothing
However, I can try and help you come up with your own idea by making suggestions and eliminating some, almost certainly, bad ideas.
Firstly, do something that interests you and that you know about - if you are not interested in your product and dont have the first clue what you are talking about, I can guarantee that you will not be successful. For example, dont try and sell products about making money on the Internet if you yourself are not making money on the Internet.
Secondly, dont do something that is already being done by thousands of other people unless you can add a highly unique twist. For example, you will never make any money setting up a general online auction site - there are already plenty of established sites with millions of registered members. Why would anyone want to use a brand new auction site with no members when they can sell on eBay
Thirdly, and I know I keep banging on about this but it is important, find a small market that is easy to target rather than a huge, general market. Small doesnt have to mean small on the Internet. The money is in the niche markets - trust me.
I know how hard it is to come up with an original idea but it isnt impossible and plenty of people do it everyday. If you cant come up with something yourself, spend time surfing the Net and brainstorming with others in forums such as: http://www.traderonlineforum.com
Copyright 2004 Richard Grady
About The Author
Richard Grady has been helping people earn online since 1998. Find out more about Richard at: http://www.thetraderonline.com. Free wholesale search engines: UK- http://www.wholesale118.co.uk and US http://www.thewholesaletrader.com.