Yesterday was 13th May 2013 ‘Akshaya Tritiya’ the Holy Day of Hindu and Jain, the day when people buy Gold for goodness in their lives. While buying Gold people ask for the hallmark but hardly know about it, what is its importance at the time of purchasing gold?
We have heard the word carat 24, 22, 20…….etc what exactly it is. Before going into details one thing that should be known is that different carat prices different. Here is the table to make you understand.
| Hallmark No. | Percentage of Gold | Carat |
| 100 | 100 | 24 |
| 916 | 91.6 | 22 |
| 833 | 83.3 | 20 |
| 750 | 75.0 | 18 |
| 667 | 66.7 | 16 |
| 583 | 58.3 | 14 |
Now according to the table, the hallmark number is printed on gold which indicates the percentage of the gold present, which means purity of gold. If hallmark indicates the number as 100 it means it’s 100% pure gold which means 24 carats if the number printed is 916 it means it has 91.6% gold and rests 8.4% is other metal and it is of 22 carats and so on.
Thus it is important to know about the hallmark because of 22-carat gold price less than 24 carats. If a customer is not aware of this the shopkeeper may sell 14-carat gold with 58.3% of purity at the price of 24 carats and the customer will be a loser. So next time when you go for buying gold and ask for the hallmarks make sure that the number printed is clear and right and you are priced on the basis of purity of gold.