More commonly used diamond ring backing materials are 18K gold, platinum Pt950, and platinum Pt900. When shopping for a wedding ring, people often struggle with whether to choose 18K gold or platinum. What’s the difference between 18K gold and platinum? What are their pros and cons?
I hope this will help you make the right choice. The most suitable material for diamond ring inlay is 18K gold.18K gold is the most widely used alloy for setting gemstones. Is 18K gold Gold? It is Gold, of course, but not pure Gold; it is not less than 75% gold content, combined with other metals, to achieve high hardness and extension and different color effects of a kind of alloy. Pure Gold is more than 99.9% gold content of Gold, this kind of pure Gold is very soft, with teeth that can bite, and generally does not need to do precious stones inlaid. Material too soft, easy to drop stones, precious stones inlaid first is to consider the stability, with a fine Mosaic will not be able to ensure safety, in the late of the drill is easy to fall, so general pure gemstone setting, even with gems is also set cheap stones, such as imitation diamond, so no significant loss even diamond away, because Gold still exists.
What are 18K Gold and platinum?
18K Gold (Au750): Gold contains at least 75% gold. There are a variety of expressions of 18K gold, gold Au750, G18K gold, G750, and 18K Gold; they are the same meaning, but the word is different.
PT950 platinum: platinum content of not less than 95%
PT900 platinum: platinum content of not less than 90%
These three kinds are the most popular ring materials on the market at present. To be precise, they are the concept of precious metal alloy content. This alloy is made not to cut corners but because the high purity precious metals are usually soft and require the addition of other metal elements to form the alloy to achieve the necessary hardness to inlay. Among them, 18K gold, and because the formula is different, can present white, yellow, and red (rose gold) three colors, their gold content is the same, but the color is different; PT950 platinum and PT900 are pure white.
What are the pros and cons of 18K gold and platinum as ring support?
Pros and Cons of PT950 platinum as a diamond ring support
Pros: Platinum pt950 is still the main component of the natural metal platinum, with strong corrosion resistance and oxidation resistance, wear will not make human skin allergic reaction, will not change color, the pure white is more in line with our definition of purity, with the same constant long beautiful meaning as diamond.
Cons: Platinum has characteristic of low hardness, the texture is soft, is being squeezed from a particular external force or after easy deformation and wear and tear, it is easy to cause the gem ring arm to fall off, in addition, due to the market value is not transparent, and the merchant’s excessive publicity, the international gold price is lower than platinum for a long time, but in China’s retail price is higher than that of Gold, in other words, Very poor hedging. Therefore, platinum is used to make simple style, not complex, do not need a large area of broken diamond inlaid diamond ring or ring.
Pros and Cons of PT900 platinum as a diamond ring support
Pros: Most consumers opt for a 90% platinum diamond ring because it’s more affordable than others, but the platinum 900 diamond ring is much better than we think. The most significant deficiency of platinum diamond rings is low hardness, so wearing for a long time is likely to fall off the diamond. The hardness of platinum is reduced with the increase of purity, so PT900 ring support hardness is higher than PT950; not only inlaid diamond stability is more robust, but it also can shape more complex modeling. At the same time, pt900 rings still retain the advantages of the platinum metal itself, such as beautiful color and never fade and wear due to solid chemical stability.
Cons: The platinum ring has a low value of preservation. As mentioned, the preservation rate of platinum PT900 diamond ring and PT950 diamond ring is similar. However, it must be noted that when platinum, the precious metal with the highest gold price, is processed into a diamond ring, additional costs such as brand fees or design fees will often add to the price. Therefore, the retention rate of platinum diamond rings is not as high as that of pure platinum element rings, which is also why the recovery price of platinum diamond rings is far lower than the price.
Pros and Cons of 18K gold as a diamond ring support
Pros: as a special for the metal Mosaic, 18 k gold high hardness, high plasticity in design and production, whether can harness more sophisticated style, such as the creation of hollow ring arm set auger, set or multilayer is surrounded with auger design, leading to a large number of artistic style diamond ring, such as wind, Chinese style, European baroque wind restoring ancient ways, small clear air.
Cons: Because k-gold is an alloy in nature and its original color is golden yellow, its beautiful appearance is the effect of the electroplating process. After wearing for a long time (at least 2-3 years), the ring arm will gradually fade. Does 18K gold change color? Will, if often grinding, metal has discoloration phenomenon, especially in the ring, ring under the ground, often color would happen, if it is a necklace is generally wear a neck, no grinding, there won’t rub off, also can recover, of course, this kind of color, take typically back a bit fine polishing the plating factory can restore.
Note: Although platinum is rumored to be more expensive than Gold, at present on the market, the two metal prices are not much different, and because gold loss is lower than platinum, if you want to change the money will be more convenient.
Platinum Pt950 is an alloy material with 95% platinum content. The natural color of this material is white, which only needs polishing to achieve an excellent effect, unlike 18K gold, which needs electroplating to accomplish the sound effect. Similarly, platinum PT900 is an alloy material with 90% platinum content. However, they only contain different platinum amounts, making PT900 a little more complicated than PT950. The hardness of platinum PT900 or platinum PT950 is not as good as that of 18K gold, and the probability of diamond failure with platinum 950 or 900 is much higher than that of 18K gold. The security is lower than that of 18K gold. In addition, the hardness of PT950 jewelry is lower than that of PT900, and the whole ring is easy to deform in the later stage.
To sum up: I think to buy a plain ring, no additional diamond ring support can choose platinum, but if the ring support has requirements, need to enchase auxiliary diamond or small diamond, do not entanglement, directly choose 18K gold ring support.
