Designations and information on the jewelry tag

Jew­el­ry is an acces­so­ry that has expres­sive­ness and beau­ty. There is some­thing mag­i­cal in them, so peo­ple have attached spe­cial impor­tance to them since ancient times. But it was nev­er enough for them that the jew­els sim­ply adorn the image. They always want­ed proof of the nobil­i­ty and the avail­abil­i­ty of high-qual­i­ty mate­ri­als from which these jew­el­ry are made, evi­dence of a prof­itable invest­ment of their cap­i­tal. Such proof is the infor­ma­tion on the jew­el­ry tag. The type of met­al they were made of, or how valu­able gems they con­tained, deter­mines the wealth or social class of their own­ers.

What are the designations on jewelry tags?

In accor­dance with the law of Ukraine, tags are a manda­to­ry req­ui­site for the sale of jew­el­ry. They are cre­at­ed in the cor­po­rate style of the sell­er or man­u­fac­tur­er. They attract the atten­tion of poten­tial buy­ers and increase the like­li­hood of a pur­chase.

In addi­tion to per­form­ing an infor­ma­tion func­tion, gold and sil­ver jew­el­ry pass­ports per­form a war­ran­ty and seal­ing role. Their pres­ence is 99% con­fir­ma­tion of the authen­tic­i­ty of the jew­el­ry.

In the absence of this infor­ma­tion, there is no guar­an­tee that the jew­el you like is the orig­i­nal, and not a cheap fake.

A stan­dard label is made of thick card­board or thick paper. It should have a clean, tidy appear­ance. There should be no scuffs, stains or creas­es on its sur­face. At the top, there is always a hole for the thread that con­nects the tag to the prod­uct.

Anoth­er proof of the authen­tic­i­ty of the jew­el­ry is a seal. When a piece of jew­el­ry is made in a spe­cif­ic shape that does not allow a tag to be attached, it is placed on the pack­ag­ing of this prod­uct or in a sep­a­rate bag.

The card­board box can be con­nect­ed not only with the thing itself, but also placed in a sep­a­rate bag. It should have an inscrip­tion made in a font with a font size of more than 8.

Since the man­u­fac­tur­er of the jew­el­ry is respon­si­ble for the descrip­tion on the label, only the label can pro­tect the rights of the buy­er. Some­times scam­mers fal­si­fy this infor­ma­tion. How­ev­er, famous world-famous brands that strive to main­tain their rep­u­ta­tion, there­fore, only truth­ful infor­ma­tion is pub­lished on the labels of their prod­ucts.

The cre­ation of the tag is most often car­ried out by flex­o­graph­ic print­ing. Some­times this infor­ma­tion is applied by means of foil stamp­ing, var­nish­ing, die-cut­ting, lam­i­nat­ing, etc. In some cas­es, the data is print­ed using a ther­mal trans­fer print­er.

How is a jewelry tag decoded?

Accord­ing to Ukrain­ian leg­is­la­tion, jew­el­ry labels must print:

• name — ear­rings, ring, chain, brooch, neck­lace, etc.;

• the arti­cle of this jew­el­ry prod­uct is the ser­vice des­ig­na­tion of the prod­uct mod­el;

• fine­ness is a term used in the jew­el­ry indus­try to refer to the amount of gold in a met­al alloy. The sam­ple of gold shows how many mass units of pure met­al are con­tained in 1000 mass units of a par­tic­u­lar alloy. If the alloy con­tains 50% gold — a sam­ple of 500. In the jew­el­ry indus­try, three main sam­ples of gold are usu­al­ly used: 333, 585 and 750. Each of them has its own indi­vid­ual char­ac­ter­is­tics, duc­til­i­ty and strength. At first glance, it is impos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish whether it is made of gold 333 or 750, only by price. Gold 333 con­tains 33.3% pure gold. Rings, ear­rings, chains or bracelets made of 333 gold are the cheap­est. Alloy 333 fea­tures high hard­ness, low duc­til­i­ty and fast pati­na. The 585 assay item con­tains 58.5% pure gold, a com­pro­mise between a fair­ly high con­tent of the pre­cious met­al and very good phys­i­cal prop­er­ties. The 585 assay guar­an­tees the high val­ue and dura­bil­i­ty of the jew­el­ry. 750 sam­ples con­tains 75% pure gold, which is a reli­able invest­ment, but is asso­ci­at­ed with the fragili­ty of prod­ucts. The high­er the sam­ple, the soft­er the met­al, the more the jew­el­ry is sub­ject to destruc­tion. The most com­mon hall­mark on a gold dia­mond ring is 585;

When it comes to sil­ver jew­el­ry, the high­est qual­i­ty 925 ster­ling sil­ver items are most often cho­sen, which con­tain 92.5% pure sil­ver in the alloy. This pre­cious met­al is not as soft as gold, thanks to which the jew­el­ry, despite its high qual­i­ty, is resis­tant to mechan­i­cal dam­age. How­ev­er, in the case of sil­ver, reg­u­lar clean­ing must be remem­bered, because the met­al turns black and tar­nish­es, which is the result of a reac­tion that occurs as a result of the con­tact of the met­al with air;

• weight, includ­ing inserts, is indi­cat­ed in grams. In some cas­es, the weight of inserts (stones) and with­out them is indi­cat­ed in a sep­a­rate line;

• hall­mark — an offi­cial sign, stamp or holo­gram con­firm­ing the amount of pre­cious met­al con­tained in this piece of jew­el­ry. The stig­ma in the form of a knight denotes gold items. In the form of a female sil­hou­ette — sil­ver. In the form of a dog — with the addi­tion of pal­la­di­um, a horse — plat­inum.

Stamp in the form of geo­met­ric fig­ures: a rec­tan­gle is gold, and with round­ed ends — sil­ver, plat­inum — eight-point­ed. Let­ter — indi­cates the region where the com­po­si­tion of the met­al was checked and a sam­ple was tak­en;

• the size. This item helps to suc­cess­ful­ly buy jew­el­ry for a gift, know­ing the size of the pre­vi­ous prod­uct;

• price per 1 gram and the total cost of the prod­uct. The sell­er must indi­cate this infor­ma­tion on the jew­el­ry tags. This explains the fact why the cost of an inex­pen­sive-look­ing ring or ear­rings per 1 gram is high­er than more mas­sive mod­els;

• DST 117–3‑002–95 — state stan­dard. These are the tech­ni­cal con­di­tions accord­ing to which this prod­uct is man­u­fac­tured;

• name of the man­u­fac­tur­er, its phys­i­cal and legal address, TIN;

• type of inserts of stones in the dec­o­ra­tion. Mark­ing of jew­el­ry with sev­er­al dia­monds: 159 Br Kr 57 1,346 3/5 A. It stands for: 159 — the num­ber of stones in this piece of jew­el­ry, Br — dia­mond, Kr — round cut (Kv — square, Ov — oval, IG — pear-shaped shape, Mk — “Mar­quis”, S — emer­ald, Pr — “Princess”), 57 — the num­ber of faces, 1.346 — the weight indi­cat­ed in carats. In 1 carat 0.2 g, 3/5 — prop­er­ties of stones, 3 — shade. The lighter it is, the clos­er it is to 1. The puri­ty of the stone is 5, A is the ide­al cut group, G is sat­is­fac­to­ry;

• method of pro­cess­ing stones (mark­ing, saw­ing, grind­ing, peel­ing, pol­ish­ing);

• The QR code is required so that the buy­er can scan it using the pro­gram on the phone, go to the man­u­fac­tur­er’s web­site and ver­i­fy the orig­i­nal­i­ty of the prod­uct;

• stamp of the tech­ni­cal con­trol depart­ment of the Qual­i­ty Con­trol Depart­ment — a tag on a brand­ed piece of jew­el­ry con­firm­ing its orig­i­nal­i­ty;

• the bar­code is set for the con­ve­nience of the man­u­fac­tur­er and dis­trib­u­tor stores.

Do I need to keep jewelry tags?

Since tags and seals on jew­el­ry made of gold and sil­ver inform about the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the goods, that is, about what exact­ly the buy­er pays for, they are evi­dence-based pro­tec­tion in case of claims about the authen­tic­i­ty and qual­i­ty of the prod­uct. They are equat­ed with offi­cial doc­u­ments, which in no case should be thrown away, but must be kept in a jew­el­ry box.

The label serves as a cer­tifi­cate or pass­port for the piece of jew­el­ry. Some man­u­fac­tur­ers, if avail­able, accept jew­el­ry for free clean­ing.

This doc­u­ment is also the basis for free repair or replace­ment in case of a break­down that occurred dur­ing the war­ran­ty peri­od.

If the pur­chased prod­uct did not fit or the defect was dis­cov­ered after the pur­chase, accord­ing to the law on con­sumer rights, with­in 14 days the buy­er has the right to a refund, war­ran­ty repair or replace­ment. To do this, be sure to save and present the receipt, the whole pack­age and the intact tag.

If you want to be sure that you are buy­ing real jew­el­ry, buy from a trust­ed online store that works direct­ly with famous brands. Many scam­mers deceive cus­tomers by sell­ing them prod­ucts made of tombac (a com­bi­na­tion of cop­per and zinc). This mate­r­i­al has a beau­ti­ful yel­low col­or that per­fect­ly imi­tates gold. To check the authen­tic­i­ty of the jew­el­ry, use a mag­net. Gold and sil­ver are dia­mag­net­ic, which means that they do not react to the action of a mag­net. How­ev­er, when mak­ing jew­el­ry, pre­cious met­als are com­bined with non-pre­cious ones, which can cause the jew­el­ry to react with the mag­net.

When the tag con­tains all of the above infor­ma­tion, the risk of buy­ing a fake piece of jew­el­ry is reduced to zero. If even the slight­est detail is in doubt, you should con­tact a pro­fes­sion­al jew­el­er or apprais­er.