What Do Real Gold Look Like

The environmental protection agency says that gold is commonly alloyed with silver and other metals.

What do real gold look like. In fact the piece with gold colored particles inside may even be lighter than your other piece of quartz if the gold is not real. Most native gold is alloyed with silver and if the silver content is high enough the specimen will have a whitish yellow color. Fool s gold and other minerals that look like gold will not produce a weight difference between the pieces of quartz. Look at how the gold reflects light.

Fool s gold is glittery and bright but if you shade it in your hand it will become dull and drab looking. Once you have seen a few pictures of real gold it is pretty easy to distinguish from the other stuff. Most specimens of pyrite found in nature will have at least some tarnish on their surface. If it floats it s probably not real gold since gold is very dense.

Nuggets or small flakes of gold are usually bright and untarnished. So indicators of the presence of sulfides like arsenic copper iron and silver may also appear within gold ore. Real gold weighs about 1 5 times more than fool s gold or iron pyrite. Gold has a golden to yellow color.

If you search online some will say that real gold tarnishes while others will say that real gold does not tarnish. Fool s gold is made up of crystals and has sharp edges while real gold is a metal with a smoother texture and rounder edges. If it sticks it probably isn t real gold since gold isn t magnetic. Pyrite has a brassy color.

To tell if gold is real try dropping it into a glass of water. Check out some of the pictures throughout our website of the various gold nuggets and gold specimens. Gold tarnishing is the slight corrosion of the gold surface and is evident as a dark discoloration of the gold item also called a tarnish film. If you look closely at the piece and see that its structure consists of what looks like small and sharp cubes then it is fool s gold.

Gold ore can look like quartz with streaks or spotty areas of gold. Real gold will still maintain a diluted glow though not as bright as it would be if in full sunlight. But real gold stays bright even when out of direct sunlight and though soft does not fall apart when you touch it like fool s gold can. Fool s gold tends to be bright and shiny much shinier than actual gold.