Hypoallergenic Gold!!

As too many of us have learned, some people seem to be allergic to gold, or are they? The reality is, we are not allergic to gold, rather, some of us are allergic to the alloy in white gold, which is often nickel. Nickel does bother some people, but let me digress for a moment and give you some background.

Put on your miners cap and let’s go digging in our gold mine. As you may expect, in nature, gold is a bright yellow metal, it is never found in a "White" gold version. We need to make it white for jewelry, which is where the alloy comes in. Alloying is simply a mixing of metals for some purpose, which in the case of gold is to make it white appearing and to give it greater hardness as gold is quite soft naturally. Bring on the nickel. For many years, nickel has been the standard alloy used to turn yellow gold into white gold. Nickel is a pure white metal naturally, and adds hardness to the mix, but as I mentioned, some people do have an allergic reaction to this alloy, such as a rash or redness, sometimes itchy or just an uncomfortable felleing, but we now have a brilliant answer to this age old problem, without moving to the expense of platinum. Are you ready for this?? Technology is great, and we've figured out another metal, palladium, along with a few other trace metals, but not nickel, to alloy the gold with. Voila!! We have a white appearing gold, that is harder than the original metal as found in the ground, and remarkably, it appears whiter, and as an added benefit, without the need to constantly "dip" (re-rhodium plate) your jewelry!!

At Windy City Diamonds, we call this new metal "bright White" gold and we've been experimenting with it for over 2 years now with tremendous success. Hypo-Allergenic Gold! So for all of you out there that have some discomfort from your white gold jewelry, bring it in to Windy City Diamonds and let us re-manufacture your jewelry with this newer, technologically advanced, gold and alloy that will alleviate your problems, and without a huge expense!