Precious Metals

Gold, platinum, silver, titanium... Here are the facts you need to choose the "best" metal for your next piece of jewelry.

Advice to help you buy gold jewelry. You'll know exactly what you're buying when you learn the facts about the terms used to describe gold.

Has your jewelry ever turned your skin green or black, or stained it some other color? Here's why jewelry discolors skin, along with some solutions to help you avoid the problem.

Learn which metals are safe to use in unhealed body piercings, and which ones are best to avoid until your piercing is healed.

Hirschberg Schutz & Co. Inc., of Warren, NJ, is voluntarily recalling about 2.8 million metal charms that contain high levels of lead, which can be a poison risk for young children.

Learn which metals used in jewelry are most likely to cause an allergic reaction in some people.

Maggie Snell and Vanessa Paterson furnish an article that's a series of photos and text of bronze, copper, and brass jewelry.

Here's a description of several metals used in the jewelry industry.

Many jewelry designers are choosing the metal niobium when they want to add a splash of color. From Lapidary Journal.

Learn more about this process, where thin layers of metals are fused together with heat, then manipulated to form a burled wood-like pattern.

Titanium is growing in popularity. It's hypoallergenic, which means most people can wear it with no problems. This page describes the color variations we see in titanium and gives a little information about caring for the metal.