What Exactly is Gold Filled?

Any fan of coffee, me being a huge one, knows this fact. When you order a cup of coffee in a new place, you will either get the cup of coffee that dreams are made of, something that tastes like dish water... or a cup that lands somewhere in between. Hopefully you don't get the dishwater! But this is what coffee lovers know: there are many different qualities of coffee... some, better than others. Gold is the same! 

Moving Mountains pieces are made using 14K gold filled (14K rose gold filled for the rose gold). However, some people don't know exactly what gold filled means. 

I believe that to fully understand what gold filled is, we also need to look at solid gold and gold plated.

Solid Gold

This one is easy! However, there's a little twist... Solid gold doesn't mean that it is 100% made of gold. Solid gold (often 14K solid gold for jewellery) is an alloy made of gold and other metals.

However, the gold "recipe" is consistent throughout the object. You get the exact same "recipe" at the surface and at the core.

This type of gold is obviously usually of high quality and is the most expensive option; especially if your karat value (K) gets closer to 24K (the highest purity level).

Gold Plated

Gold plated is the lowest quality of gold finish. It is also obviously the least expensive option of the three.

Gold plated items are mostly made of a base, cheaper metal. An electro-plating process is then used to deposit a thin layer of gold alloy (often 14K) onto the base metal object.

Gold plated items will usually lose their gold colour after one year and will need to be re-plated to maintain their gold finish.

Gold Filled

Gold filled sits pretty between solid gold and gold plated. There is still a base metal involved, but a thicker layer of solid gold is bonded to the base metal by using a lot of heat and pressure.

This results in a much stronger gold finish than gold plated and gold filled pieces don't tarnish.

Gold filled pieces offer a good quality end product, at a much more reasonable price than solid gold would. This is why the pieces created by Moving Mountains are 14K gold filled.

A few pieces are exception to that. The pieces from the original collection (cast pieces) are made of lead-free pewter and hand dipped in 14K gold. Those pieces aren't as strong as the gold filled and are priced accordingly. Those pieces are also identified in their description.

If you have any questions regarding the materials that are used for your Moving Mountains piece, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will gladly answer your questions!