Who can you trust?

By Graham Tighe

To be considered a jewellery valuer under Australian regulations, one must be trained and registered but, as retailer and goldsmith GRAHAM TIGHE argues, registration is not always a quality-assurance.

Becoming a registered valuer is a challenging task, with much skill and knowledge to acquire in the process. When assessing a piece of jewellery, a valuer conducts many tests and procedures to determine its content.

The valuer must then research the costs of those materials, determine how long it would've taken to make that item and whether it was handmade or mass-produced. Only once all this has been decided, can a value can be assigned.

Phew! Not an easy job.

For the joy of all this knowledge and respectability, you get a registered valuer's number, must pay an annual fee, and undergo ongoing training, at your own expense, to get points to retain your registration number and remain registered.

With all this training, how does a pair of valuers assess a 9-carat stamped chain as gold-plated; butchering the links to test it?

Yes, this actually happened here in Australia. The well-known and trusted retailer that sold the 9-carat, yellow gold chain had its reputation as severely damaged as those links by people our industry trusts as "registered valuers".

I'm not a registered valuer but I am a goldsmith and I hand-make jewellery so I know how much time it takes to make an item and I buy the raw materials to make jewellery, so I know the costs.

As such, I was asked by the retailer - also a regular repair client of mine - to test the chain, which turned out to be 9-carat with a percentage of 37.88. I then had to remake the butchered links.

But was this really the valuers' fault that they made this incorrect assessment? This mistake could have been made by any other valuer. Why? Because there is no accurate way for valuers to test gold; the commonly-used acid test is not accurate. Indeed, I tested the piece using the same acid test that the other two valuers used, and I got a completely different result.

To complicate matters further, white gold items containing 20 per cent fine gold and who-knows-what-else are still coming in from Asia and the Middle East.

Once these items are rhodium-plated, it is hard to determine the caratage without deeply penetrating the item's surface. This makes our industry very susceptible to low-grade imports and a lowering of our industry reputation and standard.

Of course, this makes it very difficult for our valuers, whose job is already hard enough.

Assaying is the only way to accurately know the caratage of a piece, and this should be carried-out by an independent body, as it's done in Europe.

That's why it is imperative we have a governing body like an assay office that tests and hallmarks all products made here, and imported into Australia. And we use a hallmarking system similar to that of Europe, containing the maker's-mark, the assay office, the year of manufacture and the quality of the metal. Otherwise, where is our pride in the product we make? How can retailers be 100 per cent sure of what we're selling?

We cannot even get a believable hallmark on our gold products, yet diamonds now come with certificates and the certificate number laser-inscribed on the stone's girdle, a much more difficult task than stamping gold.

The chain mentioned earlier was an Australian-made production chain, stamped on the bale end with the manufacturer's mark and the caratage, but that is obviously not good enough for our valuers.

That mistake cost the retailer much grief. They had to pay me to test it properly, then fix the damage, and issue a letter of quality contradicting our valuers.

Moreover, it cost our entire industry a consumer that no longer trusts our trade. And this customer is not the only one.

Let's unite to protect our industry, and the consumer. Let's all embrace the Australian standards for gold, silver, platinum, palladium, rolled gold and plated jewellery as implemented by Standards Australia last year.

These new standards are designed to give the industry and the consumer a guide to composition and marking requirements for all jewellery made from, or plated in, precious metal. That is, we use a consistent mark to stamp products, our products are at minimum the quality that has been stamped, and all imported products are tested for quality.