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Mimi & Ko Jewels are made with a variety of materials and plating processes. Depending on your budget, you will find all the best jewels to fill your needs.

❥Sterling silver is an alloy of pure silver containing 92.5% (925 stamp) by weight of silver and 7.5% by weight of other metals, usually copper. Pure silver is a soft metal which needs a mix of other metals to strengthen it. The sterling silver standard has a minimum millesimal fineness of 925.

❥Vermeil gold is a specific kind of gold plating. The process of creating a vermeil piece of jewelry involves coating sterling silver 925 base with a thin layer of real gold that is at least 10 karats and 2.5 microns thick.


❥Gold filled (G/F) is composed of a 14k solid layer of real gold (5% gold) mechanically bonded to a base metal (brass or copper).
 1/20th of the weight is real gold and has more real gold than “Gold Plated” Jewelry.  With proper care, it is durable and tarnish free as solid gold. G/F is one of the most valuable and tarnish resistant processes for creating gold jewelry. If properly cared for, your G/F jewelry can last for a lifetime and is an economical alternative to solid gold.

 Solid Gold Jewelry is a piece of jewelry made entirely of gold. It’s the most expensive and durable among the other types of fine gold jewelry. Solid gold items can be either 10K, 14K, 18K, or 24K dipped on base metals such as iron, nickel, copper, brass and titanium. Karats (K) are percentages of actual gold in the jewelry piece. Fine jewelry from European manufacturers use a different numbering system than karats such as 417, 585, 750 and 999 for pure gold. These numbers are referred to as the "fineness" and they represent the percentages of gold content in the alloy.

Solid Gold %

10k = 41.7% gold
14k= 58.30% gold
18k= 75% gold
22k= 91.7% gold
24k= 100% gold 
 

❥Gold plating is a process where a thin layer of real gold (0.05% gold) is bonded onto a base metal after it is dipped in a thin layer of high-quality nickel. This is to protect the gold layer from any being impacted by the base metal.  Gold plating can range in thickness between .17 to 2.5 microns. Plating with a thickness of around .17 is called gold electroplated or gold wash/flashed.  This process was invented by an Italian chemist, Luigi Brugnatelli in 1805, the first person to plate a thin coat of gold onto silver. 

❥Rhodium is a fine metal, just like gold or platinum, and is a member of the platinum family of metals. It has a bright, silvery-white appearance and is naturally corrosion resistant. While rhodium is both too expensive and too brittle to make jewelry out of, it makes an excellent plating material. Rhodium is very rare as it is never found as a single mineral hence is more expensive than gold,silver and platinum.  It is cultivated in very small quantities within nickel and platinum ores. Its purity also makes it hypoallergenic.