Gold Karat Stamps Explained: 585, 750, 916 and What They Mean

Every piece of gold jewelry carries a tiny confession, stamped somewhere discreet: exactly how much gold it actually contains. Learn to read those stamps and you can value a jewelry box in minutes — and just as importantly, spot the pieces that only look like gold before you waste a trip to a buyer.

Grab a magnifying glass or zoom in with your phone camera. Stamps hide on clasps, inside ring bands, on earring posts, and on the underside of pendants.

The two stamp systems: karat and fineness

American jewelry traditionally uses karat stamps (10k, 14k, 18k), while European and Asian jewelry uses fineness numbers — purity expressed in parts per thousand. They describe the same thing:

So a bracelet stamped 750 is 18k gold; a ring stamped 585 is 14k. Nothing exotic — just two languages for the same fact. You may also see KP after a karat (like 14KP): it means karat plumb, an older marking asserting the purity is exact rather than rounded. It does not mean plated.

Purity is what drives value: with gold at $4,412.89/ozt (updated Aug 11, 2026), an 18k gram is worth roughly 29% more than a 14k gram. Check today’s exact 14k gold price per gram and you can scale to any karat from there — or just let the calculator do it:

The stamps that mean “not really gold”

This is the list that saves you embarrassment at the buying counter. All of these mean a thin decorative gold layer over base metal, with essentially zero melt value:

• GP — gold plated
• GEP — gold electroplated
• HGE — heavy gold electroplate (“heavy” is generous; it’s still microns thick)
• RGP — rolled gold plate
• Gold tone / gold finish — not even a plating claim

One grade above worthless: GF, gold filled, usually stamped as a fraction like 1/20 14k GF. That fraction is literal — the piece is 1/20th (5%) 14k gold by weight, mechanically bonded to brass. Gold-filled items from large estates can add up to something at a refiner, but individually they’re worth a small fraction of solid karat gold, and many buyers won’t take them at all.

And a cross-metal trap: 925 stamped on gold-colored jewelry means sterling silver underneath — vermeil. It has silver melt value (silver currently trades at $65.56/ozt (updated Aug 11, 2026)), which is real but far below what the color implies.

Country and maker marks

Alongside purity you’ll often find other tiny marks:

• Maker’s marks — initials or logos identifying the manufacturer. Occasionally these matter enormously: a signed piece from a major house (Cartier, Tiffany, Van Cleef) can be worth multiples of melt value to a jewelry buyer, so identify maker’s marks before scrapping anything elegant.
• British hallmarks — a row of small pictorial stamps (an anchor, a leopard’s head, a crown or orb) indicating the assay office and year. British-hallmarked gold also carries the fineness number.
• Italy / 585 Italy — Italian chains are extremely common in the US; the country mark is routine, and the fineness number beside it is what counts.

When there’s no stamp at all

Stamps wear away on old rings, and antique or handmade pieces sometimes never had them. No stamp doesn’t mean no gold — it means test before you decide. Start with a magnet (gold is never magnetic; attraction means base metal, though non-attraction proves nothing by itself), then confirm with an acid test kit or ask a jeweler for an XRF reading, which most will do free hoping to make an offer. Our guide on how to tell if gold is real walks through every at-home test in order of reliability.

From stamp to dollar figure

Once the stamp gives you purity, the rest is a two-step: weigh the piece in grams (a pocket scale — here’s exactly how to weigh gold at home) and multiply through the current price. That’s the entire skill of valuing gold: read the stamp, weigh the metal, check what your gold is worth against live prices, and know that a fair offer lands at 70–90% of that melt figure. The stamp was the hard part, and it was never hard.