Buying Gold bars depends upon grading and confidence in authenticity.
When buying Gold bars available at APMEX, you can be assured of quality, purity and authenticity. Many 1 gram Gold bullion bars come with a card that lists the weight, serial number and guaranteed purity. To determine the purity of Gold bars in ancient times, the Egyptians developed a method called fire assaying around 1500 B.C., in which they took a small sample of the Gold that needed authentication and heated it in a crucible with a sample of lead. Only Gold, like that found in a 1 gram Gold bar, and Silver would remain, as the lead and other base metals would absorb into the crucible. The Silver and Gold would be separated, and the remaining Gold would be weighed and compared to the pre-firing weight.
When you buy Gold bars how does it compare to your Gold jewelry?
When you buy a 1 gram Gold bar, it often contains 1 gram of .9999 fine Gold (or, another way to express this is 999.9 parts of Gold per thousand parts of metal). Gold bars express the Gold content in a very different way than Gold jewelry, which uses karats, derived from the Arabic and Greek words meaning fruit of the carob tree, which had seeds used to balance scales belonging to merchants. A 1 gram Gold bar of .9999 fine Gold is equivalent to 24 karats of Gold in jewelry. Since there are 24 karats, pure Gold can be listed as 24k. When buying Gold bars, it can be helpful to have a reference point in the jewelry you are used to buying: Other popular measures are 14k Gold which equals .585 fine Gold, or 16k Gold which is used for dental Gold and has a purity of .667 fine Gold.