The One Where I Find Gold At The Thrift Store

I am not burying the lede with this title, guys. This is possibly my most literal blog title ever. I would usually aim for some surprise element to justify making you read umpteenth paragraphs of my rambling, but I decided to go for clickbait instead. If you’re still reading this, I guess it worked. Now, don’t run off; grab a snack and settle in for the full story of how I found gold at the thrift store.

I didn’t go looking for it. There are many things I actively look for in thrift stores, from the not very specific (plain black lace-up loafers) to the fairly specific (Hermes scarf, Diptique candle, Anthro mugs) to exact items (a pink felted wool Marni top I saw online once). Gold has never been on my list because I assumed that any donated gold, which must be pretty rare to begin with, would get price-jacked six ways to Sunday. I mean, I recently saw a DVF dress priced at $90. It wasn’t even a particularly nice dress. This is also the reason why I don’t bother looking at thrift store “showcases” – the locked displays where they put the “nice stuff”, i.e. the items that thrift store staff consider to be high value. (Which, more often than not, means crappy counterfeits of designer bags but I digress.) I tend to stick to the regular racks, and that is where, in my experience, the real treasures are to be found.

Since finding some Alex & Ani bracelets at Goodwill last month, I have been mildly obsessed with adding to my bangle collection. I now make a point of scouring the costume jewelry displays in each store I visit, in the hopes of finding more of these bracelets. So far, no dice … but it’s how I came across this necklace:

It was mixed in with a jumble of other necklaces, mostly trash, and it’s a small miracle than I even spotted it. What drew my attention to it in the first place was the chain. The links were perfectly formed and delicate – not what you might expect from junk jewelry. I looked for a dog tag thingie around the clasp that might indicate a brand name, but there was none. Because I was in a rush, and still had the rest of the store to go through, I decided to take the necklace with me and investigate more later. As it happens, I didn’t end up finding anything else of note on that trip. I was trying to decide whether it was worth going through the line-up at the till for a single item when I noticed a very small marking on the link next to the clasp. It was too small for me to see clearly what it said, but I was sufficiently intrigued to take a chance on the necklace and buy it. I figured the $3 spent on it would provide a learning opportunity if nothing else.

And, boy, it did.

The first thing I did when I got home was look for a magnifying glass. We didn’t have one, but lo! there’s an app for that. Such is the wonder of life in the 21st century. With the assistance of my iPhone, I deciphered the markings on the necklace; by then, I had realized there were actually 4 separate ones, inscribed on different places around the clasp. They were, in no particular order: AND, Italy, 585, and 14K.

AND was a non-starter for obvious reasons — you try googling that — and Italy was self-evident. The quickest research informed me that “585” is European shorthand for 14 karat gold, which checked out. However, it turns out that “14k Italy” is a not infrequently counterfeited mark; who knew? Mine appeared as two separate markings but I decided I couldn’t take them at face value. So I turned to science.

There are several ways to test gold at home, ranging from the impractical (no, I don’t have nitric acid handy, thanks) to the suspect – more on that in a moment. The first test I tried was the magnet test. Gold is not magnetic so it should not react to a magnet. One of my bracelets has a magnetic closure which is strong enough to attract other (metal) bangles to it; I tested the necklace against it and … nada. I also tested the necklace against the magnet in my Marc by Marc Jacobs bag, which seems to be industrial strength; again, no reaction. So far, so good.

According to Google, gold is quite dense. (This did not inspired confidence in me because the necklace was pretty light. With that said, my one other gold necklace – purchased at Tiffany, so I know it’s legit — is also fairly light so *shrug*) Gold is supposed to sink to the bottom of a glass full of water, while fake gold should float. I must have been doing something wrong because literally everything I dropped in the glass, sunk immediately. Hmm.

I was too chickens**t to try pouring vinegar on the necklace, a somewhat more practical alternative to the aforementioned nitric acid test. I also didn’t want to scratch it — it was in perfect condition, no dark spots or scratches, which was another point in favour of it being real gold — so I decided to try some more non-invasive testing.

The weirdest test of all was the foundation one. There’s a YouTube video, in case you’re interested. I followed the instructions and smeared a bit of foundation (don’t think it matters what kind) on my arm. After the foundation dries, you’re supposed to rub the gold item over the skin (where the foundation has been applied) – if it leaves a black mark, it’s real gold. If it’s fake, no mark. I thought this was nuts … until I saw the black mark on my arm. It was more like a dirt mark than pitch black, but you get the gist.

Things were looking good, but I was still not satisfied. After more desultory internet sleuthing, I eventually gave up and took the necklace to a mall jewelller for confirmation. They were kind enough not to charge me for checking it out, which is good because …

… never mind; trying to do a last minute fake-out in a blog post is quite beyond my narrative skills. The real lowdown? The necklace itself is 14k gold, while the horsebit pendant is gold plated. The gold plating is quite thick apparently, which is probably why it reacted to my home tests the way it did (or not). I didn’t want to shell out for a proper apppraisal, since I don’t plan to sell the necklace, but I think it’s safe to say I copped a good bargain for $3.

And that, my friends, is the story of how I found literal gold at the thrift store.