Why Does Everyone Hate 10K Gold Jewelry? | 5 Reasons Why You Should Love IT!

Is it true what everyone says about 10 Karat gold? Should I throw it away? Should I go to the pawn store and sell it right now? Enlighten me.

Well, guess what? I am the 10 Karat Messiah! So why does everyone hate 10K? Let's talk about the top five reasons why 10K gets a bad rap—and if any of these reasons are actually true.

Reason number one: 10K has no resale value. People are never going to buy it from you. You're going to go down to a jewelry store and nobody's going to give you anything. It is real, real F-that couldn't be further from the truth! 10 karat has 41.7% gold in the mix. In other words, it's a lot more alloy than it is fine gold; however, there is still fine gold inside, which means that no matter what, no matter where in the world you go, 10K is worth 41.7% of the ounce value trading at the time you walk into that store. That is a fact!

Are there other countries out there that may not necessarily have so much demand for it? Yes! Can you go into a jewelry store and maybe they just give you the value of it instead of buying it as a chain? That can always be the case. However, the fact still remains that people are always going to buy it as a meltdown value metal. So yes, it has a resale value! Yes, there's a demand for it! And yes, you could still make money on 10 karat jewelry.

Who knew? People who bought their jewelry back in the early '90s when the ounce was at $1,100-$800 an ounce—and now we're selling it at today's market, which is over $22,000—actually made money on 10 karat. Again, think about it in percentages: It still has a percentage of gold, and if that goes up then your money goes up. So stop saying 10 karat doesn't have a resale value—yes, it does! Because as long as it has fine gold in it, it will sell anywhere.

Myth number two: 10 karat tarnishes. Tarnish is a word that you use primarily with silver, because silver gets watered down to 925 or 950 with either copper or different other kinds of alloys. Those alloys react to the oxygen in the air, and they get sulfur, and that begins to tarnish the actual jewelry.

10 karat does not tarnish! Gold is a very, very fine and beautiful metal, and it has anti-corrosion properties just like rhodium or palladium does. Therefore, when you add it to any sort of mix, it won't have any sort of tarnishing. Feel free to jump on that jet ski! Feel free to jump in that pool water—it's not going to turn black. It's not going to turn ugly. It's perfectly fine!

Are there one-off cases, as there always are? And there's going to be people out there that say, "Gus, I had a 10K chain and it became corrosive." That's a one-off of maybe a million 10 karat pieces out there, because the alloy that they mixed had some silver, had something that was corrosive. Any point—but the reality is 99.9999% of the time you're not going to have any issues.

So when you're sweating, dancing with that big girl in Miami 'cause you got too banged up off of shots, know your sweat won't corrode any of your pieces.

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Myth number three: The color, as compared to 14 and 18 karat, is completely off. This one is true, kind of, because as a jeweler, the mix is dependent on whatever metals I decide to put on there. Say for instance, in a vacuum, we're going to use the same gold chain—one of them is going to be 10 karat; one of them is going to be 14 karat. If I decide to make both those colors match exactly, I can add more brownish, darker tones to this alloy of the 10 karat and make them almost identical.

However, if I did use the exact same alloy, technically the 14k would be slightly darker, but the variation is barely visible to the naked eye. So yes, there is a difference; however, if you ultimately want your 10 karat to look exactly like 14 karat, you could do it very easily. Same thing goes with rose gold or white gold—those differences are even less noticeable.

Also, while I'm at it—side note: No gold is supposed to look like anything! I love it when people say, "Oh my 18 karat doesn't look like 18 karat." 18 karat could look like anything I want it to look like! If I had a bunch of white metals in your 18 karat and then throw in some yellow ones, it's going to look like a metallic yellow. You can manipulate whatever the karat appearance you wanted to look.

Stop saying things are supposed to look like something, because it's just what you're used to seeing from the bigger manufacturers like Italy and Turkey that use the same alloys.

We interrupt this video for a quick update on the short that I posted asking what karat those chains were: The truth is they're all the exact same thing! It is what I wanted to look like. Stop saying things look "10 karat," "14 karat"—you're wrong! It's all in the alloy. Let's go with the video!

Myth number four: 14 karat is not real gold. Yes it is, of course it is! Now maybe there are people out there that do visit our website from the Middle East, from China, from Southern Asia—they only use 18 karat, 22 karat or 23 karat and above. Maybe some of these places only use pure gold culturally. You may think that that is only gold because that's what you use in your country, but there is a huge, huge market for 10 karat gold here in the US and in a lot of places in the world, including Australia where even 9 karat is popular.

There's still 41% fine gold in the mix, and it's just jewelry. If somebody wants to wear a 10 karat chain and you only wear 22 karat chain, who cares? Wear what you like, people! But it is real gold. Stop saying it's not because if it wasn't, then there is a huge industry of commercial plants and fabrication shops that only create 10 karat gold. So yeah, I'd say it's pretty real!

Final one, and this is the one that I find the most hilarious: is 10 karat is not durable. And I can't tell you how much it actually is, and it also shines longer than any other karat out there. Why? Because of course you are putting alloys of fine metals in the mix that will retain shine and retain durability.

10 karat is the hardest karat to damage, to dent, because like many of you guys are going to point out in the very comment section right here, it is more metal than it is gold. And because actual gold is so incredibly soft, when you add other alloys into it what you're doing is strengthening it. Now the difference is minimal, but there is a slight difference in 10 karat as far as durability goes. Feel free to bang it up—it's going to dent less. It's going to retain its shine. It's going to be completely fine.

So don't even get me started on 22 karat chains, because of that you actually do have to take care of.

To sum it up, guys, the reality of what I want to portray here is the fact that 10 karat, 14 karat, 18 karat and 22 are just a matter of preference. There are a lot of lies as to why people bash other karats because in their culture it means that it's not real gold, it's not respected or revered just as much as 22 karat. And ultimately what it boils down to is kind of like a dick measuring contest.

You wearing only 22 karat or 18 karat because there's more finer gold and it's more expensive is a way of downplaying anything that's not that same price point. It's wrong, and to be honest with you, it just needs to stop. There are a lot of people that don't necessarily want to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a 22 karat chain just because "Oh, this is considered real gold."

The hell with what you consider real gold! Wear what you want! Enough regurgitating these crazy stupid lies that really have no basis for it. And if you do want any sort of 10 karat jewelry, visit gusvillejewelry.com