Breakdown is the amount of gold in the alloy from which the jewelry is made. In its pure form, this precious metal is too soft and therefore unsuitable for the manufacture of jewelry for frequent everyday use. To give it the necessary strength, they make alloys with other metals, among which copper and silver are most often used. Quite often, other metals are added to gold to create various shades (for example, white or red) and the properties of alloys. The amount of gold contained in such alloys indicates breakdown. In Soviet times, the most common was 583 gold samples.
Earlier, the content of gold in precious products was determined in carats, while it was assumed that 100% gold corresponded to 24 carats, and the presence of any impurities already reduced the number of carats depending on the amount of added impurities. This system still exists in the UK, USA and some other countries. In the Russian Empire, and subsequently until 1927 in the Soviet Union, samples of precious metals were determined using a slide valve system, in which the alloy was divided into 96 parts, rather than 24.
Then in the USSR and in many countries began to use a more accurate metric system. It indicated the content of the number of parts of pure precious metal in 1000 parts of the alloy. It is by the number of such parts that the fineness of gold is determined, which is placed on the jewelry. According to such a system, it turns out that gold in 14 carats corresponds to 583 gold samples, in 18 carats - 750 samples and so on. This explains the origin of the “non-circular” values of metric samples already familiar to us. When comparing these two systems, an ambiguous definition of absolutely pure gold is obtained. Formally, the 1000th sample should correspond to 24 carat gold, but in practice it is impossible to obtain such gold and therefore it is more often called “pure” gold of 999 samples (three nines), and sometimes even pure 24 carat gold is called the corresponding 990 sample.
All gold alloys used in jewelry manufacturing are assigned the appropriate grade. Earlier in the USSR there were 958, 750, 585, 583 and 375 samples. At the same time, 583 gold samples were most widely used. The alloys of this sample may have a different color depending on the amount of non-ferrous metals contained in them. For example, if an alloy contains 58.3 parts of gold, 5.7 parts of copper and 36 parts of silver, then it has a green tint, it has a pink tint with a content of 23.4 parts of copper and 18.3 parts of silver, and with a content of 33 , 4 parts of copper and 8.3 parts of silver gets an already reddish tint.
To obtain white gold, which is widely used in the manufacture of jewelry with diamonds, 583 gold samples were also used. It consisted of copper 16 parts, silver 23.7-28.7 parts, zinc 8.7 parts, as well as 13-18 parts of nickel or palladium. Subsequently, in all countries of the former Soviet Union, 583 gold samples were replaced by 585 samples, and gold with 750 samples began to gain popularity. It should be noted that the color of gold is not always associated with its breakdown. With the same sample, it can have both red and yellow, white, green and even brown or black.
The earlier traditional opinion about the dependence of the color of gold on its sample was formed during the USSR, when the jewelry industry produced gold with the same color for each sample: the 750th - yellow, the 583rd - red and the 375th - pink. But now various ligatures are used for jewelry production, and therefore the color of gold products may not depend on the amount of precious metal contained in them, and the same sample should have both white and black color.