Gold Leaf flake

[WildernessAU]

We all have seen vials of gold leaf flake for sale, and know that there is almost no weight to this gold leaf flake.....so it is worth very little.
I have found afew web sites that claim to have 22k-24k gold leaf flake for sale. You can buy around 3 troy ounces of this gold leaf flake for $400.....this absolutely cant be true.
Do you guys think that this "22k gold leaf flake" just has a very low karat value or what?
Any thoughts? Thanks

 

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[DigginThePast]

Something can't be right.

A gram of gold can make about 140 of those gold leaf sheets (roughly 3"x3"). It would take over 4,000 sheets to make just one ounce. It would cost over $4,500 per ounce buying this way (from a typical gold leaf seller).

Why would someone sell so cheap?

 

[jeff of pa]

We all have seen vials of gold leaf flake for sale, and know that there is almost no weight to this gold leaf flake.....so it is worth very little.
I have found afew web sites that claim to have 22k-24k gold leaf flake for sale. You can buy around 3 troy ounces of this gold leaf flake for $400.....this absolutely cant be true.
Do you guys think that this "22k gold leaf flake" just has a very low karat value or what?
Any thoughts? Thanks

Not sure, I Would think it could be Melted down
to make at least 2.5 troy ounces of pure gold
But Maybe it can't.

 

[shaun7]

I worked on a large gilding project a few years back. Whilst burnishing the gold leaf the flakes fly everywhere so I held a
box under it every time. The bloke I was working for thought I was nuts

Anyway, at the end of the job John sent the box of flakes to the gold leaf suppliers and they melted all the flakes down
and turned it into a nugget. It weighs just over 13 grams

He had a bit of a hard time handing it over

 

[goldsilverpro]

There's no free lunch, especially when it comes to precious metals. A couple of years ago, when the goldrefiningforum.com first started, there were many members who bought those vials (or, in some cases, 100 gram boxes) on Ebay and expected big profits. In every case that I can remember, the flake was proven to be either a copper alloy leaf totally void of gold or a copper alloy flake salted with traces of real gold leaf (so the seller could claim it contained some gold). If you search on the above-mentioned forum, you will find many threads discussing that problem.

I especially remember one guy on Ebay selling the flake in 100 gram boxes. On the photo of the box, you could see that the seller had used a marker to make the label unreadable. I found the website where the seller was buying his flake from. There, I found an identical photo of the box that the Ebay seller was using. The difference was that you read the label, which said, "Faux gold flake", or something to that extent.

At one point, I considered buying vials of flake from a lot of the Ebay sellers and then assaying them for gold content. I am setup to do this since I own a fully equipped commercial fire assay laboratory. I would then write up the results, whether good or bad, in their feedback.

I hadn't looked at the Ebay entries for "gold flake" for awhile. I just did this and things have changed somewhat. Some sound legit, especially those that are selling placer gold flake from mining or prospecting operations. Some are claiming to sell acid tested 24K gold leaf flake. They may also be legit, although I would be wary of these.

Just remember that there are only 2 metallic elements (and their alloys) that have a color other than white or gray - these are copper and gold. Copper and most of it's common alloys will dissolve in nitric acid but gold won't. Therefore, you can dissolve out the copper with nitric and what remains will be essentially gold. You can easily test very small quantities using a little 10K gold testing acid, which is usually nitric acid diluted with a little distilled water. The testing acid is available in small bottles for usually $2 - $3. You can buy it on Ebay or from a local jewelry supply company, if you're in a city. If the flake totally dissolves and forms a blue solution, there was zero gold present.

May the buyer beware.