I have been able to get out a couple of times during the last couple of weeks and Saturday was nice so Doug came down and we hit the ....muddy fields. In those hunts I got 5 wheats 1909,1911, 1928, 19? and a 1949-S and a gold ring! It is the thinnest gold ring I have seen. Marked P 10k that had me puzzled for a bit. I knew it was not plated because I could see where it was a bit worn and no base metal showed. Did some checking and I found that the P designation along with a kt marking signifies Plumb gold is defined as:
Before 1981 jewelry manufacturers were allowed to be about ½ carat off compared to the mark they placed in jewelry. What this meant was a ring stamped 14k could actually be 13 ½ k or up to 14 1/2k. Of course, manufacturers were easily able to make jewelry which was 13 ½ k pretty consistently and doing that saved them gold.
In 1976 a law was passed to require jewelry makers to be much closer in gold content to what the karat stamp said. Gold had to be within a very close tolerance of 0.003(three one thousandths) of the karat mark on the jewelry. The law did not go into effect until 1981.
In the meantime, jewelers made efforts to change to the new quality control. There was one problem: How would customers know which ring was 13 ½ karat ( made before the law was effective) and jewelry made to the new standard? Put two rings side by side and both would be marked 14k, for instance. One would be the older 13 ½ karat version and the other would be the actual 14k version! Who could tell the difference? Manufacturers did not want confusion with customers and also wanted to promote jewelry made to the higher standards and looked for a way to distinguish the older jewelry from the newer.
The answer was a mark of a P, or the word plumb stamped along side the karat mark. When customers saw the p and it was explained what it meant, they knew this jewelry met the new standards for accurate marking of the karat.
Back then much jewelry on the market was made before all manufacturers converted to the new plumb standard and the P or plumb mark was used in new jewelry. A lot of time has passed since 1981 and jewelers have dropped the P from the stamping. Today, the 14k mark may be taken to mean just what it says, on the mark and really 14k.
Saturday did not bring us a lot of finds but we were able to find a house site that had eluded me for awhile but it was way too muddy to hunt, went to another field that has been good to us in the past but nothing found there went across the road to check another site I had found last year but the maps showed nothing there but there is a lot of brick and glass and modern trash....tons of modern trash....but Doug did manage a super crusty Large Cent.
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one of the first gold rings that I found was 10K P and I just took for granted the P was for plating til I found out different years later.
on the gold ring and the wheat's, especially that 1909.
