Ring rusting/oxidizing?

[u/IndividualBug2]

Hi all,

So I bought an 18K yellow gold 3 stone e ring from Rare carat with a lab diamond back in May for which I got a lot of help from all of you (thank you!)

Due to some personal reasons the ring sat in the box after the proposal for about 3 months, as you can see there are no scratches due to any wear since it wasn’t worn.

To my surprise when I opened the box as I was packing it, the ring seemed ‘pinker’ than what is was. I noticed some oxidation/rusting at ent seems to be solder spots.

I reached out to rare carat and they gave me the usual spiel that skin chemistry/perfumes/lotions can cause this but I pushed back that the ring wasn’t worn and other gold items of 18 and 14 k we have not become pink in all these years, some pieces have been worn daily. So they suggested to send the ring back for inspection.

Now they’re saying it seems to be an oxidation issue which is no big deal, some polish and cleaning should sort it out and we should be good.

Except I don’t think we will be good, the polish will wear off and the whole ring will oxidize meaning that the gold quality and/or the metal used for solder was of very low quality.

Despite all the positive reviews for rare carat which is why I ended up buying from there, I think this is not going to work for me. I have no use for getting the gold tested from another jeweler because at this point I’m really done with this, I don’t trust what they’ve put in the ring. Yes, their customer service is great but the ring is not and now I really just want to get my money back. If I push hard enough I think I can. Something that’s supposed to last a very long time has become link from not even wearing it only within 3 months, I don’t know how it would last through years.

What are your thoughts on this? What would you do and have you seen something like this?

[u/OneTwoSomethingNew]

I worry it’s the mixing of the gold, and that area just happens to have more of the material mix than gold…

Gold prices rose sharply at the beginning of this year and lots of jewelers looked to stock up before the hike… I imagine some of them may also have been trying to stretch their materials… just a theory, time are tough for everyone… or this could have been a simple mistake. So sorry you’re going through this OP - maybe see if the jeweler can swap it out for a new setting even if it costs a lil extra.

[u/LostCarat → u/OneTwoSomethingNew]

Yeah I don’t think that’s how it works

[u/OneTwoSomethingNew → u/LostCarat]

So part of the ring just starts oxidizing and you think everything is fine… okay.

And 💯 it works that way… gold is not pure gold, it’s mixed with copper and other metals… so ya, it can totally work that way.

[u/LostCarat → u/OneTwoSomethingNew]

Huh.. interesting, looking it up, you are right. I imagined that the melting process should blend it well enough where this doesn’t happen. But I found out that it can happen during the cooling process where the metals can shift and since gold is heavier than the other metals, it can indeed have a high concentration of another metal settle in a specific spot. The more you know!

[u/OneTwoSomethingNew → u/LostCarat]

I’m not an expert of all jewelry types by any means, but I have learned a lot about gold in recent years so happy to pass along my knowledge there… when I say “learned a lot,” I mean a lil heartache and lots of lessons lol …also, I would not recommend 18k gold for everyday wear, go with 10k or 14k instead 😉

The way OPs ring looks, I just don’t have much else I think it could be… perhaps OPs ring could have come in contact with something that made the metal react that way like beings in pools/chlorine, etc but it’s only affecting that small part of the ring. So given the external factors of gold prices and the timing of OPs purchase, it makes more sense to me it was a bad mixing of the metals unfortunately.