Palladium Wedding Ring
Until recently, palladium was only used in jewellery as an alloying element, notably to bleach gold’s natural yellow colour closer to that of platinum. Now this “new” metal has started to gain attention as a jewellery material in its own right.
With the popularity of palladium products, particularly palladium wedding rings, the UK assay offices have introduced hallmarking of palladium jewellery.
After only a couple of weeks as an “official” precious metal for jewellery, with its own legally recognised hallmark, palladium looks set to add to the continuing increase in demand for white precious metal jewellery.
The Palladium hallmark, which like all other UK hallmarks can only be struck in the UK by one of the four independent Assay Offices, came into force on July 22nd. Until 31st December 2009 this mark is voluntary and yet in the first few days till the end of July nearly 5,000 articles have been hallmarked by the four UK Assay Offices, Birmingham, Edinburgh, London and Sheffield (for more information visit the BJA website).
One of the advantages of palladium over other precious white metal has been the cost, but with the introduction of hallmarking and the huge increase in demand the price of palladium jewellery will undoubtedly rise through 2010.