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Trademarks and content stamps
Would anyone know when the law was passed that the metal content had
to be stamped on each piece of jewelry made ? 20's ? 30's ? 40's? please respond to Thanks Frank |
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#2
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On Wed, 09 Jul 2003 22:10:30 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry Mars
wrote: Would anyone know when the law was passed that the metal content had to be stamped on each piece of jewelry made ? 20's ? 30's ? 40's? please respond to Thanks Frank If, as your email address suggests, you're looking for Canadian law, then I can't help you. But in the U.S., the first one I have quotes from is from 1906. There may have been earlier acts that affected this as well, the the 1906 law (passed in 1907) is sometimes called the original U.S. stamping Act. That law stated that if you stamp a piece of jewelery gold that is made of gold, then you also have to stamp it with the karat as well. The law specified other stuff too, like tolerances. An amendment to it in 1962 required that anything stamped to indicate gold or silver content had to also have a tradmark, or the name of the firm or person responsible for the claim. In November 1970, an ammendment was added which allowed manufacturers and associations to take unscrupulous violators of the laws to courts, but the stamping requirements remained the same until 1976, when what I think is the last major revision of the U.S. stamping law that was passed. It reduces the tolerances for indicated karat such that items could not assay more than .003 parts per thousand less than marked, or if the item contains solder, it could not, if assayed as a whole, be less than .007 parts per thousand of the marked karat. The previous law had allowed a full half karat tolerance. The 1976 law gave manufacturers five years to comply, allowing already manufactured goods to be sold off with the old standards. The result was the emergence of stamps that added the letter P, indicating "plumb", to the kt mark, to distinguish the new alloys from the old. Without the P, 14K would actually be 13.5K, while with it, it was pretty much plumb 14K. The P in the stamps is no longer in such common usage, since about the only old 13.5 kt stuff floating around is clearly not new merchandise any more. Note that the law does NOT actually require a karat stamp at all. It is legal to sell jewelery with no stamps whatsoever, so long as you're also not representing it as gold. It only needs to be karat stamped if you're representing it as such. Even then, it's legal to mark it with means other than an actual stamp, such as tags, if that's appropriate to the item. The law simply states that if you mark it gold, you have to also indicate the quality, and not diviate lower than that standard by the stated tolerances, and also that if you mark it gold or silver, then you also have to mark it with a trademark or proper identifier, and the trademark stamps and quality stamps must be by similar means (both stamps, for example) and equally visible.. Also, though I'm not certain of this, these are U.S. federal laws. Usually, such laws apply only when items are being sold in interstate commerce. I might be wrong about this, but I suspect that an individual artist selling only locally, not shipping across state lines, etc, might be able to escape presecution if they violated such laws, since the FTC usually can only become involved if interstate commerce is involved. Of course, individual states may well also have such laws, but this would vary state by state. the above info is taken from the closest book I have at hand with that info, which happens to be one of Murrey Bovin's fine books. This one is a 1977 edition, so if there are mre recent additions to the laws, i don't have the exact quotes/dates in front of me. But frankly, I don't recall any more recent additions. peter |
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Would anyone know when the law was passed that the metal content had to be stamped on each piece of jewelry made ? 20's ? 30's ? 40's? please respond to Thanks Frank But in the U.S., the first one I have quotes from is from 1906. There may have been earlier acts that affected this as well, the the 1906 law (passed in 1907) is sometimes called the original U.S. stamping Act. That law stated that if you stamp a piece of jewelery gold that is made of gold, then you also have to stamp it with the karat as well. The law specified other stuff too, like tolerances. This answers a question I was going to post, but hadn't got around to yet. I repaired a ring, obviously quite old, that was stamped "solid gold" with no karat designation. It must have been made before 1906. On all the thousands of rings that have passed through my hands, I had never seen this stamp. Thanks! Marggi |
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