Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Position of Law on Gold Jewelry Encased in Silver


Sat 18 Jun 2022 | 11:02 PM
walid Farouk

The first law regulating hallmarking of gold was issued during the reign of Khepe Abbas Helmy II in 1913.

That law specified five legal carats for gold, including 23.5, 21, 18, 15, 12, and four legal carats for silver, including 90, 80, 60, and 45.

But the law did not specify precious artifacts that are overlaid with each either gold or silver.

And the law did not specify its position on the method of hallmarking the encased jewelry, whether they are put on the market as silver or gold.

The law did not consider this problem, as a result of the non-circulation of encased jewelry in the Egyptian market at the beginning of the last century.

Saeed Imbabi, a member of the Gold Division of the Cairo Chamber of Commerce, said that the hallmarking law was considered to be amended during the sixties of the last century, as a result of the jewelry designer “Azza Fahmy” offering silverware covered with a layer of gold.

Every type of precious or non-precious metal is covered with adhesive foils of precious metal with a carat exceeding the lower carat, the original metal is hallmarked with the date, emblem, and carat, while the other metal is hallmarked with the emblem only.

He added, as well as the same rule applies to coated jewelry, which is every kind of precious or non-precious metal covered by electrical or chemical methods with a layer of precious metals.

He pointed out that the law stipulates that it is not permissible to sell dressed jewelry, offer them for sale, or possess them with the intention of selling unless they are tagged with the word “encased.” With the exception of jewelry whose size does not allow that, and items that are imported from abroad if they are tagged with this statement in a foreign language, it is sufficient In both cases, each piece of these items must be accompanied by a card bearing the mentioned word and the name of the shop owner in Arabic.

Translated by Ahmed Moamar