Jewelry Guides

Jewelry Guides: Helping Consumers Understand What They’re Buying

The FTC’s Jewelry Guides are designed to help consumers get accurate information when they are shopping for gemstones and their laboratory-created and imitation substitutes; natural and cultured pearls and their imitations; products made from precious metals such as gold, silver, and platinum, precious metal alloys, and their imitations; and other types of jewelry products. The guides state that marketers must truthfully represent the type, kind, grade, quality, quantity, metallic content, size, weight, cut, color, character, treatment, substance, durability, serviceability, origin, price, value, preparation, production, manufacture, and distribution of their merchandise. In 2010, the FTC revised its Jewelry Guides in response to changes in the way the industry manufactures platinum. In recent years, some manufacturers have added base metals such as copper and cobalt to platinum jewelry sold to consumers. The revisions spell out how these new platinum/metal alloy products should be described and advertised.