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Does plated white gold wear off?


William Campbell

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If it's plated then yes it does have a problem of wearing off over time, how long is a factor of several things like thickness of plating, your skin chemistry, how rough you treat the item etc. Also there is no such thing as white gold plating. White gold is an alloy of gold with a high nickel content that is then rhodium plated for a high luster.

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Ok from personal experience,it's no from me. I have a FG datejust from Joshua since 2006 and the gold plating is just fine. Caveat here is that the watch does not get a lot of wrist time. 

You will need to polish it though because it does dull over time. i just use toothpaste to polish it  ;)

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White gold has a slightly different problem as yellow gold: it gets dingy.

 

As jpz said, a lot of white gold is a gold-nickel alloy with a rhodium plate, which will wear off and make the whole thing appear slightly dingy (and eventually, yellow)  Better white gold is alloyed with palladium and isn't reliant on the rhodium plating.

 

Typically white-gold plated reps are just nickel and rhodium plated.  No gold used. 

 

The good thing is, though, that a rhodium plate isn't that expensive.  I had a steel DJ rep with a fluted bezel.  Fluted bezels are always precious metals, so I had the steel rep bezel plated with rhodium, so it looked just like white gold when I re-installed it.

Edited by atomic_doug
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