Deciphering Chinese gold hallmarks

February 7, 2017 9:12 AM

I have a gold ring that was given to my mother in the 1970s by my grandmother living in Hong Kong. The ring was originally set with a pearl and has two hallmark stamps on the inside. Can anyone help decipher them for me? I'm interested in the gold purity, not so much the maker.

I've taken pictures of the two stamps, linked below. From my research, I believe the second link may be the character for "gold" in the character on the bottom.

http://imgur.com/muKeY7K
http://imgur.com/WQLXuof

posted by exquisite_deluxe to Writing & Language (3 answers total)

In the first photo it says 永生 (yong sheng in Mandarin) which means eternal life or immortality.

In the second photo I agree that the bottom character is 金 (gold), but I can't tell if the thing above it is even a character.
posted by duoshao at 9:28 AM on February 7, 2017

1st character in the second photo could be 美 (beautiful). Could also be 黄 (yellow), as in 黄金 (full word for "gold").
posted by chainsofreedom at 10:41 AM on February 7, 2017

A jeweler can take a rubbing and do a test to measure the gold content. It is not very destructive to do this, because it takes hardly any gold to do the test.
posted by fritley at 6:48 PM on February 7, 2017 [2 favorites]