The Breitling Watch Source Forums

When it comes to luxury watches, the prices are outright expensive, even if they're bang for your buck. With all this money people pay, especially for the deluxe watches (Patek, Vacheron, etc.), why have I never seen 24kt gold used in a watch? I am not sure, thus the question, but could it be because they need to add other metals to create rose and honey gold? Or maybe to strengthen the metal overall? All I ever see are watches that use 18kt gold, and, according to the internet, that's only 75% pure.

Rose gold, I suppose, can't be pure as they add brass (correct me if I'm wrong). White gold can't be pure either. But how about yellow gold? Yellow gold can be 24kt, so why not use 24kt to make the watch better or more exclusive? It would jack up the price but the demand for it would surely be higher, wouldn't it?

crasian1030

You wouldn't want a 24k gold watch.

Gold is an extremely soft metal and would be completely impractical as a watch case if it didn't have other metals to strengthen it.

Would 22kt or 20kt still be considered weak?

I am not a metallurgist, but I don't think you would want more than 75% gold for anything structural.

Ok, thanks for the answer.

Yes 22kt and 20kt gold is considered (and IS!) too soft for watchmaking. Even 18kt which the norm for gold watches is a pretty soft and scratch-happy metal. I'd never consider a gold watch for a daily wearer. Additionally when you polish gold, you are actually removing metal. Of course this happens with all metals, but with gold being so soft, you remove proportionally much more.

Platinum is a better bet as a precious metal because when you polish it, it doesn't actually polish too much metal away : the polishing more "moves the metal around" rather than removing it. However, IMO platinum is a little pointless as it's very expensive but looks like steel while still being more prone to scratches than steel.

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Driver8

Site Moderator

Thanks for saying this, my thoughts exactly about platinum. What's the point!