It is very hard for an average person to know whether a piece of jewelry is made of gold or not, especially because most homes across the world do not have gold testers or x-ray machines.
The good news is that there are several different things home owners/business owners can do without purchasing expensive equipment to ensure that what they have purchased or already own is in fact gold or not.
The easiest test around is the magnet test. If you have a magnet (earth magnets are the best) you can hover right over or even put the magnet right on the piece. If an item is made of gold it should not pull towards the magnet or lift up off the table it is on. You will want to be careful that there is nothing around the article that is getting tested that could attract to the magnet, a big mistake is when people use a folding table and there is a metal bar right under where you are testing. Now this test is not full proof but if you have a piece that says 14k on it and you test it with a magnet and it does not pull than most likely that piece is marked correctly and you have GOLD. Sometimes something pulls that is made of gold...hoop earrings are one of these. Often hoop earrings have a small metal wire inside that is not gold and does attract towards the magnet. In this case your gold hoop would stick to the magnet, not because of the gold content but because of the wire inside this. If you think this is the case and you don't care about the piece anymore, you can take out the wire and test again. Now there are times that an item does not stick to the magnet and has no markings on it but it is not gold. This happens when something is so heavily plated that the metal underneath is not picked up. This does happen so the next step if you are still wondering is the acid test.
The acid test focuses around the fact that gold is a metal which is resistant to change by corrosion, oxidation, or acid. With the acid test you rub the item on a black stone. This will leave an easily visable mark. If you want to keep the item, do this on the back side because it will damage the piece a bit. The mark is tested by applying nitric acid. If your item is not gold the mark will dissolve. If the item does not dissolve you can do one more test with it. Test the remaining mark with nitric acid and hydrochloric acid (aqua regia). If the mark is removed and dissolved, the item is genuine gold.
Another very simple test is to drop your piece of jewelry into a large container filled with water. Gold is heavy and should sink. If you item sinks that is a good sign it could be real gold. If the piece floats it is probably fake.
Most jewelry is stamped with a hallmark in which it tell the karat weight (14k, 22k etc.) However, if it doesn't have a mark, it doesn't always mean it isn't gold. Jewelry made before 1900 may not have any gold markings. The same goes for jewelry that was made by an independent jewelry designer or artist. It could also be that the mark was worn away or even cut or smoothed over as is the case sometimes when rings are re-sized.
These tests are not all full proof but should give you a good idea with what you are dealing with. If you want to know for sure, you can always go to a jeweler and they can use an x-ray machine or gold tester to tell you what your piece is made up of.
Good luck!
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