North America’s largest annual jewelry trade event is celebrating its 30th anniversary in person this year. The JCK Show, scheduled for June 10-13, 2022, in Las Vegas is where leading jewelry professionals show up to discover the latest in jewelry design, technology, and trends. This is a trade event for qualified jewelry industry professionals only; none of the general public can stop by to pick up a few baubles, bangles, and beads.
According to the Quick Facts on their show website, they are expecting over 16,000 domestic and international independent jewelry retailers, jewelry wholesalers, online/internet jewelry retailers, specialty gift/boutiques, designers, chain/mass merchants, and department store/catalog retailers.
The American Gem Trade Association (AGTA) will be back on the show floor within the GEMS Pavilion as well, which makes sense since jewelers are usually in the market to stock their stores with both gems and precious metals.
Speaking of precious metals, we will be at Booth #54065 demonstrating the latest technology that can identify precious and other metals and alloys. To accurately assess if a piece of jewelry is made of gold, silver, platinum, or palladium (or some other material), jewelers should utilize X-ray Fluorescence technology — which is a fast, simple, nondestructive solution for analyzing metals and alloys, and even determine the presence and concentration of other trace, alloying elements.
With instruments based on x-ray fluorescence (XRF) technology, jewelers can identify non-standard, under-karat & counterfeit gold with fire assay-comparable accuracy. The instruments can even help identify if 14kt White gold has been alloyed to look like platinum, or if something has been gold-plated over less valuable metals.
The old low-tech scratch and acid test that many retailers use to test gold is not very accurate and is potentially dangerous. When you use acid to verify the gold content, you have to scratch the jewelry on a stone to get flakes or a streak of gold that can be tested. That means, you are rubbing off some of the material, then adding a few drops of corrosive acid on the gold streak — which could destroy the design or value of the piece as well as burn your fingers (or rugs if the liquid is spilled).
With the fluctuation of gold prices, you would want the most accurate measurements to value the jewelry. Most acid kits contain materials to test 10k, 14k, 18k, and 22k gold. The acid rounds to the nearest testing solution; it can’t tell you if it’s 13K or 18.5K. Also, certain types of stainless steel sometimes pass the stone test for 18 karat gold. There are even precious metal analyzers that can sit on a jewelry counter so the customer can safely watch the analysis in process and be confident in the results.
Las Vegas is known for its glitter and glamour but JCK kicks it up a notch. We hope to see you there, but if you can’t make it, follow the show twitter feed at #JCKLasVegas or watch our webinar Not All That Glitters Is Gold to learn how to improve the bottom line of your jewelry business by doing the correct chemical analysis using portable XRF technology.
SHOW DETAILS
JCK Las Vegas 2022
June 10-13, 2022
Booth # 54065
Venetian Expo & Convention Center
201 Sands Avenue
Las Vegas, NV 89169
#JCKLasVegas or #JCKLasVegas2020
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