Pure Gold and Silver

Pure gold and pure silver are terms used to describe an item that is 100% pure.  Precious metals in bulk form is known as bullion, and is cast into ingots(bars or blocks) or minted into coins.  With respect to bullion, the level of purity varies from issue to issue.  A purity designation of “Three nines” (99.9%) is commonly accepted as the standard for the highest level of purity.  Another expression that designates the purity of gold is “pure gold” and for silver, “fine silver“.  In the adjacent image, you can see the terms used on the American Silver Eagle and the Canadian Silver Maple Leaf coins shown.

The purest mass-produced bullion coins are in the Canadian Maple Leaf series, which go up to 99.999% purity.   The Canadian Silver Maple leaf has a purity of 99.99% or .9999.  They are issued annually by the Canadian government and minted at the Royal Canadian Mint since 1988.   The Canadian Gold Maple Leaf is the official bullion gold coin of Canada and is also issued by the government of Canada and minted at the Royal Canadian Mint.  It is widely known as one of the purest regularly issued coins in the world, and has a designation of 99.99% (.9999) pure, with some special issues designated as 99.999% (.99999) pure.

A system that is very well-known for the designation of purity is the Karat or Carat System.  Karat is a variant of Carat and the purity is measured as 24 times the purity by mass.   The purity of gold using the Carat system is commonly and widely used with respect to fine gold and silver jewelry.  24 Carat gold is fine gold and is designated as 99.9% pure gold and not as 100% pure.

It is important to note that a achieving a 100% pure bullion is impossible, so pure gold and silver is usually demonstrated by the triple nines or better designation.