Testing gold plated pins

[Anonymous]

I had recently sold some gold plated pins on Ebay. A few days later, the guy who bought them e-mailed me and said that none of the pins tested positive for gold. I am just wondering if there is a way to test the pins for gold. Sounds kinda fishy to me. If I can do it, I'll try to attach some pics of the pins I sold. Can you tell by looking at these if they contain gold?

 

[lazersteve]

Welcome to the forum. The pins look to contain gold to me.

Do you have muriatic acid, bleach, an tin metal on hand?

If yes:

Do this outdoors.

Dissolving

1. Take one pin and place it in a pyrex dish.
2. Cover it with a 5mL (1 tsp) of HCl
3. Add in a few drops of bleach (the solution will fizz and change color).
4. You should see the gold layer on the pin start to dissolve after 1-5 minutes.
5. Pull the pin out when the solution is yellow, don't wait until it is green.

Testing

1. Place 1 teaspoon of HCl in a fresh pyrex glass.
2. Add in 0.25 grams of tin powder.
3. Heat until the tin starts to fizz.
4. Remove from heat.
5. Dip a cotton swab it the yellow liquid obtained from the dissolving reaction above.
6. Dip a second cotton swab in the stannous chloride test solution made in the testing reaction.
7. Touch the two swabs together.
8. A purple or black color indicates the presence of gold.

Positive gold swab:

Steve