Crystals and Jewelry Q & A

Help, I Have Green Gunk on My Jewelry!

QUESTION: I have a couple silver necklaces. They're not very expensive; the kind you find at usual clothing stores and/or a costume jewelry store. It was quite warm yesterday and when I removed one of my necklaces, there was a very noticeable green ring all around my neck from the chain. After looking at both of them closely, I noticed a green residue "inside" (for lack of a better word) each chain. Is there a way to get rid of that residue and what can I do to not make that green appear on my skin again?

MY ANSWER: It sounds like the necklaces you're referring to are not actually solid sterling silver, but are either silver plated or chromium plated to look like silver. That's usual with jewelry from costume jewelry stores and similar places, because there's no way they can sell for the prices they do if the jewelry is solid sterling.

The green stuff is from oxidization, which happens with most metals, but quite a lot with copper or brass based metals when the plating wears off or wears thin in spots. That can happen easily between and inside links of chain, as well as on the outside of the chain. The green gets worse when you get hot and sweaty is normal too, because that makes the oxidization happen quicker because of the acidity of skin oils and sweat. The same thing happens with sterling because it has copper in it, as well as other metals, it just happens much slower, usually.

First, to get rid of the green, you can try a couple of approaches. You can go for the manual method with a dry q-tip, which will sometimes work. You might also try a jewelry cleaner made specifically for costume jewelry. One I know of is called Jewelry Joose, and you can find it at JewelryJoose.com. There are other costume jewelry cleaners, but this is the one I've heard the best about and the only one I've used recently.

Jewelry Joose is great at cleaning costume jewelry safely, although I always recommend trying it on a small area of the jewelry at first, just to be double sure. Also, like the instructions say, clean it off well afterwards. They're not kidding! I once made the mistake of not doing that and ended up with a weird white coating on the jewelry I didn't clean off well. Oops! I did get the coating off eventually, but it's easier just to do it right at first. So just read the instructions (and the info on their site) before you use it.

As for keeping the green from coming back, once the base metal has been exposed by wearing against one another, there are really eally not many alternatives. You could try coating it with nail polish or something so that skin oils and sweat don't come in contact with the metal. That would work, but has to be redone periodically. You might consider not wearing them when it's hot, or at least not when you expect to be active in the heat. You could get them replated, but that's usually far too expensive to be worth it. Or you can just clean them afterwards. The same goes for solid sterling silver, it just usually isn't as much of a problem because the copper in it is part of the sterling alloy, not under a plating that can wear off.

May, 2005

< Back