Medallion Liquid Gold electroless (immersion plating) product

A. Hi Joyce.
I don't know why it was discontinued, but I suspect that the unavailability will remain permanent. You can follow the link we offered to eBay where vendors have some stocks of the product still for sale. We've received a lot of postings offering to sell small quantities but we can't post them or we'd drown under spam, but if you re-post your inquiry as an RFQ, those small sellers will be able to privately contact you.

Luck & Regards,

Medallion Liquid Gold Plating Kit

on eBay

(affil links)

A. Hi Gary. Yes, "immersion/displacement gold plating" does work, and even finds application in industry. What drives the process is that gold is a "noble" metal which will come out of solution to displace other metals. A molecule of silver (or other metal in the object to be plated) dissolves into the solution, and a molecule of gold comes out of solution and deposits on the object. It is limited in thickness, thinner than electroplating, and it will wear off more quickly, but wax or lacquer based "polishes" can offer some wear protection.

Ed. note: Although I described the technology of immersion (replacement) plating, my assumption that the Medallion system is replacement plating isn't quite correct. Please see Marvin Sevilla's posting on this page

A. I can vouch for it. I purchased this thru QVC in the UK and it works so well I plan to buy more. Great for restoring luster to jewellery and changing silver jewellery to make it coordinate with real gold pieces.

I last posted a reply here two years ago. Well I have just today received my latest order and happy as ever with it. The silver plating lotion is quite good but I still think the gold plating solution is the best. It would be great if there was a white gold plating and rose gold plating system for going up other colours of gold jewellery.

A. Hello Anna. It is available on Amazon. ⇩ It is sometimes also available on eBay . Good luck.

A. The product does really work - it's made by Medallion Products located in the Chicago, Illinois, USA area. You can probably call 800 # information and get the phone number.
Bruce

A. The gold Medallion kit is available now on Pitchwell Tv, accessed via the internet at £29.00 for a whole kit of gold plate solutions. Hope this helps.

A. I have recently bought the Medallion gold plating system online and am very pleased with it! I thought it would do something but really didn't expect it to look as good as it does. I realize it probably won't last as long as professional plating but for my purposes--primarily doing silver jewelry as I only wear gold-tone--that is fine with me. I'm glad it is now available again in the U. S.

They say that you can do approximately 100 wedding bands' worth of gold plating with this kit. I can't speak to that as I haven't done that many items yet, but again I have been very pleased so far with the results. I have plated on sterling and silver plate thus far.

A. Hi Igor. "Immersion" (replacement) plating processes are driven by atoms of one metal (like silver) going into solution and being replaced by atoms of the other material (like gold) coming out of solution. Or another way of looking at it is they are silver-gold batteries, not too different from zinc-carbon batteries, or nickel-cadmium. That is, two different metals with a conductive solution between them, which generates a voltage. As soon as the silver is completely covered with a very thin layer of gold, there is no battery anymore -- so the process stops.

"Electroless" (autocatalytic) plating processes have powerful chemical reducing agents in them that cause the gold to keep coming out of solution and deposit even though the item is already covered with gold; thus the thickness of electroless gold plating is not nearly as limited. But electroless gold plating is a more complicated process, newer, and can only be done by plating shops since it's not a packaged solution but a process which must be controlled, maintained, and adjusted.

I think an immersion gold plating process is not going to be thick enough and non-porous enough to protect the underlying object from corrosion. The deposit is probably essentially pure gold, but even when gold is electroplated thicker it has limited ability to seal the item away from a really aggressive environment. There is a test with nitric acid which distinguishes gold plating that is thick enough and non-porous enough from gold that isn't, but immersion gold may not pass it. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Mr. Mooney: The process Medallion uses is what I would call 'Enhanced Immersion Plating; it's a hybrid of autocatalytic and Immersion plating in one ingenious package.

Like any of you I was skeptical before I purchased the product, so I did a lot of research and one of the tools I always use is the US Patents search. I was able to locate the specific patent used for this product (Yes it has been patented, but not under medallion of course, Medallion and HSN are brands that bring such patents to market).
The product uses a conventional non-toxic immersion plating solution enhanced by a metallic reaction enhancer, this metallic reaction enhancer must be in contact with the metal being plated. It should also be a metal which does not react with the components of the composition. If you have purchased the product and you are inclined to this beautiful art (metal deposition into substrates and its many branches) you instantly know what that metal is made of.
The metallic enhancer is what makes this product capable of gold plating onto solid gold rings (10k, 14k, 18k yellow/Rose), Platinum, Palladium and rhodium. This would be impossible to do if it was a simple immersion. The plating simply does not stop until you remove the piece from the plating solution and you could deplete the entire plating solution onto a single platinum ring if you so desire which would be impractical but it illustrates the way the product works.

Regards.
Marvin.

Thanks Marvin! I wasn't "skeptical" of the product in light of the positive reviews; rather I was trying to answer based on what I know about immersion plating :-)

Apparently Medallion goes beyond immersion plating and includes catalytic power as well. Bravo, all the better!

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hi Lana. Sorry, I'm only slightly familiar with the Medallion gold plating solution, and have never heard of their formerly available rose gold solution. Maybe the short life you mentioned is the reason they discontinued it.

But, no, you probably shouldn't try this with an electrolytic gold plating solution. No galvanic system produces anywhere near 5 volts. I don't know for sure what their metal disc is made of but assuming aluminum, even gold to aluminum produces only about 1 volt. The chemistry of the Medallion system seems quite a bit different than the chemistry of electrolytic gold solutions and I would not attempt to mix them.

Regards,

Thanks Ted! I was afraid that was the case. I'm really kicking myself for not buying at least 1 extra kit to have on hand. I'll just have to keep watching eBay and hope someone finds one and posts it.
Have a great weekend!

A. Hi Ebenezer. Another possibility is that there was a misunderstanding over what was being bought & sold rather than "forgetfulness". Medallion and their resellers offer replenishment solution at a lower cost than the whole kit; apparently you received just the replenishment solution. You could try a piece of aluminum foil for activation, but I don't know how well it will work, nor whether that comprises a patent violation as I'm not familiar with the patent.

Regards,

A. Hi Marian. Yes, that residue probably is reacted metal from the activation disk, indicating that there is less gold in the solution now. You probably can remove it by passing the solution through a paper coffee filter. But the residue doesn't speed up or slow down the reaction; it is just a consequence of having used some of the gold, indicating that there is less (if any) useable gold left in the solution, so it will be slower if it works.

Regards,

Thank you for your response. Since I posted this, I've used it again, and it did work, however, not as quickly as before. But, it still works after I removed the residue. Again, thank you.
Marian

A. Hi Richard. Once a gold plated surface has been well rinsed, it's just gold regardless of whether it was put there by electroplating or the Medallion method. Real gold is eaten as decoration on exotic candies, pastries, and foods and I have personally never heard a report of it being a problem; it is very inert to any chemical reactions and presumably passes through the body unchanged.

Luck & Regards,