I was looking over my Burlington Bulldog that is housed in a Nawco case. Looking at it, I would say it was white gold. Looking through some of the older posts on these cases, I noticed the case came in different gold layerings. The layerings where gold, white gold and green gold. To be honest, I've never seen a Nawco case in green gold. Can anyone post a pic of a Nawco case in green gold?

My case is very very bright white. It almost seems like it's been re-dipped. Is there a tell-tale sign that a case has been re-dipped?

Bruce to tell about a re-plated case you must look closely at the areas where the case usually starts to lose it's layer of gold.

Those areas generally for all cases are the pendant directly underneath the winding crown that the bow attaches to and front and back bezels start wearing away where they slid in/out of a pocket. After many years of wear and usage these areas become more pronounced sometimes with a complete 360 degree circle of gold being worn off and leaving the brass composition material sticking out for all to see.

Most re-plating jobs begin with buffing these areas down and "feathering" the two materials where they meet, [gold still left on the case & composition brass material] so they are less noticeable. Then they are re-plated. Interestingly the electro plating processes used today do not "stack or layer" and get thicker by multiple plating's. The plating process will only be so thick and will be measured in microns.

Plating gold watches has long been a task because the color that one desires can't be exacty attained. It will always be off by a shade or two. Also the electro process will not take any wear or cleanings. So for the most part electro plating would only be for looks and the costs would exceed it's worth.

The easiest gold watches to electro plate would be the white gold filled ones as the material used, rhodium, matches very closely the original nickel and yellow gold mixture that is used to make white gold. There are differences in color of most white gold filled items because of the amount of nickel used in each "batch" by the case manufacturers and the purity of yellow gold used. So there will be slightly different shades.

However, if an item has been plated using rhodium it will always show as being "bright white" whereas most white gold filled items will show to have a less harsh and softer tone to them to the color of "gray-white" almost steel-like in color.

You certainly "describe" a rhodium plated item. Using a strong light and a 20x power loupe and looking for slight differences in colors and areas that weren't "feathered" so well should yield results for you.

Good pictures of different angles of the points described above with great lighting and sharply in-focus and posted here should get some helpful reviews.

regards,
bb

Here's a picture of a "green gold filled" Nawco case.

Thanks Buster!

I learn something every day!