Proprietary Gold Alloys in Watchmaking: Sedna, Everose, Magic Gold and More

Pure 24k gold is too soft and dent-able to make watches out of. And although 9k gold and 14k gold watch cases used to be common, 18k gold is the standard in the luxury watch world today: 18k yellow gold, 18k rose gold, and 18k white gold. But what exactly makes up the other six carats is not so standard anymore, and luxury watch brands are increasingly coming up with cute names for their own gold alloys. Here’s our guide to all the proprietary branded gold alloys of the luxury watch world.

Why Watch Brands Make Their Own Gold Alloys

Aside from marketing reasons, scratch resistance and fade resistance are the main goals of these proprietary gold alloys. Rose gold and white gold both tend to fade more yellowish over years of wear, which is why traditional white gold is rhodium-plated. Modern alloys often include a bit of palladium and/or platinum to combat wear. Rolex and Patek Philippe both use their own 18k white gold alloys–which don’t need rhodium plating–but they haven’t given them cute names.

Omega, meanwhile, seems to love the cute names the most, with four proprietary brand-name gold alloys to their name. Hublot has two, and nobody else has more than one. In my opinion, very few of these names really need to exist. “Sand gold” is actually an interesting blend that falls somewhere between white and rose gold, and Audemars Piguet uses it as a generic term–they didn’t trademark it, but they’re the only ones using it.

“Honeygold” from A. Lange & Söhne is a trademarked brand name, and it also has its own distinctive hue–most often described as somewhere between pink and yellow. Most innovative of all is “Magic Gold,” which debuted in 2011–Hublot combines ceramic with gold to make an 18k gold alloy that’s even harder than steel! IWC’s “Armor Gold” undergoes its own sophisticated process to make it extra-hard, but aside from those, branded gold alloys are generally just nice-sounding names for fairly normal 18k gold. Let’s break them all down:

Proprietary Gold Alloys in Watchmaking

Alloy Name	Primary Hue	Purity	Brand	Year Debuted	Description
Everose Gold	Rose	18k	Rolex	2005	Maintains color over time; likely contains platinum to help resist to fading and tarnishing.
Sedna Gold	Rose	18k	Omega	2012	Designed to be extra durable and maintain a reddish hue, similar to Everose Gold.
King Gold	Rose	18k	Hublot	2014	Rich red color; more copper than most rose golds. Platinum helps resist fade.
Armor Gold	Rose	18k	IWC	2019	“Significantly harder and more wear-resistant” than conventional alloys.
Goldtech	Rose	18k	Panerai	2020	“This innovative alloy combines gold, platinum, and copper for an intense red hue and superior oxidation resistance.”
Bronze Gold	Rose	9k	Omega	2021	Develops a patina over time; corrosion-resistant; warm pink hue.
EON Gold	Rose	18k	Roger Dubuis	2021	Designed to resist fading, similar to Everose gold.
Sand Gold	Rose/White	18k	Audemars Piguet	2024	Appears between white and pink depending on the lighting. It’s actually not a trademark, just AP’s own generic term.
Canopus Gold	White	18k	Omega	2015	Gleaming grayish silver hue, needs no rhodium plating
Honey Gold	Rose/Yellow	18k	A. Lange & Söhne	2010	“The patented Honeygold…is harder than other gold alloys” with a “warm glowing hue resulting from the special ratio of pure gold, copper and zinc.”
Moonshine Gold	Yellow	18k	Omega	2019	Lighter color than typical yellow; high resistance to fading.
Magic Gold	Yellow/Rose	18k	Hublot	2011	An innovative mixture of gold and ceramic; extremely scratch-resistant; subtle mocha hue.

Gold Alloy Trends in Watchmaking

As you can see from the chart above, rose gold alloys tend to get the most brand names. 10 out of the 12 proprietary luxury watch alloys are rose gold or at least rose-ish! Omega is the only brand so far to make a brand name for a white gold alloy, and they’re also the only brand with a proprietary 9k gold alloy (Bronze Gold). I don’t think these names are doing the brands much good, though.

Imagine wearing a Roger Dubuis watch made from EON Gold, and a colleague says “Nice watch–is it rose gold?” You would probably say “Yes, thank you” and not “Actually, it’s EON Gold!” And have you ever heard someone say they’d love a Sedna Gold Omega? If you can’t say it out loud without cringing, maybe it shouldn’t be a brand name at all. Luxury watch collectors are a sophisticated, nerdy bunch, and we can understand that Panerai makes fade-resistant rose gold without needing a trademarked name for it. But for now, the trend of making up brand names for watch materials doesn’t show any signs of letting up, so we hope this article can help you keep these various gold alloys straight.

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More on Gold Watches:
The Best Yellow Gold Watches for Men
Rolex Rose Gold: Every Everose Watch Produced by Rolex
Breitling Releases 3 Gold Perpetual Calendar Chronographs
Patek Philippe Nautilus 5811/1G In White Gold