For the price it costs you make any of the gold items and how it ends up looking, you would be better off just sticking to Copper. It's a subtle difference between the two, but 1M pebbles per armour piece compared to just 5k pebbles SHOULDN'T be subtle.

As a suggestion, how about making the gold pieces 'sparkle'? And extra layer of shine or glow or even just a twinkle that shows off THIS being the real thing and expensive, and not just copper that looks just about as good as gold does. I would, for one, love to see the sparkle to be animated. How cool would that be!?! A shifting between different drawing layers as the glistening gold sparkles twinkle first here and then there.

Either way, as it stands right now, all Gold apparel is not worth a pebble over 5k because Copper exists and the differences between these two right now, as it stands, is barely worth the noticing, let along paying that much for.

I can tell them apart just fine, but I don't mind a little more of an emphasis that it's gold added :)

I don't want animation, however.

They do look kinda similar but I’m not terribly fussed about it. Though I wouldn’t mind if there was more of a difference. A sparkle of glow would be neat.