I ordered some 1mm x 3mm gold plated magnets from gaussboys a while back. I viewed them under my microscope today at 100x. All 50 of them had defects in their coatings.
http://imgur.com/a/l9xpu I took a picture of a few of them but my camera wouldn't pick up the smaller defects as seen in first picture of the album. The second picture you can see 2 silver colored spots that expose the under coating of nickel. The third photo is one that was already oxidizing. And the fourth one you can see a lot of spots exposing the nickel under coating. All the magnets were stored in the bag they came in.
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http://imgur.com/a/l9xpu
I took a picture of a few of them but my camera wouldn't pick up the smaller defects as seen in first picture of the album. The second picture you can see 2 silver colored spots that expose the under coating of nickel. The third photo is one that was already oxidizing. And the fourth one you can see a lot of spots exposing the nickel under coating. All the magnets were stored in the bag they came in.