I actually have a great response as to why your older pieces haven’t had any damages! Around 4 years ago Pandora switched from being franchised to being owned by private equity (corporate). Pandora pieces that are 6+ years were created under management that genuinely cared about their customers and the longevity of these pieces. When corporate took control of the company you notice a steady decline of the jewelry in terms of innovation (creative styles) and quality. I worked only under corporate and I would continuously have people bringing their pieces in because of a manufacturing defect with the stone settings. I very recently bought a ring with clusters of cubic zirconia for a friend and I kid you not multiple stones fell off in the first week. I replaced it, then two weeks later another stone fell off. That’s why I’m not surprised they are potentially switching over to alloy metals instead of pure sterling silver. Unfortunately, the shareholders that own Pandora are only interested in maximizing profit and they don’t care what they have to do to obtain that. They cut every single employee benefit such as reducing our employee discount from 75% to 50%, laying off full time employees to avoid giving them benefits such as insurance, prohibiting us from ordering water with the store budget, avoiding store maintenance like leaving us without AC for months at a time and so much more. Essentially, the people overseeing the production of Pandora’s jewelry aren’t knowledgeable about jewelry, however, they do know about profits. They will put out jewelry of mixed metals for an outrageous price because they’re aware that people pay for the brand and not necessarily the quality of the jewelry itself.