Recently I traveled to Istanbul and saw fake emerald jewelry in quite an expensive shop. It wasn’t even a synthetic emerald, it was a MUCH cheaper version - a doublet of coloured quartzтand glass. And the price was around 4000$. For this money, you can afford a real emerald and be happy with this purchase.
Hi everyone,
I’m Sasha Kareva and on this channel I talk about GEMSTONES. Welcome!
I know that everyone who has jewelry, always has doubts about gems, is it real or not. Especially if you bought it in any shop abroad, or at a market or a fair, or even if a famous brand made it.
What can you do to understand if your gemstones are actually real?
People try to find answers in google, make experiments - put jewelry into the water, observe the stone with sunlight, rarer with Loop, burn the stock and then lick it.
All these experiments can indeed work for some stones, so you can give them a try. But it will never bring you calm and confidence, if you don’t have professional knowledge and experience.
How many regrets, disappointments and financial losses I witnessed for my career, I can’t even count. All this situation bind one reason, one missed step could change the situation, safe money and nerves. There so many beautiful stones, which deserve to be a part of your jewelry collection.
My first and main advice can seem too obvious, but stay with me until the end, because I’ll explain you in great detail, how to do it RIGHT, so that you save yourself lots of time, money, and avoid extra headache.
So, here you go.
Make a certificate, get a professional opinion!
There are different laboratories that do it at different prices. If you didn’t buy your gems or jewelry for thousands and hundreds of thousands dollars, then even the cheapest service will help you, the lab will give you a certificate with cherished words - is your stone is natural or not. For expensive jewelry I advice the same, - make a report, but choose the report with the maximum details, include gemstones origin and better to choose the lab which specialized on precious stones , like a Lotus lab.
I personally made such certificates many times in a few countries and paid from 15$ till 250$ for a regular report. The price can depend on the type of stone, size and name of the lab. Of course famous laboratories charge more than others.
How can you find them ? Easy, you can just google it. But you need to understand, that more respectable labs there are in big cities. Because more people come with their stones and the gemologists there have much more experience.
So, I think the most famous is
GIA - Gemmological Institute of America
This company has almost 100 years of experience. Gia is the most popular for diamond identification and grading and their laboratories are located in New York, Karlsbad in California, London, Antwerpen, Shanghai, HongKong, Mumbai, Bangkok, Ramat Gan in Israel.
AIGS - Aisian Institute of gemologist sciences are very famous in China, Thailand and Japan
GUbelin Gem Lab also has 100 years history. This lab has brunches in New York, Hong Kong and Switzerland. It is highly respected Gemmological Reports, which are relied upon by famous auction houses, royal families, jewellers, gem traders, and collectors globally who are looking for unbiased, independent and absolutely trustworthy opinions about their gems.
Prices for a Gemmological Report vary between roughly 300 USDollars and 3000 USDollars depending on the type of gemstone, its carat weight and the turnaround time. More comprehensive reports for jewellery pieces may be more expensive.
If you didn’t find your city in my list, you can choose any lab in your or in the nearest city, even small laboratory has equipment to identify is the gem in your jewelry real or not.
How does a procedure of gemstone identification look?
You bring the stone, the office manager checks the weight, assigns a number to your stone and puts it into a box. Then you pay and get a paper with a date, when your report will be ready.
How does this report look? Here is how the report will look like.
Usually it looks like a softcover book with a picture of your stone. Sometimes you can choose a cheaper option, when it looks like a credit card. Every report consists of all the information about your stone. Weight, color, size, cutting shape, did your stone go through any treatments or not. Sometimes you can pay extra to identify its origin, to know exactly the place where your stone was mined. For some gems it makes sense, especially when it comes to price. For example emeralds from Columbia are valued higher than emeralds from Zambia or Ethiopia.
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Properties of true gems, and their value and investment potential, is one of the things I’ll be covering more of on this channel. So do make sure to subscribe to watch more videos like this in future!
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Allright, now back to our report. I’m explaining it to you in such detail, because it only serves the
purpose if you know how to read it, right?
What is it gemological report for you? Gemological center is independent, the buyer can hear an objective opinion about the subject of the proposed purchase.
If you already have documents for a your gem or for your jewelry ( I mean, may be you have a tag from the shop that you purchased 2 carats blue sapphire ring), the laboratory can check the compliance комплайнс of the data indicated there with the real parameters of the stone.
Here are the parameters that will show up on your report:
First, the weight of the stone. All gemstones are measured in carats. One carat equals 0.200 grams or 1/5 gram. Stone on my example is 1.42 carats, which equals 0.284 grams.
Second, the cutting shape. In our example the shape is octagon, that means 8 edges. In other cases, it can be square, baguette, oval.
Third, color and clarity. These parameters are very important, especially for precious stones. There are some colors for rubies and sapphires,
In our example it’s abi-color tourmaline and we ab have wide spectrum of colors from brownish pink till yellowish green.
So the field филд with color and clarity usually consists of one word - blue, yellow, green whatever.
Clarity and transparency is the most controversial question. Some labs do it, some not. Some use a diamond system for coloured gems.
Mostly you’ll find one of these abbreviations:
VVS - means it’s very, very slightly included. Stone has inclusions, which you can’t see even with a 10x loupe
VS -means it’s very slightly included. This kind of inclusions you can find in loop, but can’t see with naked eye
SI - slightly included, and you can find inclusions with your naked eye
I - included Sometimes, it means, that gemstone has too many inclusions, which degrade appearance and durability of the stone.
On my gem report of bi color tourmaline, we don’t see any grading of clarity. Honestly, for tourmaline it is not so important.
Btw, I have an entire video on tourmalines, if you want to learn more about these stunning gems, I’ll drop a link in the description.
The last and the most interesting part of the certificate is treatments. A stone can be natural but it often undergoes heating or irradiation, it can be dyed, or even enhanced with oil. Only corundum has more than 10 kinds of treatment.
Ok, don’t be scared! For some stones, especially precious stones, treatments are normal and are acceptable in the whole world. It’s important to know it, because the presence or absence of treatments usually affect the price.
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You can find the link in description, choose the stones and also order the report. We can get it from any laboratory in Bangkok. Bangkok as you know is the biggest center of gemstone trading in the world. And every reputed lab has office in this city.
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Enjoy true gems world! Even if you did a mistake one time and bought an artificial stone, don’t give up. Gems will bring in your life new knowledges, experience and beauty !