I can remember the first time I was duped about a colored gemstone. I was sixteen, and a friend of the family who was a nun got to go on a trip to Egypt. She brought me back a ring that she had bought in a bazaar there. It was a carved turquoise scarab beetle, set in silver. I was thrilled, until after wearing it for a couple of weeks, my finger turned green from the base metal, and the shiny surface of the scarab wore away, exposing the chalk beneath. I was disappointed, and shocked that anyone would deliberately cheat a nun. It was my introduction to the problems involved in purchasing colored gemstones.
A few years later, I dated a man who had a friend who owned a business in the jewelry building on South Wabash Avenue in Chicago. I went there to look at jewelry, and became fascinated with a beautiful ring whose stone changed color--reddish purple under incandescent light, brilliant brown under halogen, and a teal green in daylight. The stone was marquise-cut and set in white gold to look like a leaf, flanked by three tiny branches set with diamonds. The jeweler told me it was a synthetic alexandrite. The real ones were the rarest gemstones in the world, he explained, but this synthetic one had the same chemical composition and behaved just like the genuine article. I was so taken with the ring, I didn't care that the stone was man-made, so I bought it (for about $30) and still have it to this day.
In both of the above stories, the stones were fakes. The difference between the two of course, is that in the second story, the buyer was informed. The dealer was honest and let me know exactly what I was buying, and the purchase price accurately reflected the value of the stone.
Unfortunately, not everyone behaves this way. In my colored stone class at GIA, one of my teachers told the story of going on a gemstone-buying trip to Bangkok. He was examining a particularly fine (and expensive) sapphire in a roomful of buyers and sellers, when he suddenly figured out that the stone he was examining wasn't a real sapphire at all. He glanced around the room and realized that if he accused the seller of cheating him, who knows what would happen to him, traveling alone in a foreign country, so he quietly handed the stone back, told the dealer he had changed his mind, thanked him, and moved on.
I myself had a similar experience. Right after my GIA courses were completed, my husband and I were spending the day in San Diego to celebrate. We strolled around an exclusive shopping district and I happened upon a storefront of a shop that sold estate jewelry. I saw a gorgeous diamond ring in the window, and went in and asked to see it. The price tag was $28,000.00. I pulled out my newly minted jeweler's loupe to examine the stone, and when I looked at the back, I thought I saw lines of telltale color that betrayed that this stone might be an imitation. I gave the stone back to the saleswoman and left. Obviously, with such a cursory examination, I could well have been wrong, but it was enough to convince me that I would never buy a large diamond without proper GIA certification.
Colored stones are probably easier to fake than diamonds, and the equipment needed to accurately identify and assess colored stones is actually much more extensive than the equipment needed for diamonds. Unscrupulous dealers substitute colored glass imitations and pass them off to unsuspecting buyers. Or they glue a small amount of a real stone onto a larger portion of cheaper material, and charge for the combined weight at the precious stone's price rate. There are dozens of ways to doctor and fake colored stones.
Nowadays, there are companies who specialize in making synthetic stones, and openly announce that their products are synthetic. Synthetic stones are identical in chemical composition to genuine stones, but they are made by machines. I have a friend who bought an emerald ring while on a cruise in the Caribbean. It's a real emerald all right--so occluded (cloudy) that I couldn't even see the internal faceting. She might have done better to buy a synthetic emerald. It would have had the same gorgeous green color, plus clarity and sparkle. (The one thing that makes synthetic stones relatively easy to tell apart from mined material is that synthetic stones are clean inside, where the real gem has tiny imperfections that can be seen with a magnifying loupe.)
What adds to the confusion for the public is that many real faceted gemstones are treated in some way--they are often heated or irradiated to cause a color change (as in the case of all blue topazes or blue zircons). Many of these treatments are considered perfectly acceptable and legitimate--without them, we would not have the range of beautiful colors that we do in the gem world.
The thing is, even with the heating or irradiation, you should still be getting a genuine stone. And, the dealer should be ready and willing to tell you about any of the treatments should you ask. If a dealer tells you that the stone is totally natural, that means that not only is the stone itself genuine, but it hasn't received any treatments of any type. But how do you know for sure, short of bringing the stone in to a certified gemologist? You don't. You have to trust the dealer, who is also trusting the person he bought either the stone or the rough from.
The very last topic covered in both my diamond and colored stone courses was an overview of the many ways that gemstones can be faked. It was pretty overwhelming. The bottom line for both courses was that you increase the probability of avoiding fakes in two ways: 1) by becoming educated and knowing what to look for and 2) by buying from a reputable dealer whom you can trust.
Dealers who are members of professional organizations such as the American Gem Traders Association (AGTA), or the Gem and Lapidary Dealers' Association (GLDA) and others, promise to sell only genuine stones and openly reveal any treatments those stones might have received. So buying from those member dealers is a way to hedge your bets. But even an honest dealer can be fooled, especially if your stone started out as part of a lot of several dozen or hundred that he purchased. In that case, the dealer should admit he was mistaken and either take back the stone or replace it for you.
Buying gems is a risk. Yes, get educated. Yes, get a "feel" for the real thing. But also choose a reputable dealer and build a working relationship with him or her. The bottom line is: It's all a matter of trust.
Comments