Tips and Advice on Buying Loose Gemstones
1. Try to use American companies.
Most cases of fraud or counterfeit items being sold are filed against foreign companies. There is also a language barrier that can cause problems when trying to resolve any issues thay may arise.
2. Know what you are buying.
Try to do some research on the gemstone species you are buying.
– Find out the hardness and durability of what you are looking for.
– Make sure the item you are buying is not being sold under a deceitful trade name.
– Be sure to ask the seller questions, anybody selling loose gemstones should have them tested by a trained gemologist. This will also give you the oppertunity to see the sellers response time and knowledge of stones. Many people selling gemstones do not know enough about gemstones to even determine what species they are. Good questions to ask would be; How has this item been tested? Was this item purchased in this country? Was this gemstone removed from a piece of jewelry or has it ever been set before (stones are often damaged during the setting process).
– Do not have your purchases tested by jewelers. Jewelers are not gemologists. Gemstones should only be tested by trained gemologists. Ask to see their credintials. Experiance doesn’t mean anything if the person does not have a certification. I recently did an expirement with 6 local jewelry stores. I took GIA lab certified gemstones into the showroom. 5 of the jewelers simply looked at the stone as said it was fake. I then pulled out the lab certificate and they they all said the stone looked fake because it was too “nice”.” The first thing a real gemologist is tought is to never determine a stones authenticity without doing at least 3 tests to confirm it. If somebody claims they can tell if a stone is real or not by looking at it is simply ignorant. Tests such as specific gravity, refractive index, thermal conductivity, crystal structure analysis, and pleochroism should confirm a stones identity, not a guess.
– Reading a book or a couple paragraphs from a website does not make you a gemologist. I have had people in the past accuse me of fraud or ” ripping them off” because they thought they knew more about gemstones than my GIA certified Graduate Gemologist with 30 years of experiance. If you are not formaly trained have a second opinion done by a third party gemologist. Then bring that report to the seller if their is a problem.
– Do not buy from sellers that use diamond clarity grades for colored gemstones. This is a dead give away that the person or company selling the stones does not have the appropriate skills to grade gemstones. Gem labs will never grade colored stones using a diamond grading scale (example: vvs, si, i-1). Colored gemstones should be graded using decriptive terms (example: eye clean, minor inclusions barely visible to the naked eye, etc) GIA’s grading scale is barely ever used because it is very difficult for a regular person to understand. They use multiple classifications for certain species and letter or number coding.
