What is an Alexandrite?
It’s the color-change variety of the mineral, chrysoberyl. Bluish green in daylight, purplish red under incandescent light; hard and durable. Top quality examples are rare and valuable.
What is an Amber?
Fossilized resin, color of the burnished sun--orange or golden brown. Amber might trap and preserve ancient life, including insects, leaves, even scorpions and occasionally lizards.
What is an Amethyst?
Purple variety of the mineral quartz, often forms large, six-sided crystals. Fine velvety-colored gems come from African and South American mines. In demand for jewelry at all price points.
What is an Ametrine?
One of the rarest types of transparent quartz, combines two colors: amethyst’s purple and citrine’s orange-to-yellow, growing together in a single crystal.
What is a Citrine?
Citrine’s color comes from traces of iron. It’s perhaps the most popular and frequently purchased yellow gemstone and an attractive alternative for topaz as well as for yellow sapphire.
What is a Diamond?
This hardest gem of all is made of just one element: carbon. It’s valued for its colorless nature and purity. Most diamonds are primeval—over a billion years old—and form deep within the earth.
What is an Emerald?
The most valued variety of beryl, emerald was once cherished by Spanish conquistadors, Inca kings, Moguls, and pharaohs. Today, fine gems come from Africa, South America, and Central Asia.
What is a Fancy Color Diamond?
Fine color diamonds are the most rare and costly of all gemstones. Their ranks include the world’s most famous jewel—the Hope—and the most expensive gem ever auctioned—The Graff Pink.
What is a Garnet?
The garnet group of related mineral species offers gems of every hue, including fiery red pyrope, vibrant orange spessartine, and rare intense-green varieties of grossular and andradite.
What is an Iolite?
Known in the jewelry trade as iolite, this mineral is known as cordierite to geologists and mineralogists. It was named after French mineralogist Pierre Cordier.
What is Jade?
Prized by civilizations from ancient China to the Aztecs and Mayans of Central America, jade is crafted into objects of stunning artistry.
What is a Kunzite?
Trace amounts of manganese give this pink to violet variety of spodumene its feminine glow. A relative newcomer to the gemstone stage, kunzite was only confirmed as a unique variety of spodumene in the early part of the twentieth century.
What is Lapis Lazuli?
Lapis lazuli is treasured for its beautiful deep blue color. Afghanistan is considered the source of the best-quality lapis
What is a Moonstone?
Feldspar prized for its billowy blue adularescence, caused by light scattering from an intergrowth of microscopic, alternating layers. Favored gem of many Art Nouveau jewelry designers.
What is a Morganite?
Like its cousins emerald and aquamarine, morganite is a variety of the beryl mineral species. This gem gets its subtle blush when a trace amount of manganese makes its way into morganite’s crystal structure.
What is an Opal?
Opal’s microscopic arrays of stacked silica spheres diffract light into a blaze of flashing colors. An opal’s color range and pattern help determine its value.
What is a Pearl?
Produced in the bodies of marine and freshwater mollusks naturally or cultured by people with great care. Lustrous, smooth, subtly-colored pearls are jewelry staples, especially as strands.
What is a Peridot?
Yellow-green gem variety of the mineral olivine. Found as nodules in volcanic rock, occasionally as crystals lining veins in mountains of Myanmar and Pakistan, and occasionally inside meteorites.
What is Rose Quartz?
Microscopic mineral inclusions cause the pink color and translucence of rose quartz. Well shaped, transparent pink quartz crystals are rare
What is a Ruby?
Traces of chromium give this red variety of the mineral corundum its rich color. Long valued by humans of many cultures. In ancient Sanskrit, ruby was called ratnaraj, or “king of precious stones.”
What is a Sapphire?
Depending on their trace element content, sapphire varieties of the mineral corundum might be blue, yellow, green, orange, pink, purple or even show a six-rayed star if cut as a cabochon.
What is Spinel?
Although frequently confused with ruby, spinel stands on its own merits. Available in a striking array of colors, its long history includes many famous large spinels still in existence.
What is a Sunstone?
Sunstone, a member of the feldspar group, can be an orthoclase feldspar or a plagioclase feldspar, depending on chemistry. Both can show aventurescence. “Sunstone” applies to the gem’s appearance.
What is a Tanzanite?
Named for Tanzania, the country where it was discovered in 1967, tanzanite is the blue-to-violet or purple variety of the mineral zoisite. It’s become one of the most popular of colored gemstones.
What is a Topaz?
Colorless topaz treated to blue is a mass-market gem. Fine pink-to-red, purple, or orange gems are one-of-a-kind pieces. Top sources include Ouro Prêto, Brazil, and Russia's Ural Mountains.
What is a Tourmaline?
Comes in many colors, including the remarkable intense violet-to-blue gems particular to Paraíba, Brazil, and similar blues from Africa. Favorite of mineral collectors.
What is Turquoise?
Ancient peoples from Egypt to Mesoamerica and China treasured this vivid blue gem. It’s a rare phosphate of copper that only forms in the earth’s most dry and barren regions.
What is a Zircon?
Optical properties make it bright and lustrous. Best known for its brilliant blue hues; also comes in warm autumnal yellows and reddish browns, as well as red and green hues.
What is Excellent polish?
Polish is the quality of a diamond’s finish or how smoothly the surface of a diamond has been polished. A diamond with Excellent polish has no polish defects visible at 10× magnification. Small surface defects, such as pits and polish lines, are often created by the polishing wheel during the polishing process and can usually be removed through re-polishing. While they are often invisible to the unaided eye, having a lot of surface defects will dim the shine and sparkle of the stone.
What is a Triple X diamond?
Triple X diamond is a trade term for round brilliant diamonds that have been graded by GIA as having Excellent cut, Excellent symmetry and Excellent polish. X is short for Excellent, so Triple X really just means Triple Excellent.
What is Excellent Cut?
Cut is a diamond’s most important factor. It determines a diamond’s proportions — its depth and the angles of its facets — which in turn affect how light bounces around in a diamond. An Excellent cut grade means that a diamond has been cut within parameters that allow the diamond to give off intense brightness, sparkle and fire, while having an even pattern of light and dark areas (scintillation). Poorly cut diamonds often have large light or dark patches that make the stone appear dull or uninteresting to the eye.