Tips and Trivia

Individuals born in October get to choose between two birthstones—tourmaline and opal. Each gem then unveils nearly limitless possibilities, as each one comes in a rainbow of shades and color combinations. In fact, both of October’s birthstones came to earth through a journey involving rainbows, according to legend. Between tourmaline (whose color depends on trace […]

A Brief History of Gold Who discovered gold? A child finds a shiny rock in a creek, thousands of years ago, and the human race is introduced to gold for the first time. Gold was first discovered as shining, yellow nuggets. “Gold is where you find it,” so the saying goes, and gold was first

Minerals form under various conditions in the earth. Most gemstones form in the Earth’s crust; the top layer of the Earth, with a depth of 3 to 25 miles. Only two gemstone varieties – diamond and peridot – form in the Earth’s mantle, which represents 80% of the Earth’s volume. The mantle consists mostly of molten rock called magma with a solid

People often email us photos of gemstones and ask us for help in identifying their stones. We try to be helpful, but even the best gemologist in the world cannot properly identify a gemstone from a photograph. Indeed, even a detailed visual inspection of the actual gemstone is rarely sufficient for gemstone identification. Jeweler’s Loupe

The Mohs scale of mineral hardness was created by the German mineralogist, Friedrich Mohs in 1822 to measure the relative hardness or scratch resistance of various minerals. He based it on ten readily available minerals. Since it is an ordinal scale, two minerals must be compared in order to decide which is harder. Almost everyone buying gemstones

Today, there are over 130 different varieties of precious and semi-precious gemstones available. Many of the different gemstone types belong to a larger common family or umbrella group of related gems. Gemstones from GemSelect In many cases, gemstone groups are based on physical properties, such as water content or optical phenomena, for example, cat’s eye gemstones, rutilated

There are different ways of organizing the world’s gemstones. The science of mineralogy sorts the various minerals into ten different mineral classes, based on their chemical composition. The classes include basic elements, sulfides, halides, oxides and hydroxides, carbonates and nitrates, phosphates, silicates, and organic substances. Within these classes are species. Each species has a well-defined chemical

Over the centuries, various cultures have contributed to the legend and lore surrounding gemstones. These rare products of nature have inspired philosophers and mystics to attribute unusual powers to these special minerals. Ruby – For Good Luck and Good Health The best compendium of gemstone lore is undoubtedly that found in George Frederick Kunz’s book The Curious Lore of Precious Stones,

In 2016, August joined June and December as one of the three birth months represented by three gems. The original birthstone for August was Sardonyx, and then peridot was added, becoming August’s primary gem. The addition of spinel, which can be found in a variety of colors, gives August babies a plethora of options! Learn

The materials first used as gemstones tended to be ones that were relatively easy to find and easy to work. Thus it is not surprising that gems such as amber, turquoise, coral, lapis lazuliand malachite were among the first human adornments, since they were soft enough to be worked by readily available materials such as sand. Amber is without doubt one of the earliest