The majority of women like jewellery, Many men do too, but they tend to prefer gadgets and watches. In numerous countries women store their wealth in jewellery as exemplified by the Fifties song “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”. Asian women in particular collect gold.
However, precious stones and precious metals are by and large perceived to be very valuable. Leaving the value of the piece aside, most people have a favourite colour.
Some like yellow gold, others prefer white. Some like the clarity and brilliance of diamonds, whereas others would rather have aquamarine, turquoise of green.
In fact, high-quality green gems are among the most precious of all gemstones including diamonds. Emeralds are the most costly green gemstones weight for weight.
Gemstones are created underground at immense pressures and they obtain their colours from the minerals involved in their composition. Gemstones are by and large quite hard, because they were fashioned under great pressure.
In olden times, many people believed that gemstones had magical properties. The magical property attributed to emerald was the restoration of vision and the curing of eye illnesses.
In fact, emeralds are a kind of beryl and derive their green colour from the element chromium or sometimes vanadium. Emeralds have a hardness of seven to eight; diamonds are the hardest at 10 on the Mohs Scale.
However, emerald has a great many inclusions (or faults), so it will shatter fairly easily. These inclusions give emeralds their typical fuzzy look.Nevertheless, the best emeralds are those that have a clear, transparent, even colour of green throughout.
Weight for weight, an emerald of high quality is more valuable than a diamond of similar quality, which amazes most people. However, good diamonds are easier to find than decent emeralds and hence the difference in price.
Become very suspicious of stones that are called ’something’ emeralds like Lithia emeralds or oriental emeralds. These are usually cheaper gemstones which are referred to as emeralds in order to boost their value. These stones are not emeralds and not worth much in comparison.
Because of the value of real emeralds, many ‘cheap emeralds’ are either not emeralds at all or are very bad specimens that are being held together by resin. It is very difficult for a greenhorn to know the difference between the decent and the bad, which makes it important to buy from a trustworthy jeweller or dealer.
Emeralds have been well-liked since the days of the pharaohs and there are emerald mines in Egypt. There are also emerald mines in Siberia, Brazil, Zambia, Pakistan, South Africa, India and Australia amongst other countries.
In spite of the fact that there appears to be numerous sources of emeralds, good quality gemstones are still hard to get hold of at a good price. However, there are no equivalents to emerald, so if you like the best, you can expect to pay handsomely for it.
As with all expensive gemstones, you should ask for a signed certificate of weight and quality if you purchase an emerald.
Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a number of topics, and is now involved with Amber in Poland. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Jewellry and Watches.