The majority of women like jewellery, Many men do as well, but they tend to prefer gadgets and watches. In many countries women store their wealth in jewellery as exemplified by the Fifties song “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”. Asian women in particular accumulate gold.
However, precious stones and precious metals are generally perceived to be very valuable. Leaving the value of the piece aside, most people have a favourite colour.
Some prefer yellow gold, others prefer white. Some prefer the clarity and brilliance of diamonds, while others prefer aquamarine, turquoise of green.
In fact, high-quality green gems are among the most expensive of all gemstones including diamonds. Emeralds are the most costly green gemstones weight for weight.
Gemstones are created underground at great pressures and they obtain their colours from the minerals involved in their composition. Gemstones are generally 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 number of 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 all the way through.
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 cost of real emeralds, many ‘cheap emeralds’ are either not emeralds at all or are very poor specimens that are being held together by resin. It is very difficult for a greenhorn to know the difference between the good and the bad, which makes it important to purchase from a reputable jeweller or dealer.
Emeralds have been popular since the times 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 places.
In spite of the fact that there seems to be many sources of emeralds, decent quality gemstones are still difficult 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 costly gemstones, you ought to get a signed certificate of weight and quality when you purchase an emerald.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a variety of topics, and is now concerned with Amber in Poland. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Jewellry and Watches.