Jewelry Facts for Dummies

You have all seen them in bookstores, manuals for Dummies that include nearly everything in life, such as computers, cooking, sailing, even staying in a relationship. So I figured, why not one listing the facts for the wonderful world of jewelry? 

As I sit here writing this from my showroom, I hear my daughter explain to an unhappy customer the simple fact that silver tarnishes, as it has for hundreds of years. You know, like grandma’s sterling silver serving service that was a pain to keep shiny unless you polished it all the time. It does not matter if the piece of jewelry came from Tiffany’s, Cartier or an outdoor bazaar in Timbuktu, silver will tarnish. There have been some breakthroughs in new alloys you can add to the silver to make it a bit more tarnish-resistant (Another fact - sterling silver is not pure silver. It is mixed with other metals (alloys) to make it workable for jewelry and silverware). Many factors make sterling silver tarnish; low-quality sterling silver, perspiration or a dive into the Gulf or a chlorinated swimming pool will turn black pronto! Fact…If you want to avoid tarnished silver, get white gold instead.

“Can you melt my smaller diamonds to make one big one?”

Believe me, I have been asked this on more than one occasion. That would be a big NO! It’s a fact. You cannot melt diamonds of any size to make a larger one. That would be the same as melting a pile of loose gravel to make a large boulder! Then again, if you can find me an active volcano and you can give me a couple of hundred million years or so, I’ll be happy to give it a try.

“How in the world did I chip my diamond? I thought they were unbreakable?”

Fact. You can chip, crack, or break any diamond. It is one of the hardest substances on earth and you can certainly still damage them. Diamonds with thin girdles (the edge of the diamond) are very susceptible to chipping. Same goes for the points on marquis and pear-shaped diamonds. One should remove such a diamond when around pots and pans or performing heavy cleaning and especially out in the garden. 

Diamonds don’t burn… sorta – kinda true fact. It’s the dirt, lotion or food residue behind your diamond(s) that will burn and stain the outer skin of a diamond making the diamonds appear brown or black. That can be caused by inexperienced “jewelers” who rush the job and do not properly clean the jewelry needing repair and requires using a torch on or near the diamonds; they will certainly burn your uncleaned diamonds. 

Case in point: years ago, I had a couple from the great white north come in with a burnt block of what appeared to be a Salvador Dali piece of artwork; apparently, this couple did not read “Jewelry Safekeeping for Dummies.” I was told that while they were on vacation, they hid their family jewels in the basement trash incinerator for safekeeping. You guessed it… The hubby fricasseed not only all their valuable diamond jewelry but also their matching Rolex Presidential gold watches. Cash that is now only ashes mixed in this fused New England clam bake on my counter. I was able to salvage the diamonds and some precious gemstones that somehow survived the barbeque and sent them off to a diamond cutter to be polished, for they were badly burnt. The watches were toast, and I sent the rest of the block to a refiner to separate gold from platinum. 

“If I give you my deceased husband’s gold tooth, can you use it to make my ring larger? That will make it cost less, right?!” Wrong!

It would actually cost more for the goldsmith to melt then alloy the tooth to the proper karat, color and shape to use it in sizing the ring; more time and labor, more money.  

Fact…I personally do not use dental gold in my shop. Besides being gross and macabre, it is full of unknown alloys that make it brittle and difficult to work with.

“This is my grandmother ‘sapphire ring.’ It’s very old, so it has to be real - I was told it is worth thousands!” Fact…Not all that glitters is gold, and not all blue stones are sapphires. Fact…Imitation gemstones have been around for centuries. Experts recently discovered that the famous gold death mask of King Tut was not set with all precious gemstones but mixed with fake glass “gems” created by ancient Egyptian artisans. On close examination, I informed her that Grammy’s sapphire was, in fact, a good imitation blue doublet created in the early 1900s. There were also tons of glass “gems” created in the 1800s used in costume jewelry. The not-so-genuine sapphire may have fooled a lot of jewelers and the buffoon who called himself a gemologist telling this poor woman it was worth thousands, but not this one! It may have looked expensive, but it is, in fact, very inexpensive to purchase one of these even today.

“My mother/husband told me not to trust any jeweler with my diamond because they will switch it for a lesser quality one!”

I have heard this comment more times than I can count. Years ago, it would always irk me and I would say if you don’t trust me, please go elsewhere. Trust is a two-way street. Then as the years progressed, I heard it even more in this non-trusting world we now live in. I began to understand why folks were being more than just cautious so would then show the customer what their diamond looked like under magnification and point out identifying features of “their diamond” before and after the work was done to ensure the customer peace of mind and me the unnecessary and painful nonsense of untrusting souls.

 Then there are others who would tell me the only way they would leave the ring to be sized (or whatever) would demand either I remove the diamond while they watch my every move in my shop behind my counter so they could hold it while I “do the work” and put it back in when I finished the ring, which is totally ridiculous. Ha! Let me get this straight, I'm letting total strangers behind my counter in my back shop with customer’s jewelry in envelopes, and I’m supposed to trust you back there while I do your repair? I don’t need the money that badly, folks! Fact…You have two chances of that happening - none and never gonna happen