I need to buy some wedding rings and stuff. We want tanzanite gemstones. I sent a flock of Filipinos out over the weekend to find the best deals in town on the stone. (They get a better price than an American would.) They found some stones in the right size, but are not happy that they are the real deal.
A few years ago I paid for a peridot, I took it home to be set and discovered it was a fake.
Is there any way a civilian can be sure he is buying an actual tanzanite gemstone?
There’s nothing I know of without a little specialized equipment (nothing like rubbing pearls on your teeth), but it’s not expensive or hard to use equipment.
You can use a tanzanite filter and dichroscope: http://www.mineralab.com/Tanzanite_Filter.htm
Oh! So that is how they do it! If he has a filter, he is legit, if not he is not.
(Too late to get my own filter, sorry to say.)
I see a few websites advertising tanzanite as “1000 times rarer than diamonds”. Is this misleading? I was under the impression that diamonds as a whole were very common, and that only jewelery quality diamonds (which are not specified) are of any rarity at all.
Yes and no. Jewelry grade diamonds are not very rare at all. But rarity is a bit hard to put your finger on, as this article explains:
Plus if a gem is too rare, it cannot enter the marketplace to the point where people have heard of it, and it becomes very UNvaluable, because no one is looking to buy it. So just being rare doesn’t make something valuable.
Tanzanite is only mined in a very small area, unlike diamonds which are mined all over the world. I am pretty sure it is far more rare than a diamond – not sure about the 1,000 number, but I could believe it. Lots and lots of fairly moderately priced gems are more rare than diamonds. That doesn’t mean a tanzanite is more valuable than a diamond. It depends.
As Hello Again said, Tanzanite is much, much rarer than a diamond.
Be sure if you’re buying Tanzanite to get the deeper colored stones. When we first started carrying Tanzanite in our store about 18 years ago, we only purchased the best colored stones. When the gem hit the department stores and tv shopping channels, they were passing off very pale stones which had little value, even though they were Tanzanite.
Here’s what appears to be a good page showing some colors and explaining much about the gem.
Is it many times more expensive than diamond?