Fake Emerald & Old Tricks

welcome back everybody to another episode of gemology Schmucks my name is Peter Nelson I'm here to guide you in everything you need to know about gemstones as I was cutting my most recent round Stone I was reminded of one of the oldest tricks in the book this is oftentimes used for imitating emeralds and it's cheap and easy way to make a nice trinket so my goal in this episode is to tell you about this oldest treatment that may not be historically accurate what is it how do you detect it and how does it affect the gem market so this oldest of treatments is actually indicated by this comically large gemstone right here but this isn't something that you need to worry about in the gemstone Market because it's ginormous and what you can make a pendant out of it I doubt it even I'm not that flashy no no no much more often you'll see it in Stones like this imitation emeralds and this treatment is in fact coding now coding is a really really really really easy really really really really cheap way to treat gemstones and as the name may make you realize coding is basically just putting color on top now there are many different ways to do that there are inexpensive low-tech ways and then there are high-tech ways the inexpensive low-tech way we see in these cabochons right here basically this is something like nail polish or a synthetic enamel something like that and it's basically just smeared on the top so it provides a pretty striking color I think we can all agree on that even if it doesn't always look Supernatural though I have seen gemstones with this color and certainly seen gemstones with this coat now what it is is oftentimes an earth mind gemstone that is incredibly inexpensive and oftentimes difficult to move on its own so low quality gaussianite which is a type of barrel can be used to imitate Emerald which is also a type of barrel simply by adding a green color to it and the nice thing is oftentimes even low-grade Emerald can still be very expensive so you can use low-grade gaussianite add some green on top of it and boom you've got a product now of course it's very important to be careful about this because this is the kind of thing that certain deceivers would like to use as a tool to get your money but fortunately for you this is also very easy to detect this low-grade variety of coding is basically just painted on right so anybody who's ever done their nails which would not be me oh okay you've seen my close-ups you know that this is a out of hand oh gosh that was painful pun for shame but anyway when you're painting these things on if you're not careful with the brush it will leave bubbles so that is something that if you look very closely at this cabochon you will see bubbles from where the layer of color started to harden and thicken up because it's highly viscous and so it hardened into that bubble shape or traps bubbles underneath another layer that's one way we can detect this another thing that we see much more in these fasted Stones is where the color has actually seeped into the cracks to some degree which in the case of this dyed oceanite right here imitating an emerald is quite obvious look at those color concentrations right along the cracks stones with natural cracks in them or cracks that are put there by quench crackling that's heating it up and then shocking it so it creates cracks they'll then put colored dye down into those fissures so Stones like this which naturally have them and may have similar inclusions to Natural Emerald this makes for a very convincing basic level of emerald not the high-end stuff but hey when gosh Knight something like twenty dollars a gram you can get a very large Stone much larger than someone with very small budget would ever go for in Emerald the total treated stone is going to be less than one carat a pretty lousy Emerald so this is definitely an opportunity for them and for people who want to make inexpensive but very flashy jewelry you want a big old emerald ring just make sure that when you're selling it you call it treated ghost night or imitation Emerald it cannot be called Emerald on its own that would be deceit and also illegal in the United States vote for thought now this is the low-tech variety of coding the high-tech variety of coating you would see in other faceted gemstones and more often this is in what people call Mystic topaz or Mystic quartz an aqua Aura and all these other fantastic names but the high-tech version basically uses metal oxides or other coloring agents and sputters it in controlled conditions on top of the stone so the coating is much more even some processes even go a little bit further and they will kill net or heat it up in a controlled environment so that the color bonds to that top layer of the Stone own this is a lot like what they would do with car parts they will spray it down with their coloring agent put it into the Kiln and it creates a nice smooth glossy coating which makes it much harder to detect sometimes the color will give it away sometimes the color will not now with colorless topaz if you saw my other video you see that for me you can even get it for two dollars a gram super super cheap but natural pink topaz I have seen pieces that are very faint color but still going for over a thousand dollars a carrot so whether you're trying to make a trinket that's easy to buy and sell or you're a deceiver that's trying to get people's money this type of treatment is an opportunity and so we have to be very careful about it so how can we detect it these high-tech versions of Coatings we would need to take a gemstone and reflect it in light and look at that luster if it has a super high metallic luster that's unusual for most gemstones especially if we believe it to be pink topaz pink topaz should not have a metallic luster a crispy white luster yes but not a metallic luster so that would be the big giveaway for a flawlessly treated Stone so let's talk about durability for a moment if this is a stone that has been worn or put into jewelry at all for any length of time we may expect to be some wear and tear which this comically large gem actually shows right here on the facet Junctions it's kind of nibbled away and the color is starting to peel off because it is only a skin deep layer of beauty assuming you know the color appeals to you so scratches and peeling and differences in the color will show us that this may be a coated Stone same thing with chips if there are any chipped areas look for color differences and this is something we should be doing for all of the stones that we're inspecting once it gets into your habits it's something that will catch your eye right away you won't have to think about it so looking for wear and tear will help us a lot looking for bubbles looking for scratches and differences in color or color concentrations in the painted variety will help us to detect Coatings otherwise we need to reflect it in light and see if it has a higher luster than it should possibly have in a natural environment because remember these are metallic oxides that are being sputtered onto the surface the metallic oxides naturally may have metallic luster so why are we doing this there's always the two options some people are using Goods that might otherwise be unmovable and adding value to them creating trinkets out of otherwise white heavily included ghost Knight or topaz things like this and turn turning them into bright sparkly costume jewelry material and of course you've always got on the other side the deceivers and the best thing that you and I can do is to be aware of these types of treatments what they look like so that we can detect them because if deceivers have no space they'll go to somewhere else and try and deceive someone else with different tools and that's what we want because you can't catch everyone but what you can do is leave them no space just like back in the day if you took over a castle and you really didn't like those people you would salt the Earth good luck growing your potatoes here Chief so anyway if you've got any other questions please head over to jimsheper.com where you can contact me directly otherwise you can read blogs about investing in jewelry otherwise hit that like button hit that subscribe button if you haven't already tell all your friends about me and until next time bye services [Music] [Music]

Channel: Gemology for Schmucks

Views: 30,602

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Id: ya13P-TMNY4

Length: 7min 50sec (470 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 16 2022