Jewelry Grading

For thousands of years jewelry has been used for many reasons, many of which religiously or even just for looks. For this reason alone it is no wonder that jewelry is still used in today’s society to represent attractiveness, power or wealth. Jewelry is also one great form of investing if you can know what exactly you are getting. You may not think of it much, but the value of jewelry and the products used to create them are what many nations and societies were even slaughtered for.

There are many types of jewelry and many methods of creating them. There are certain things taken into account when judging jewelry such as the quality of the gem or the piece of jewelry itself. Since the quality of something is decided by how it’s produced, something that needs to be looked at is how they are made and how problems occur. One method that will be discussed is called the “Lost Wax Process”.

In the “Lost Wax Process” a wax model of a piece of jewelry is created. This wax model has no flaw if done right and when it is in peak condition a wax stick is attached to it. This wax stick creates a sprue in the resulting mold. A sprue is a tube or passageway used to allow melted materials to travel through the mold. Many of these pieces of wax jewelry with a sprue attached are created. These pieces are than attached to each other to create one mold where melted gold or silver can flow to each section of the mold.

This large piece of wax is called an investment. The investment is put into a plaster-like substance and when hard it is cooked in order to melt or burn the wax inside. Now there is a final mold that gold and silver can flow through and make many pieces of jewelry, though every piece has to be filled so the overall mold is spun when the mold is being filled to make sure of this. There are many methods of creating jewelry besides this but this is the most common, in this method sometimes you wind up with jewelry with air bubbles that make the piece weaker. Sometimes this cannot even be seen but they still exist and lower it’s value.

Though in order to tell the value of a piece of jewelry more has to be taken into account, such as what are the value of gem or gems is has. There is a tem used in the jeweler community called the “four Cs”, these stand for carat weight, clarity, cut and color.

The carat weight of a gemstone is not the same as a karat used in terms of gold jewelry. A carat is the weight of a gem, one carat is the same as 0.2 grams and another term “points” is the same as 0.1 carats. On the other hand, karat is a term used to tell how much of gold is used in a piece of golden jewelry. For instance, a 22-karat piece of jewelry means that it is 22 parts gold and 2 parts of another material, an 18-karat piece of gold jewelry means that there are 18 parts gold and 6 parts of another material. There are a total of 24 parts when determining the amount of karats.

Larger gems are a lot more rare than smaller ones; therefore these pieces are worth a higher value. Just like in any type of investment, something that’s more rare is worth more. Since these pieces are more rare they are also worth more per carat.

Clarity (just as you would have guessed) is how clear the gemstone is. Every gem may have a few of what is called an inclusion. And inclusion is a flaw such as pieces of another mineral or scratches that make light not pass through the jewel as easily. Gemstones with more of these are worth less even if the inclusion is so small it cannot be seen by the naked eye or if a professional grader cannot see it easily with special tools.

The cut of a gemstone represents the work put into it. Something like this can have a huge affect on the value of a piece of jewelry. Check certain things such as if the edges of a facet (side of a gem) are connecting well. Something this small of a change can make a gem not look as well. If the gem is not faceted, meaning it is a Cabochon gem or one that is polished and has no sides, hold it up to your face and turn it making sure that it flows nicely.

The last of the “four Cs’ yet to be mentioned is the color of the gemstone. Obviously colors that are deeper and richer are more highly priced and therefore have a greater value. A gemstone of a deep green, red or blue will be worth higher than a gemstone that is perhaps a light orange. The affect of the color for pricing can vary depending on the value of the gem according to other characteristics. If the gemstone is not highly valued the affect of the price because of its color will be less, though if you are investing in jewelry that is more expensive, color is definitely something that should be taken into account with your purchase.

Many societies have died for something so small. The reason is so simple though, jewelry is valuable and I believe always will be. As long as people want to show their personality than jewelry should be there along side them, just the same, if you want to show your affection to someone, something as beautiful as a piece of jewelry can greatly affect your relationship.