The stones on an item you come across by chance on the way, a stone on a necklace you find among old items, and let’s say, the stone on the ring your lover bought; Is it really a precious stone? Of course, spiritual value is always our preference, but still, everyone has the right to know whether a stone is really a precious stone. You don’t necessarily need to consult an expert to find out.
There are simple methods you can use at home, by yourself, to find out if a stone is truly a precious stone. In fact, most of these methods are just to look at the stone, but you will look at it in such a way that you will be able to see all possible tricks or artifacts. Let’s take a closer look at how to understand whether a stone is a precious stone and see the methods you can apply.
Ways to understand that a stone is precious:
- First of all, learn what a precious stone is.
- Examine its surface and interior features.
- Take the risk to break it.
- Note its color and transparency.
- Weigh it with your hand.
- Test for hardness.
- Look at its brightness against the light.
First of all, find out what a precious stone is:
When you think of precious stone, we all think of emerald, ruby, diamond and the like, but you must admit that Gemstone means much more than that. Therefore, before trying to understand whether a stone is a precious stone or not, you should learn what a gemstone is.
You can get one of the gemstone catalogs approved by the Gemological Institute of America and similar organizations, but if you are not going to be constantly examining gemstones, you can use the websites. You can make your examinations more professional by accessing the Gem Select RI table via the link here, and you can learn the measurement values of precious stones by accessing the website of the American Federation of Mineralogy Societies via the link here.
Examine its surface and interior features:
To see if a stone is truly valuable, just tap it. If it has a rough or sandy surface, even if it is light, that stone is not valuable. The internal properties of the stone are also extremely important. Because even visible situations in its internal structure will reveal that the stone is an artificial stone.
The internal growth of artificial stones is curved. Round, large bands or even gas bubbles may be seen. Platinum and gold platelets tend to adhere to synthetic stones. Most importantly, there are traces of joining, zigzags and inner pillars, albeit fine, on the artificial stones.
Another type of stone you should pay attention to is imitation stones. It looks pretty real but is fake. They are pitted and rough like an orange peel. There are traces in it called streamlines. Most have large gas bubbles. Most of the time they are much lighter than natural stones and you can even tell by hand.
Take the risk of breaking:
If we are talking about a large stone rather than a small one, we have a test that is not preferred much. Take the hammer and hit the stone. If it’s breaking it’s a gemstone, if it’s being bent or crushed it’s a metallic ore. Because precious stones do not bend, bend, shape easily and therefore break. You can do whatever you want with metals.
Note its color and transparency:
The color of gemstones is extremely important. If it’s not a masterful imitation, you’ll know what color it is just by looking at it. However, some may require further investigation. Let’s say from the beginning, if you do not have a very dark stone in your hand, you do not need to hold it to the light. It’s a scene that’s shown in movies to make it look cool.
You shouldn’t say color. The Gemological Institute of America divides stones into 31 different colors. When toning and saturation are involved, it would be unfair to call a stone just red. Understand the saturation of the stone over gray and brown by identifying warm colors such as yellow, orange, red, and cold tones such as purple, blue, green.
Transparency is also extremely important for a gemstone. Gemstones are either transparent, translucent or opaque. For example, diamonds are completely transparent. Stones like ameist and aquamarine are translucent, so you can see both the back and the inside when you look around. Stones such as opal are opaque. So it doesn’t have any transparency.
Weigh with your hands like this:
Weight is extremely important for gemstones, but it may not always be possible to manually measure the actual weight of a stone. Still, the first thing to do for the first check is to take the stone and weigh it in one hand. If it is not as heavy as it seems, that is, it is light, it is unlikely that it is a precious stone.
At this point, it is necessary to open a parenthesis because specific gravity comes into play. Some gemstones can be light or heavy due to their appearance. Therefore, if you are not an expert, manual weight control does not make much sense for a precise result. However, when you weigh it in your hand, you can realize that it is something more or less valuable.
Hardness test:
Again, similar to the crushing test, we also have a test on hardness. Most gemstones are extremely hard. As you know, glass is cut with diamonds. It is possible to see many examples of this. If you want to understand whether the stone in your hand is really a precious stone, you can test it on a hard surface. Of course, it is also important what material the hard surface is made of.
If you say, what do I know about the surface material, go to the kitchen and get a ceramic plate. Using the stone, draw a line on the ceramic. The quality of the line indicates the value of the stone. Take it one step further and try breaking the stone. The more power it takes to break it, the higher the probability that the stone will be valuable.
Look at its brightness against the light:
The brightness of the stone in the face of light is also an effective method to understand whether it is a precious stone or not. Pass a thin beam of light, called pen light, through the stone. You should see color changes as light passes through it. In fact, these color changes must be in many different colors, in many different lights.
You should also see its standard brightness in a bright ambient light. For this, you should use a magnifying glass that provides 10x zoom. When you examine it, check to see if the inside of the stone looks dull, waxy, shiny, glassy, oily or silky. All of these will help you understand whether a stone is a gem or not.
We answered the question of how to understand whether a stone is really a precious stone and we talked about the methods you can apply to understand whether that stone is valuable or not. Of course, there are much more effective methods, but these require advanced tools.
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