Gems Glossary

Color
Color is the number one factor in determining the value of any gemstone. The more intense the color, the more valuable.

Hardness
Hardness is based on a gem-trade standard called the Mohs scale. The higher the Mohs scale number, the harder the stone is. The highest Mohs scale rating is 10 (diamonds). Anything with a Mohs scale rating of less than 7 is easily scratched (such as coral, lapis lazuli, opal, pearl, and turquoise). Gold, silver, and platinum are only Mohs 2-1/2 to 4.

Carat
Carat is a metric unit of weight used in the gemstone industry to describe how much a gemstone weighs. A carat is equal to one fifth of a gram or it can be said that there are five carats in one gram.

Points
A decimal fraction of a carat. One point is equal to .01 of a carat. The weight of both gem and industrial diamonds is expressed in metric carats. One carat equals one fifth of a gram.

Cut
Cut is what gives a gemstone its beauty and brilliance. When viewing a gemstone, looking at the table, a well cut gemstone will be very bright across the entire surface. This brightness is light being bounced around inside the gemstone, reflecting back to your eye. You cannot see through a well cut gemstone because almost all light is being reflected back towards your eyes. Poorly cut gemstones maybe too shallow or too deep causing what is called a "window". Windows are some thing that you are meant to look through and these are better left as windshields in you car or as windows in your home. If you can see through a gemstone looking from the table down towards the culet, the point on the bottom, it has a window. If you can see through a gemstone it means that light is passing through it, along with color and brilliance. Windows weaken the intensity of color and severely affect brilliance. The brilliant cut is the most popular. This has 58 facets, 33 above the girdle (circle at greatest diameter) and 25 below. The task of the highly skilled diamond cutter is to place the facets so that the most light rays will reflect through the top facets. Gemstones with windows are not desirable, they lack beauty and brilliance. You want gemstones that have "mirrors" that reflect back to you all of the beauty and brilliance .

Clarity
Clarity is the term used to describe how clean a gemstone is using a monochromatic color corrected 10X magnification. The Gemological Institute of America (GIA) has set forth standards for clarity grading of Colored Gemstones and Diamond.