We’re certain most jewelry lovers or even jewelers don’t spend their days watching foreign currency markets and hypothesizing as to the effects they may have on the cost of their next jewelry piece. But if you have been watching the U.S. Dollar and the Euro versus the Colombian Peso, maybe you’ve realized that now is a ‘must buy’ time if you’re in the market to buy Colombian emeralds…direct from Colombia. We say ‘direct’ because emerald prices sold in Colombian pesos remain stable, but right now the Dollar and the Euro have more buying power in pesos than at any time in the last several years.

At the time this article is published, the Colombian Peso is trading at 2575 pesos to 1 U.S. Dollar and 3247 pesos to 1 Euro. These are high exchange rates and spell huge discounts for emerald buyers paying in dollars or euros. If you take a look at the chart below you’ll see that the dollar is peaking in strength after a very weak stretch in 2008. Since a low point of 1615 pesos, the dollar has surged more than 50%. The Euro was not quite as weak as the dollar, but it is riding a wave as well.

To put individual emerald prices into perspective, a good quality emerald that sold for 3,000,000 pesos while the dollar was dragging the floor at 1615 pesos would cost about $1858 dollars. This same emerald bought today could be purchased for just $1165. This is almost a 40% savings. Granted, 1615 pesos was a very weak point for the dollar in recent years, but the current high rates are beyond excellent for emerald buying and may not last long before they give up 15-20% to return to more typical levels.

If you want to jump at the chance to purchase emeralds at this very opportune time, we recommend you get in touch with us right away before the rate changes. We buy our emeralds in Colombia and get them straight to you. You’ll save money across the entire price spectrum, but if you’re purchasing a fine stone of several thousand dollars, you’re really going to notice the difference. You’ll also have made a great investment in this difficult economy. This is a clear cut opportunity for excellent value purchases for consumers and increased profits for jewelers and resellers that just simply isn’t there if you buy your emeralds from middlemen… you need to buy close to the source to get the most from the current market. As an American company buying in Colombia, Embassy Emeralds is uniquely positioned to help you do just that.

To put us to the task and help you take advantage of the current prices, call Embassy Emeralds at +1(708) 336-3690 or email us.

1) Emerald Quality – Emerald quality is a very important consideration as it will have a major impact on the other two considerations that follow. If you’re on a budget, you may not be able to afford the emerald you dream of, so you must carefully weigh the different emerald characteristics such as color and clarity and the presence or prevalence of inclusions in order to choose a stone that you can be satisfied with, within your budget.

2) Price – The price of your ring is highly dependent on the quantity and quality of the materials used to make it. Remember, that while you can find cheap gemstone jewelry all over the internet, you almost always get what you pay for. Any smart vendor knows what their merchandise is worth so you should be realistic about the quality you expect to receive if you buy a cheap ring. Cheap emerald rings will often have poor quality emeralds from Africa, South Asia, or Brazil; dull, low quality accent diamonds; and be made of cheap 14kt gold alloys.

3) Design – Design is very important because obviously you want a design that you’re going to enjoy well after the initial excitement of having a beautiful new emerald ring subsides a little. For some, that means having a ring design that focuses mainly on the emerald and lets you easily admire and study its features and for others that means having a well balanced design that’s simply pleasing as a complete package without much focus on the size of the emerald or any single feature.

Here we’ve put up several of our emerald ring designs to show you some of the unlimited creative possibilities. Notice how some feature mostly just the emerald and others focus more on the complete design. Many of these rings are currently available for purchase at Embassy Emeralds.

Emerald Ring Notes:

- Some fine jewelers will only work with gold that is 18kt or higher. If a jeweler or online jewelry seller has only 14kt gold pieces, this may tell you something about the quality of the jewelry you can expect from the vendor. It may also tell you that you can probably expect lower quality emeralds and accent diamonds as well.

- If buying online or from a catalog, keep in mind that while some sellers may have dozens of rings of a given style in their inventory, their website or catalog will only show a picture of one of them. Emeralds and other gems vary from stone to stone, so you may not get one that looks the same as in the picture. (Almost all of jewelry items for sale on Embassy Emeralds are one of kind pieces and the pictures shown are of the actual jewel.)

- Colombian emeralds are the finest emeralds in the world and the difference in price is often noticeable, but so is the quality. If you are only interested in owning quality emeralds, be sure the ring you choose contains only Colombian emeralds.

- You might think that all accent diamonds are the same, but this is most certainly not the case. Fine jewelers use only good quality accent diamonds in their pieces, but you’d be surprised at how few jewelers on the average do this. Good quality accent diamonds cost several times more than cheaper ones, but the difference is very noticeable and a knowledgeable customer will identify a cheap accent right away. If you’ve never paid much attention, we recommend you do and demand more from your jeweler.

All of the above designs are available online only from Embassy Emeralds. Some may have been sold but can be recreated to meet your individual requirements, with or without modifications to the original design.

When you visit Embassy Emeralds note the AlphaSSL image shown above in the left column. Clicking on it will show you security information relative to our SSL Certificate which lets you know that you’re safe buying jewelry and gemstones from Embassy Emeralds. Also, note the padlock that appears in your browser as you proceed through the checkout process. In Internet Explorer, it will appear on the right side of the address bar. In Firefox, it will be in the lower right corner of the screen. Clicking on these padlocks will show you that the information on the page is being encrypted using 256bit SSL encryption.

To give you a sense of how strong this encryption is. We’ve paraphrased an article on Brute Force attacks from the Wikipedia…

Emeralds are considered by historians as the first gemstone ever discovered. They have thousands of years of history, and with a long history comes longstanding beliefs, traditions, and mystique. That’s definitely the case with Emeralds, but they certainly don’t need any help. People enjoy them for the beautiful gems that they are and recognize the traits that have made them so popular for so long. One of the most important traits is obviously their color. Emerald green is considered by many as the standard for green color and green is a color associated with my positive attributes or virtues such as fertility, prosperity, and tranquility. Besides these associations, a beautiful emerald and its distinctive color is simply soothing to look at.

This soothing appearance and the instinctive association with these very positive attributes is one reason why many people prefer emeralds over sapphires, rubies, and other gems. But to think about it, it makes sense. Many see diamonds as way overdone, and sapphires have become very common. Rubies are still an interesting choice but red has never been considered a soothing color by anyone. That leaves emeralds, which are seen by most as very elegant and will probably never be thought of as ‘overdone’. You might even be surprised to know that some feel so strongly about having emeralds over other stones that they choose emeralds in place of diamonds for their wedding and engagement rings.

Also very interesting sometimes are the requests we receive from our customers. By now, almost everyone who’s passionate about emeralds knows we can source them on request but some also know we can source diamonds and other gems as well. Some of the interesting requests we’ve had lately are for: canary yellow diamonds (still searching), alexandrite (found), trapiche emerald cut into a hex shape (we just cut it), emeralds specifically requested with inclusions (easily done), and many other items besides good quality emeralds that help make each day interesting, because you never know what the next request will be.

Another interesting aspect of working with gems in a major gem trading city is the speed at which gemstones move in the marketplace. Every day hundreds, if not thousands of stones change hands. And that’s just amongst the small time dealers and jewelers. Larger brokers make million dollar transactions on a regular basis as well. It’s really remarkable and it often reminds me that I’m right in the heart of it all.

Colombian emeralds are already known as the world’s finest emeralds because of their superior color and quality. This new development will only help their reputation and is a major leap forward for the Colombian emerald trade that will distance Colombian emeralds even further from the rest of the pack, raise consumer confidence levels in Colombian emeralds to all time highs, and provide yet another reason for buyers to demand Colombian emeralds over any others.

You’ll need to use the classic 4 C’s as your guide to choosing a replacement emerald but the 4 C’s alone are not enough. In this case you’re not just looking for any emerald, you need to find a replacement emerald with some very specific requirements. Therefore your main considerations will probably focus on four main areas: Size, cut, quality, and cost. Here we’ll take a look at each of these and hopefully give you ideas on where you can find flexibility and options when choosing your new emerald.

The size of the emerald is an important consideration. Obviously you want it to fit in the same setting where the old gemstone was. For prong type gem settings and small to average size stones there should be no problem to quickly locate a suitable replacement and get it set. It would be helpful to know the size of your lost or broken stone but it’s very unlikely that we’d think to measure and record the dimensions of our gems before something unfortunate happens. Luckily prong settings give us a fair amount of flexibility and even rough measurements taken after the loss of the stone will probably suffice. If your stone was a very large one or has bezel setting, the quest may take a bit more time or demand more of the jeweler who performs the repair.

The cut of the emerald is another obvious consideration. For bezel settings you have very little choice but to get the same cut with the same proportions unless you’re prepared to do some potentially major modifications to the jewel. For prong settings, many times you can make changes. For smaller stones, you can sometimes substitute an oval, trilliant, and maybe even a princess or square emerald cut gem for a round cut stone or the other way around. It’s worth some thought because this is one of the opportunities I spoke of. With a minor change in the shape of your stone, you can possibly make an average looking design much more attractive.

Quality and cost usually go hand in hand when you’re talking about emeralds and so we’ll discuss them here together. It’s very likely that you’ll want to match or exceed the quality of the stone that you had before, and so that becomes the basis for comparing the new stone to. If your budget allows, this is another opportunity where you can go for an upgrade and choose a much better stone than you had before. But if your budget does not allow for flexibility, it could limit your choices. You have to consider that you may not be able to afford a stone of the quality that you have in mind. And you need to settle for an emerald with a slightly lesser color. Sacrificing on clarity can make a difference as well, but color typically has a more significant impact on the price of emeralds, just as it does for many other colored gemstones.

Hopefully you never lose or damage your emeralds, but if you do or just want to change gems, remember what you learned here and remember to let Embassy Emeralds do the heavy lifting for you. We have access to countless emeralds right from the source in Colombia in almost any size, cut, quality, or price range imaginable. Contact us today and put us to work for you.

Because of the cost of certifying a stone, certifications are not always practical. Therefore, gems without certifications should not be dismissed. Major laboratories charge hundreds of dollars for certifications and may charge even more for larger and/or finer gems. These costs are passed directly on to the consumer and dictates that most dealers will choose not to certify all stones in order to keep prices at an affordable level. Recently the American Gemological Laboratory began issuing lower cost certifications with different levels of certification that are becoming more and more recognized in the marketplace.

Recognition in the marketplace is important for many certifications, especially if you plan to resell a gem. Buyers interested in gems that have certifications must trust in the legitimacy of the certificate and the issuing authority or it is virtually useless. Untrained jewelers and self-interested parties often issue ‘certifications’ for their merchandise, but truth-be-told, these carry no weight amongst reputable buyers and sellers. A reputable and independent gemologist or laboratory must be used. Embassy Emeralds recommends the following laboratories and the independent gemologists trained by them in no particular order:

AGL – American Gemological Laboratories
AGS – American Gem Society
AGTA – American Gem Trade Association
AIGS – Asian Institute of Gemological Sciences
EGL – European Gemological Laboratories
GIA – Gemological Institute of America
IGI – International Gemological Institute

There are many, many more, but these are a few of the more recognized names in gemstone laboratories. We welcome any comments suggesting other labs and gemologists.

Emeralds are obviously the most famous type of beryl. In mineral terms, emerald is known as green beryl but not all green beryl can be called an emerald. It has to be gem quality, which very little green beryl is. Emeralds tend to be much more included than other gemstones and even other beryls.

Aquamarine is another famous beryl that many people adore. The best ones come from Brazil and they tend to be relatively free of inclusions and possess good brilliance.

Dark blue beryl or maxixe is quite rare. It comes only from Brazil and gets its color from natural radiation deep within the earth. An interesting fact, however, is that it can lose its color when exposed to heat, UV light, or sunlight.

Yellow beryl is best known as heliodor or golden beryl. With a bright yellow gold color its quite and interesting looking gemstone. Heliodor was discovered in the early 1900’s and was poised to become a popular gemstone until World War I and II got in the way and it was forgotten about for decades.

Red beryl is the rarest of the beryls and very little gem quality red beryl makes it to market from the Wah Wah Mountains of Utah in the United States where it is found. Some refer to it as Bixbite, Bixbyite, or Red Emerald, which is a bit controversial because the word emerald specifically refers to green stones.

Pink beryl might seem like some fancy synthetic created gemstone made for niche boutiques and people who obsess about the color pink, but it actually occurs naturally this way. Orange, peach, and lilac tones are also common with deep pink or lilac being the most desireable (and expensive). Interestingly, this stone was named after J.P. Morgan of J.P. Morgan Chase Bank and Morgan Stanley fame. He was one of the most important gemstone collectors of his time and stones from his collection can be found in the American Museum of Natural History.

Last, but not least is goshenite, also known as colorless beryl. Goshenite gets its name from the town of Goshen, Massachusetts in the United States. It’s by far the most abundant and affordable type of beryl and is often found in close proximity to colored beryls.

Embassy Emeralds has access to almost unlimited emeralds, emeralds in matrix, and green beryl mineral specimens and more. We have sources for quality aquamarine and other gems from Brazil as well. Contact us today to find out more!

Golden Beryl image source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Beryl.jpg Author: Vzb83