Glossary

Not alphabetized
(Definitions and / or Opinion)

It sometimes seems, that no one takes the time to explain anything anymore. If you have a question about a Jewelry term, just ask!

Sterling: Silver is a white, valuable metal. Traditional photography is dependent on the use of silver. It is reasonably priced but will tarnish or oxidize with age. Sterling Silver, abbreviated SS is used to denote the percentage of nickel present as an alloy. Sterling silver is 92.5% silver 7.5% Nickel. It is often marked ".925" It is considered ideal.

Rhodium: A metal electroplated over silver. It has a "Chrome like" shine. It is used to prevent the silver from tarnishing. It can wear off however, in which case the item tarnishes in a non-uniform manner. It complicates the resizing of rings and other jewelry work.

Coin Silver: Is 80% silver and 20% Nickel alloy.

German Silver: Has no silver at all. It is a mixture of metals used as a substitute.

Karat Gold: Pure gold is too soft to make anything out of under normal conditions. It has to be alloyed, mixed with other metals, to make into Jewelry.

If an item is 10K it is 10/24 gold, the remainder is the alloy (more on alloys below).

10K is 10/24 gold 14K is 14/24 gold 18K is 18/24 gold 24K is 24/24 gold

That can be divided into a percentage if you like:

10K = 41.6% Gold 14K = 58.3% Gold 18K = 75.0% Gold 24K = 100% Gold

Items are often marked .750 instead of 18K, (or other decimal equivalents) especially if they originated in Europe.

The more alloy an item has, the better it will wear, but the shade of color will change, yellow gold will lighten, white gold will whiten, rose gold will darken, green gold will become greener.

Alloys: All pure gold is intrinsically a deep yellow color, almost brassy in appearance. Mixing copper and Nickel as alloys yields Yellow gold. Copper alone, as an allow, yields Rose gold. Nickel alone, as an alloy, yields White gold. Silver instead of either, yields Green Gold. These colors will be familiar to anyone who has admired "Black Hills Gold" jewelry. There are other trace alloys, primarily zinc, but these are the predominate metals used.

Gold Plated: Items marked with a Karat marking followed by "HGE" or "GE" are gold plated. An example is "18K HGE" or "24K Plate." Those markings are telling you that the item has been dipped into a gold bearing solution and electricity run through it to make the gold stick. It is VERY thin and will wear off in time. HGE means "Heavy Gold Electroplate."

Vermeil: The best material to electroplate with gold, is silver. Most gold plated jewelry is Zinc, which is near worthless. Vermeil however is of a higher quality, having a more valuable metal (silver) beneath the gold, to which the gold sticks better.

Gold Filled: This has more gold than electroplate and will generally wear very satisfactorily, but it is inexpensive, so it should not cost very much to purchase.

Typical markings may read: "1/20 12K GF" which would mean one-twentieth of the weight is 12K Gold.

Now 12/24 is 50%, so what they are saying is that 1/20th of the weight is half gold. They might just as well mark it 1/40th gold, but that is not what they do.

Platinum: A metal different from gold, somewhat more rare, harder, so it wears better, but also more difficult to work with. It can look more grayish than white gold, which is often used as a substitute for platinum. Platinum is often marked "Platinum" "Plat" or "Plat 10% Irid" (Irid means Iridium, it is used as an alloy).

Carat Weight: In ancient Egypt a plant grew with seeds that were a very uniform weight due to their genetics. They used a simple balance scale to work out trade. If an item took 4 Keration, or Carat seeds to balance the scale, it was described as weighing 4 Carats. A half a Carat was not too hard to work out either.

Today however, mankind has learned to weigh individual atoms! Therefore, a better system was needed. The term Carat was simply divided into 100 parts and these were termed "Points." No sharp objects are involved, I think it is just a case that "they had to call it something"!

Points: There are 100 points in a Carat, so 50 points is a half a carat, 25 points is a quarter carat and so on. If an item is just a bit over a half a carat, it is more precise to be able to call it 56 points, and we have sensitive scales that can do so.

Grams: There are 31.1 Grams in a Troy Ounce, which is what jewelers use. An ounce of gold usually sells in the 300 - 350 dollar range as pure gold. This price varies daily. The price can often be found in the paper. This is for pure gold, however. Karat gold is a percentage of this price and it's cost depends on whether it is made into jewelry or not. There has to be some substantial markup on jewelry, such as gold chain, to reflect the costs of labor and doing business. Gram is abbreviated g.

Pennyweight: One Pennyweight equals 1.55517 Grams. It is abbreviated DWT. It is somewhat harder for our customers to work with this generally unfamiliar term, so we use Grams. Others however sometimes use Pennyweights.

Wholesale: Here is a term that is vastly Abused by retailers in our country. A fairly long and detailed explanation is needed. There is an awareness that wholesale is the price that a store pays when they buy an item.

An Invoice lists that cost.

Years ago, car dealers began to sell cars for "$1 dollar over factory invoice." This led many buyers to believe that they were paying an unreasonably low price for the car. The government responded by making them start using terms such as; "Excluding Factory to dealer incentives" in all such advertising. I believe many people are still misled, however. Many do not hear, or comprehend the meaning of the term; factory to dealer incentive. I'm tempted to think of it as cash handed back under the table, from the factory to the dealer, thus the so called "Invoice" does not reflect the true cost of the vehicle to the dealer. The invoice is thus changed from a bookkeeping item, into a sales tool.

Something similar happens in the jewelry trade. There are a number of "wholesale" price lists that purport to list the average costs of Diamonds to the Jewelers. These are legitimately used by jewelers to compare prices when obtaining diamonds. Is the asking price the same as this list? Is it lower? It works well for comparison shopping by a jeweler in that context.

However, many Jewelers show these lists to the customers and then represent themselves as selling the Diamond at or below Wholesale to the customer.

It is a fact, however that many, if not most diamond dealers sell to Jewelers (any jewelers, not just big ones) at discounts below the prices shown in these lists as wholesale. Additionally, further discounts are often made for non-certified diamonds. Therefore, any customer misled into thinking that they are not buying Retail, is in my opinion, being taken advantage of. Only a business with a tax number can buy wholesale.

This means a business who buys wholesale never pays tax on the item. That is what their tax number is for. It shows the government that the buyer is reselling the item, and that tax will be charged at that time. Did you pay tax? Then you paid retail.

Did you not pay tax? Then the store discounted the item by the amount of the tax, before taxing it, and said words to the effect that they were having a no tax sale, or they would pay the tax for you etc. The cash register can be programed to do this.

The item was sold to you at a retail price and the government still got paid the tax. If no tax is charged on a retail sale the business owner will likely go to jail, pay a big fine, or both.

Retail: (see wholesale above) Retail is the price paid by the store, multiplied by the markup. Typically a lower priced item is marked up a higher percentage than a higher priced item.

Many people are scandalized to think that they are being charged a price, more than a scant few percent, higher than the store owner paid for an item. Frankly, it is impossible to run a business without an honest markup. The markup is used to pay the bills; utilities, employees, rent or mortgage, security, etc. etc. The bigger the store, the bigger the bills.

So many people have grown up "hearing" that they can buy a $20,000.00 car for 1 dollar over dealer invoice that, with no experience in retail themselves, some actually come to believe volume sales somehow makes this possible!

Certified: There are several different organizations which make certificates to authenticate to the customer, retailer, or insurer, the quality of a Diamond. Among these are the:

GIA (Gemological Institute of America)
EGL (European Gemological Laboratory)
IGI (International Gemological Institute)
GGL (Global Gemological Laboratory)


These reports are made independently of the Jeweler. Sometimes a customer will feel more assured that the seller of the item, is not also the one who is making the certificate describing it.

Most Jewelers also have the capability to make an in house appraisal of an item with the same, or much the same information, given on these certificates. These are perfectly fine for insurance purposes, but keep in mind a Jeweler wears many hats, and can make honest mistakes. The organizations above are considered the last word when grading Diamonds, they are much more experienced at it and you may wish to consider this when comparison shopping.

Jewelers can honestly vary in opinion about the quality of a given diamond due to experience and training, if you have concerns as to the integrity of a particular jeweler however, you may wish to do business elsewhere, regardless of the certificate.

Volume sales: (just an opinion) While it is possible for someone with VERY large sales to sell at a lower price than a smaller store. This difference is greatly exaggerated in advertising.

The more money a store makes from its customers, the easier it is for them to buy advertising. Conversely, the more they advertise "low prices," the more they can charge on non-advertised items, as someone new is always being enticed into the store, and the perception of low prices has thus been established.

Often the price is raised, prior to an advertised sale, and ends up the same as it was, after the discount. To illustrate this point, a local jeweler once had a 99.99% off Gold Chain Sale! He raised the initial price through the roof, so the chains ended up priced normally in the end.

For example, a One Million, Four Hundred Ninety-nine Thousand, Five Hundred Fifty Dollar chain, at 99.99% off, costs only 150 Dollars. A much more reasonable price for a gold chain. It got Nationwide attention!

I believe the media, who sees large retailers as their best advertising customers, works hand in hand with them to create a false perception about the savings a customer can expect to reap from large retailers. Often, jewelry items are very cheaply made from inferior Diamonds and gemstones, and mountings are poorly assembled in order to create a false bargain, which is then advertised at a sale price.

It costs Many Millions of dollars to build and operate large stores. Volume sales can only go so far, and many of these stores can be VERY difficult to deal with in terms of customer service, defect repairs, and refunds.

One of our employees has been devastated by the medical bills of a family member. We have put over a thousand dollars into car repairs for her on different occasions as a gift. I believe this would be unusual at best, for a "volume dealer" but it was only fair from our viewpoint. A serious medical problem can bankrupt you in this country, insurance or not.

Volume dealers aren't always what their cracked up to be! How have some of the big companies treated their employees during this recession? It may be something to consider when choosing a retailer.

Appraisal: A written determination of the retail replacement cost of an item, including a careful description, most often used for insurance purposes. It is not an offer to purchase an item. Appraisals are often twice the wholesale cost or more and frequently exceed the true replacement cost of an item.

Offer: This is what many people mean when they ask us for an appraisal. An offer is what we can afford to purchase an item from them for. Naturally we must pay less than we can resell the item for.

We will need to resell it for less than it cost them to begin with, as we are now selling it as a used item, and no customer will pay a new price for a used item.

Estimate: This is an approximation of the cost of repairs needed for a worn or damaged item. Appraisal / offer / estimate, these three terms are very frequently confused.

Cameo: A carved stone, often shell, with the image raised above the surface.

Intaglio: A carved stone, usually Hematite or Tiger Eye, with the image sunken beneath the surface.

The four C's: Different aspects of a Diamond which affect it's value as follows:

Color: Most Diamonds have a trace of yellow, gray or brown body color. A colorless Diamond falls in the same price category as top quality color. Fancy colors are also very valuable. Diamonds can occur in any color, such as fancy red, green, blue or violet. Red is the rarest and most valuable fancy color.

Clarity: Diamonds are graded for inclusions on a flawless-to-imperfect scale. All internal flaws visible to the unaided eye, or to 10-power magnification, are noted for their size, number, position and color. A clarity grade of flawless, IF, VVS, VS, SI, or I, is assigned. Flawless diamonds are very rare. All other factors being equal, the "cleaner" the stone, the more valuable it is.

Cut: The proportions and finish of a fashioned diamond are called the cut, or "make." Cut may also mean shape, such as Marquise, oval, pear, etc. Stones are evaluated for relative angles and proportions to see how well they match the ideal. Polish and symmetry are considered as well. Cut affects the weight retained from the rough crystal as well as its finished beauty. The bigger diamond is not always the better diamond. We have a lighted model at our store which demonstrates this aspect far better than it can be explained here, just ask to see it.

Carat: The Carat, which equals 0.2 Grams is the standard unit of weight for gems. As size increases, so does rarity. A one carat Diamond is worth much more than two half-carat Diamonds together.

A cluster of small diamonds is often weighed together and the item of jewelry is described as being so many Carats, "Total Weight" (TW).

Usually this sounds more impressive to the customer, especially in sale advertisements. A single One Carat Diamond can cost thousands of dollars. One carat Total Weight of 1 to 2 point diamonds, can be virtually worthless, depending on the stone quality. Tennis bracelets are a good example of this. It seems you can always find a cheaper price on a one-carat "TW" tennis bracelet, if price is all you compare.

Thank you for your interest. More definitions to follow in the future.

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