This gem dealer says NO!
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Nice video, no disagreements here 
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Yes ⌠At the K-mart and Walmart jewelry counter! ;)))))
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The public getting ripped off with fake gems is a time-honored tradition that dates back millennia. In recent history, a Japanese guy by the name of Mikimoto made a fortune with fake pearls and got sued. Now, in the US, that type of âpearlâ needs to be qualified as a âcultured pearlâ. Ironically, the big nuclei and bulk of his phony âpearlsâ were produced by the millions in the US-Mid-West, driving many US mussel species to the brink of extinction (and some beyond). Nowadays, as expected, the Chinese own that industry too with their cheap freshwater mussel cultivation (instead of at least using real oysters for a few months like Mikimoto).
Also, fairly recent (2012) in the US:
16 CFR 23.22 - Disclosure of treatments to gemstones.
Laws be darned: Today, robbing consumers at the register or virtual shopping cart with gem-fakes has almost become ânormal â just donât steal those same fakes five minutes later outside in the parking lot at gun-point.
I suspect that it is just a matter of time before ebay.com gets a C&D letter. However, Iâm just not sure if that would be a huge windfall or disaster for gemologists. Iâm guessing the former?
Best wishes, John
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John, I used to sell on eBay, my monthly fees would range from $35k-$50k USD (MONTHLY). Between 1999 and 2009 I accumulated about 92k feedback, in 12 years I have added about 4k (a pittance)
To give you an idea of scale, I was selling 14k jewellery with natural stones and diamonds, average price was about $700 USD (gold was still sub $1000 USD)
At the time, commission was very small once you broke $200 (2% I think), so that gives you an idea of scale.
In the late 2000s, the market became FLOODED with fakes! I was contacting eBay almost daily and they gave ZERO SHITS, so I will tell you, THIS LINE " just donât steal those same fakes five minutes later outside in the parking lot at gun-point." hits SO CLOSE TO HOME!
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Once you select synthetic diamonds, then there is no longer Fine Jewels in the
Fine Jewelry.
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Iâm stealing that one!
The writer who tells the story of Mikimoto has his information incorrect. Mikimoto and the court caseâŚMikimoto won. the courts found that cultured pearls were real⌠The fact the oysters were manipulated by inserting a nucleus was no different than a crabâs claw or a parasite as a nucleus irritated the oyster to produced Nacre build up. Fake pearls are glass, plastic âŚlike Majorca pearls that are fake (glass). In fact Majorca never states they are real. It is a company. Although the Chinese are producing cultured pearls, one can distinguish fantastic from poor quality pearls by nacre thickness, color, hue, size, luster⌠You cannot compare cultured pearls to manufactured fake diamonds i.e. Cubic zirconia . Maybe is a fake pearl.
Please get the facts straight.
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Dear T2kascikova:
Mikimoto and his fake pearls barely survived the âParis trialâ way back when as still evident today by the laws set forth by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC.gov):
Natural pearls are made by oysters and other mollusks.
Cultured pearls also are grown by mollusks, but with human intervention: an irritant introduced into the shells causes a pearl to grow.
Imitation pearls are man-made with glass, plastic, or organic materials.
Your ads should not use the word pearl - by itself - unless the advertised product consists only of natural pearls. If the product contains cultured pearls, the word âculturedâ or âcultivatedâ - or a synonym - should immediately precede the word pearl.
A statement that discloses only the type of cultured pearl youâre selling - for example, freshwater, South Sea or Akoya pearls â will not suffice. Instead, say that the pearls are cultured: cultured freshwater pearls, South Sea cultured pearls or Akoya cultured pearls. If the product contains imitation pearls, use the word âartificial,â âimitation,â âsimulated,â or a synonym immediately preceding the word pearl.
My facts are straight. Perhaps your grasp of the English language is slipping a little?
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Anything synthetic cannot be considered, named or sold as Jewelry. Itâs a theft & a case of police.
Synthetic gems including diamonds are as bad than useless plastic junk & belong to the garbage bin.
My two (real) cents
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Well you are entitled to your opinion but I might point out that the global âcostume jewelryâ market which you believe to be not jewellery at all was valued at US$32.9 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach US$59.7 billion by 2027 according to Allied Market Research. Compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for costume jewelry far exceeds diamond jewelry. We are also watching the synthetic diamond market with great interest. Here at Luxuria weâve always believed that customers will buy what suits their taste, budget and philosophy.
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You go your way, I go mine. (Bob Dylan)
Costume Jewellery is by definition, NOT fine jewellery.
Regarding market value: Toilet paper is a multi billion dollar business too, but itâs not fine jewellery.
Regarding customers, I believe that part of my job is to educate my clients.
For example, I make a lot of emerald engagement rings, but the first thing I say is âYou know emeralds need a lot of special care and handling and arenât necessarily suitable for everyoneâŚâ
I then go on to ask about what they do for a living and explain what they can and canât do with it and I explain that we are probably going to have to re polish the stone in 15-20 years.
All the things I said in the video are true, I mostly made that video so when people ask about synthetics, I can just send them a link to that blog post and say âsorry, I donât do syntheticsâ
Kind regards
David
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I agree with you completely. I recently received some known & identified lab created rubies. When researching what their value was, I was floored. Went to âGemsNGemsâ & found that I could get ten of the same size stones for under $100.00. People hear the terms Blood Dimond or Conflict Stones & shy away from them, even though they are real. Some jewelers have taken advantage of them by selling lab created stones & saying these are âEthically Sourcedâ & people are jumping all over them. All they hear is Ethically Sourced, not here is a $5.00 stone being sold to them for $500.00.
In the long run. Synthetics hurt everyone in the gemstone trade.
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âIn the long run. Synthetics hurt everyone in the gemstone trade.â
EXACTLY!
That is why I am so against them!
If we have someone pay $10k for a fake diamond ring, and in five years they canât sell it for $500, of course they are not going to continue to buy jewellery!
I say all the time that âI turn people into jewellery buyersâ, how can they have faith in a product like fake diamonds?
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Indeed, North-American customers are getting screwed daily at every turn.
How do we help them after the fact? In the US, they can possibly take this matter most affordably to their local small claims court. It canât award more than $6,500. If you have a case you think is worth more than $6,500, you can still file it. However, you then lose any amount over $6,500.
The last address of Asian dirt-bag- âcertificationsâ might be found using the WaybackMachine at archive.org. Naturally, if this turns out to be another âserviceâ in Asia, any court judgment they receive is likely to be ignored â but should still be a tax deduction for US victims. While some excellent Asian certification- reputations exist (e.g. 8th Dimension Gems at primagem.com), Iâve stopped buying any supposedly certified ebay, Amazon or etsy gems from Asia.
Best wishes, John
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I remember joining the International Gem Society,
not the Imitation, Glass n Synthetics club.
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The idea that âAsiansâ are responsible for the insane number of fake gems we are seeing passed off as real is incorrect.
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§23.12 Definition and misuse of the word âdiamond.â
(a) A diamond is a mineral consisting essentially of pure carbon crystallized in the isometric system. It is found in many colors. Its hardness is 10; its specific gravity is approximately 3.52; and it has a refractive index of 2.42.
The dispute about whether a laboratory grown diamond is not a diamond is long gone. That means that a laboratory grown diamond is acceptable in fine jewellery and in fact jewellery artists are using those diamonds in fine jewellery regularly. Itâs not about the stone itâs about the descriptor that precedes the word diamond.
Ipso facto, it is also likely to be unfair, misleading or deceptive to claim to customers that a lab created diamond is âfakeâ, âsyntheticâ or use other descriptors that attempt to convey that the stone is not a diamond.
People might like to spend some time re-acquainting themselves with the FTC jewellery guidelines: https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=e74d22268b1ca1ee8974514f8a940f87&mc=true&node=pt16.1.23&rgn=div5#se16.1.23_112
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I would have a FIELD DAY going in front of the FTC for calling fake diamonds fake.
I call them fake because they are NOT REAL, I intend to continue to call them fake until the day I die, if the FTC wants to come after me for it, I canât imagine a better way to get a TON of free press, I would come out painted by the media and the industry as the savior of natural gemstones, people would say âDavid Saadâ and Skyjems in the same breath as Laurence Graff and Cartier, so please, send my blog post to the FTC and ask them to investigate me for misuse of the word âfakeâ.
David Saad