Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Every now and again I make a point of throwing my eye over the list of common gemstone misnomers. It’s important to have researched this area if you’re going to be buying and selling gems. You don’t want to sell somebody the wrong thing and you don’t want go get ripped off yourself by buying something that is not what it appears to be.

I’ve seen these misnomers crop up in the jewelry category on Etsy and other places. I really don’t think sellers are deliberately mis-naming stones but suppliers will sometimes mislabel supplies to help them sell. Some unscrupulous suppliers will mislabel gems to help them sell and to attract a higher sale price. To combat falling victim to this type of thing, Robert Shipley’s Dictionary of Gems and Gemology is an invaluable guide to have. If you don’t already have it, take a look at the link below, it actually takes a lot of it’s definitions from Shipley’s Dictionary.

http://www.gemscape.com/html/misnomer.htm

Labels: common misnomers, gemstone, gemstone names, label, misnomers, name

posted @ 6:40 AM
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