An article from NANDO:
Man-made gems fool diamond dealers,
pawnbrokers
Copyright © 1999 Nando Media
Copyright © 1999 Associated Press
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By TESSIE BORDEN
LOS ANGELES (June 14, 1999 6:51 a.m. EDT nandotimes.com) -
Marilyn Monroe once sang that diamonds are a girl's best friend. But how
would she take to moissanites?
The lab-created stones can be dead ringers for high-quality diamonds,
stumping many jewelers' instruments that tell real stones from fake.
Since the gems debuted commercially a year ago, pawnbrokers and
jewelry dealers across the country have gotten swindled, paying top dollar
for moissanites they thought were the genuine article.
"You learn with your own money," said Hampy Antonian, owner of Ritz
Jewelers in Los Angeles' downtown jewelry district.
In March, Antonian paid $1,300 for a stone that weighed less than a carat.
Moissanites, a carbon crystal like diamonds, usually sell for just under
one-tenth the cost of their more prestigious cousins.
Antonian showed the find to other jewelers, one of whom suspected the
stone might not be a diamond. He then tested it.
"At first I felt like I was dumb," said Antonian, who has 15 years of
experience as a jeweler. "But these are the problems of the business."
Moissanites occur in nature - as green, brown or black microscopic
deposits. Chemist Henri Moissan discovered them in a meteorite in
Arizona's Diablo Canyon in 1893.
In the mid-1980s, Cree Research, a Durham, N.C. company, figured out
how to make moissanites for industrial use as semi-conductors, precision
blades and screens for calculators and laptop computers. The azure glow
in the dashboards of Volkswagen's New Beetles comes from the stones.
The company developed a patented version of moissanites in 1995, and
they appeared commercially in 1998.
Some jewelers and gemologists say they can tell moissanites right away
because they have a greenish cast and show regular striations that don't
resemble normal flaws in a diamond.
"Moissanites are almost plastic-looking," said Dennis Dufau, a partner in
Estate Jewelry Buyers of Los Angeles.
But others not as knowledgeable in gems have had less luck. Moissanites
have duped pawnbrokers, for one.
"One of my stores got hit for $1,000," said Kyle Farson, owner of First
National Pawn in High Point, N.C. "The stone that I got was about 1.25
carats. It was in an engagement ring."
Michael Mack, who owns First Class Pawn and Jewelry in Las Vegas, said
well-dressed hockers trying to pass the stones off as real diamonds hit
several stores in a city at once. They pushed the stones across the
counter and called them family heirlooms, he said.
"They play the part, but we do our tests," Mack said.
C3, the Morrisville-based company that is the sole manufacturer and
marketer of moissanites, says it wants to position the stones as gems in
their own right, not diamond impostors.
The company has tried to guard against fraud by requiring dealers to make
clear the stones are man-made, limiting outlets to about 130 jewelers
nationwide, and requiring them to sell the stones in settings.
But Farson said he has heard of hockers getting caught with bags full of
loose moissanites. "The problem is there's no follow-up," he said.
Even with few dealers, C3 ships about 18,000 carats of moissanite a year,
said company spokeswoman Jessica Blue.
Blue said company officials wanted the stones to hit the market in 1997.
But they put on the brakes when they realized that because moissanites
conduct heat like diamonds, they can fool thermal probes used to tell the
difference between real and fake diamonds.
The company developed a device to screen for moissanites and contacted
the Gemological Institute of America. Some dealers have contended that
the stones are merely a marketing ploy to sell the testers.
But Blue said the company's profits from the sale of the stone far exceed
the profits from the device: about $3 million in revenues from the stones
vs. $160,000 for the tester in the first quarter of this year. |
