How Much is my Emerald Worth?

One of the most common types of emails we receive at Embassy Emeralds is the: ‘How much is this emerald worth?’ email. It seems like a good question and certainly an innocent one. After all, many people think that emeralds, diamonds, and other gemstones are bought and sold as a commodity like gold, silver, oil, soybeans, etc… But this just isn’t the case, and so we must invariably reply with the ‘sorry, we’d have to see it in person’ email. Which is not too helpful but we try to explain the reasons why.

Each individual emerald sold to the consumer is valued individually based on the quality of that particular stone. For some gems, assessing quality is a simple matter, but for emeralds, it is perhaps one of the more difficult to assess. This is due to the almost endless possibilities of variance in the important emerald characteristics. One characteristic is the natural tendency for emeralds to contain inclusions...much more so than other gemstones. Inclusions that are acceptable in emeralds are not at all acceptable in most other gemstones such as diamond, sapphires, rubies, and topaz to name just a few. Variances in clarity is another key point to look evaluate, but perhaps most important is color. After all, we love colored stones because of their beautiful colors. A slightly better shade of color from one stone to the next can equate to a difference in price of hundreds or even thousands of dollars per carat.

We say it all the time, but nearly any quality assessment is based on the 4 C’s of Color, Cut, Clarity, and Carat. If you’d like to do an amateur assessment you should look at those areas, but you need to know something about the stone your assessing and you should know and have seen how these 4 C’s can vary from the lowest quality stones to the finest. This is something not many people have the luxury of knowing.

For an accurate assessment by a professional, it is absolutely essential for them to be done in person to see the combination of these important features of the stone and how they work together to create a complete image of quality. It should be stressed (not just noted) that the majority of jewelers are not good at gemstone assessments. Accurate assessments are done by qualified gem dealers or gemologists.

If you’ve ever written the ‘how much is my emerald worth’ email. Don’t feel bad. You didn’t know. But hopefully this blog helps you understand why you didn’t get the response you were looking for or educates others why writing the same email won’t be helpful to them.