so you're interested in buying a tanzanite engagement ring I'm Steve
Moriarty from Moriarty's gem art where a jeweler on the square in Crown Point
Indiana and we also represent ourselves as tanzanite jewelry designs.com so I'm
gonna try and explain to you what you should be looking for in tanzanite and
how to determine whether the tanzanite is a quality stone tanzanite is
generally graded by the four C's just like a diamond is which is color cut
clarity and carat weight the first that most important factor probably is the
color because tanzanite is kind of unique it does a color shift in
different lights and you want to look at this factor and determine what the color
is in multiple lighting sources so when you have a stone you want to go to the
varying light sources we've got a couple of the sources here and this would be
daylight equivalent fluorescent bulb you can of course go to daylight if you have
it available and in this light the stone should appear more blue let's get this
bigger stone out a little easier to see so this light it'll appear more blue
this is daylight and then when you go to incandescent light the stone will be
more violet this particular stone is strongly violet it doesn't show in the
video real well but these are the the situation you're going to try and see
what the different colors of this stone can be they will vary in all different
types of lights so you'd like to know that this stone is a beautiful stone and
all lights because your fiance or a future wife is going to have it on all
day and she's gonna see this stone in every light so it's important that you
take the time to look at different lighting sources and determine just what
the colors are not what they are but that they're pleasing colors
in general the depth of color is how the value of tanzanite is determined deeper
the color in general its better the an occasion are too dark but that's a rare
case so you want to be looking for a deeper color if you're looking for the
finest of tanzanite next would be the cut and and cut is extremely important
just because so many stones are so poorly cut we are cutters and we stress
the quality of the cutting just because it makes a huge difference in just how
that stone looks the issues that you're going to have with tanzanite our stones
that are cut too shallow is is one of the main factors that's a problem you
know this picture kind of represents a stone that's cut somewhat correctly and
and this stone is cut too shallow so the effects of this when you have a stone
that's cut this shallow when you look down through the stone you see right
through the stone this is called a window and it's so common in tanzanite
it happens because the color try the cutter tries to save weight and to do
that they have to change the angles two angles below critical and they no longer
reflect so when you look at a stone faced up looking down through the table
you can look through the center of the stone you'll see no brilliance so if you
rotate it slightly and there's no brilliance down in the middle you know
that the stone was cut too shallow occasionally they're cut so shallow you
can literally put it over a written page and you can read through it so this
affects brilliant so much that it's a factor you want to avoid the other
factor is cutting the crown too shallow sometimes you'll see it stones if
there's almost no crown this is almost flat across so the problem with that
again it affects brilliance and down the line you know it's say in five or ten
years because tanzanite is not the hardest stone on the planet you're
eventually going to have to reach the crown the top of the
stone this is where all the damage will occur this is the part she looks at and
after a while you'll just have a frosted look and you'll want to reap allah sh
the stone when there's no crown it's difficult for the cutter to read polish
the stone and what he ends up having to do is cut in the width of the stone to
get some crown material to actually be able to cut a crown on it so you end up
maybe the stone doesn't fit back in the mounting but you'll end up a smaller
stone so if you buy a stone that's cut correctly to start with repolish eNOS is
not an issue you'll lose very little weight of the stone and you'll lose no
diameter on the stone you could cut it three or four times and not have a
problem the other factors with cut are the quality of the Polish polish is
extremely important and again overseas cutters because they're using old
equipment or worn-out equipment you'll see lines and little divots and the
facet if you look at the table and you can easily see lines running across this
down or chips little divots you know that just means that they were using
poor equipment or not polishing long enough to get those lines out of the
stone so you want to avoid a poor polish because it has a huge effect on the
brilliance of the stone
next would be the clarity of the stone clarity of tanzanite is usually not an
issue most of the times we cut tanzanite very clean because after we cut them
they need to be heated almost all tanzanite are heated
we put them in oven heat them to a thousand degrees and it removes the
yellow coloration that's one of the three colors that's in tanzanite they
typically appear blue although this one that we looked at earlier is all-natural
came out of the ground blue but most of them look brownish so we heat them to
improve their color when you do heat him sometimes there are inclusions in it and
you'll get fracturing inside the stone from those inclusions so that's one
characteristic you want to look out for and I'll try and show you how to do that
with a tool that's always handy to you and that's your iPhone or phone so while
most tanzanites are flawless or at least I clean and I
clean is mostly what you should be looking for one way to identify
inclusions in a stone and to see if there is any major fractures because
sometimes it's hard to see the inclusions in a stone just looking at it
normally but using your cell phone if you just take the flashlight that's
available to you if you shine the light from the side of the stone it'll just
light up the interior and any inclusions particular fractures caused by heat
they're going to show up as reflecting they're gonna reflect light dramatically
and you'll easily see it so if you just rotate the stone and and look closely at
it you don't have to reject a stone just
because of few minor inclusions you may see needle sanam or a little crystal but
when you see a major fracture in it something that reflects these are things
that installing light like this you're going to easily see so when you get out
in daylight these fractures will show up visibly so finally it's carat weight
carat weight in tanzanite varies a little bit from diamond example here
would be this stone this is a one carat stone it measures six millimeter whereas
a diamond can measure six point five millimeter for the same carat weight so
generally tanzanite is a little heavier for a given size so if you're looking
for a particular look and don't necessarily look at carat weight look
more at the millimeter size of the stone you might want to think about buying a
little bigger stone than you might have thought about in a diamond just because
with the color the color gets better the bigger the stone and it's like water the
deeper you look into the stone the deeper the color and tanzanite larger
sizes will generally have a deeper richer color so you might want to be
thinking about a carat and a half to three carat or even bigger so to give
you a price comparison for tanzanite if you were looking at a one carat diamond
currently you'd be looking at four to seven thousand dollars you could buy a
three carat tanzanite for under $2,500 so it makes it affordable to buy a
little bigger stone and when it comes down to the tanzanite running out which
it will probably during your married life there will be no more tanzanite
mined and you could find that tanzanite is much more valuable than the diamonds
so hopefully this information will be helpful in your search for tanzanite so
if you get a chance stop by and see us at morir these gem art on the square in
Crown Point Indiana or shop us online at tanzanite jewelry designs com
we are cutters I do travel to Tanzania and on our website we have full pictures
and videos of the stones that we try and make it as accurate as possible and
we've also initiated a new grading system that gives you a overall quality
grade from one to a thousand which takes in all the factors that we've just
discussed thanks so much for watching and I'm Steve Moriarty from tanzanitejewelrydesigns.com