#72: How to Buy Gemstones Without Getting Burned

Courtney Gray, metalsmith educator and host of The Jeweler’s View, shifts into practical jewelry industry guidance, starting with gemstone sourcing and buying stones online. Using a real engagement-ring story about a misrepresented “natural” tanzanite that turned out to be synthetic, she explains that lab-grown gemstones aren’t inherently bad; the real risk is lack of transparency. She covers essential stone-buying safeguards for jewelers and clients: always confirm return policies, demand clear treatment disclosure (heated, fracture-filled, irradiated, coated, oiled), and understand the difference between natural gemstones, lab-grown stones, and simulants. Courtney also notes when gem lab reports (GIA, AGL, GRS, IGI, SSEF) matter, why bench testing has limits, and why trusted supplier relationships and reputation are the best quality control for building long-term client trust.

Transcript

#72: How to Buy Gemstones Without Getting Burned

[00:00:00] Welcome to The Jeweler's View. I'm Courtney Gray, metalsmith educator and creative business strategist. After 25 years in the jewelry industry, running one of the country's top metalsmithing schools, coaching artists, advising companies and organizations, and hosting interviews with some of the best in the craft.

I finally created the kind of support I wish I'd had from the start. This podcast is a part of that. Each week I share the lessons I had to learn the hard way so you can build a rhythm that supports your creative work, your values, and the life and business you actually want. Find tools, coaching and my transform course@courtneygrayarts.com and let's get to work.

Courtney Gray: Hello my friend. After the last few episodes, I wanna shift gears and get practical.

One of the members inside my community, we [00:01:00] call ourselves Transformers, brought something to my attention during our last monthly meetup. These are the jewelers who have completed, transform and chose to stay connected as they continue building their business or their creative practice, we meet regularly.

We talk through what's happening in their studios, their sales, their challenges, what they're navigating in real time. It's one of my favorite conversations of the month because the level of honesty in that room is something that you have to earn and they've earned it. What a group of dynamic, authentic women.

During the last conversation, one of them lovingly called me out on something. I love it. When y'all do this, please call me out or ask me what do you wanna hear about, anyway, she said, Courtney, you have a lot of industry knowledge sitting in your brain from all the years you've spent working in this field.

And sometimes we need that practical side too. [00:02:00] She's right. I can dig into mindset all day long and you know, I will. But there is also a significant body of practical, hard won knowledge in this industry that people simply don't know where to look for. Knowledge that used to get passed down through apprenticeships and mentorships and years of working shoulder to shoulder with people who had already made the expensive mistakes, so you wouldn't have to, A lot of that transmission has broken down, or it's overwhelmed.

And the internet for all it offers is not always a reliable substitute. So in honor of my transformers and specifically Andrea Dunham. Thank you, Andrea. We're gonna shift gears for the next few episodes and get practical. Andrea is a wonderful jeweler and you can find her work at https://aldunhamfinejewelry.com/. She's also just started [00:03:00] a killer blog that's hilarious and real, and you must check it out on her website. For the next handful of episodes, we're gonna talk about the real nuts and bolts of working in the jewelry trade, buying stones, building relationships with suppliers,

sourcing materials, tools, production decisions, the things that you often only learn after you've been inside the industry long enough to have gotten burned at least once or twice if you're new here from the Rising Metal Cost Panel. Welcome. I'm glad you're here. The way I structure these episodes is a bit like building blocks.

Some are mindset, some are strategy, some are trade knowledge. What we're about to dig into. A lot of what I teach inside Transform shows up here on the podcast in pieces over time, inside the program and the membership, we gather those pieces together faster and apply them directly to your specific business.

But here on the [00:04:00] Jewelers View, I keep things open book and share what I've learned working in this industry over the last couple of decades. So today we're starting with gemstones.

Years ago, someone I knew earlier in life was actually an ex-boyfriend, sort of, I don't know if we'll go there. Anyway, he came back to me almost 20 years later. He had kept my number all that time, which I always found meaningful. And he reached out because he was getting engaged and he wanted to have the ring made by me.

He came in excited full of that energy. Someone carries when they think they've done something really smart. He had already bought the stone, a tanzanite that he had purchased online.

So we took a look at it under the microscope. Pretty quickly, it became clear it wasn't natural tanzanite. After all, it was synthetic. So I asked him, what did he pay? , And when he said $30, that answered the question [00:05:00] immediately.

Now, I wanna be careful here because I don't want that story to be misread. Lab grown stones are not automatically bad. There are beautiful, well-made lab grown stones on the market today, and they can be entirely legitimate as a choice depending on what someone wants and what they value.

The technology has advanced significantly, and in some categories, sapphires, emeralds, and certain garnets. Lab grown materials have become a serious option. The issue is never the stone itself. The issue is transparency. He believed he had purchased a natural stone. He made a significant emotional and financial decision based on that belief, and it wasn't true.

That's where people get burned, not by lab grown material, but by the gap between what they thought they were buying and what they actually bought in the engagement ring context. That gap can [00:06:00] fracture trust in a way that's very hard to repair. And as the jeweler who delivers the news, you're suddenly in the middle of a situation you had no part in creating.

This is why I tell both jewelers and their clients to approach online gemstone purchases with real care and real skepticism. Not paranoia, but informed caution.

If you're sourcing stones, especially online, there are a few things you always want to evaluate before committing return policies. This is non-negotiable. If you cannot return the stone after seeing it in person, that's a red flag. Full stop. No serious reputable dealer who stands behind their material will refuse you the opportunity to inspect what you've purchased.

The ability to return is not just a consumer protection. It's a signal of confidence on the seller's part. When that option is [00:07:00] absent, I want you to ask yourself why. Now let's talk about treatment disclosure. Many stones are treated heated fracture filled. irridated, . Coated, oiled and treated stones are not automatically inferior. Heat treatment in sapphires and rubies, for example, is considered standard practice in the industry, and a well heated stone can be absolutely beautiful.

The issue again, is disclosure. You need to know what you're buying. Treatment affects value, it affects care instructions, and it affects how you represent the stone to your client. If a seller is vague or evasive about treatment status, that evasion, that's good information. All right, let's talk about natural versus synthetics and the new category of simulants.

These are three different things, and they're often conflated in ways that cause real confusion. A [00:08:00] natural stone came out of the ground. A lab grown stone has the same chemical and physical properties as a natural stone, but it was created in a controlled environment. A simulant looks like the stone. It's imitating, but has an entirely different composition. Cubic zirconia standing in for diamond, for instance, or blue glass standing in for tanzanite. All three have a place in the market. None of them should be misrepresented as another. The jewelry trade runs on trust, and it always has a dealer who's been working in the industry for decades has a reputation that precedes them into every transaction.

 A reputation they've spent years building and have every reason to protect that. Accountability shapes how they do business in ways that are hard to replicate random online marketplaces [00:09:00] no matter how polished, the listing often offer no such accountability.

Courtney Gray: The transaction ends when the package ships. Sometimes stones come with documentation from independent gemological laboratories. You'll often see reports from places like GIA, the Geological Institute of America, probably the most widely recognized name in the field, particularly for diamonds, AGL. The American Geological Laboratories known, especially for colored stone work and country of origin reports, GRS, not the engravers, but the gem research Swiss lab, with a strong reputation in the colored stone market.

Worth noting. GRS is also the name of a well-known engraving tool company. Those are not related. Just an acronym collision that causes a little confusion. IGI or the International Geological Institute is [00:10:00] widely used, particularly in the lab grown diamond space, and SSEF, the Swiss Geological Institute, another highly respected European laboratory, particularly for origin determinations on high value stones.

These labs verify whether a stone is natural or lab grown, whether it's been treated, and in some cases where it originated, which matters significantly for certain stones.

But here's something important to understand. Not every gemstone in jewelry comes with a certificate, and that's normal. Certification is most common with higher value stones, diamonds, fine rubies and sapphires

in much of everyday trade buying, you are relying entirely.

On the knowledge and integrity of the dealer that you're working with, which means the relationship is the certification. That's not [00:11:00] a weakness in the system. It's how the system has always worked at its best. The question is whether you've built the kind of relationships that make it reliable for you.

. There are tools that can help you evaluate stones. If you're a fine jeweler or you're working with a lot of gemstones, you may wanna think about getting some of them at your bench so you can start discerning for yourself what you're purchasing. We won't get into all the details on that, that's for another episode.

But these tools matter. They give you the ability to ask better questions to catch things before they become problems, and to build the kind of confidence in your sourcing that lets you stand behind what you put in front of a client or on their finger. But I wanna be honest about something because I think it's important.

Even with all these tools, there are limits to what bench level testing can definitively confirm advanced treatments and sophisticated synthetics. Certain composite stones, these [00:12:00] can fool testing equipment in the hands of someone without deep gemological training. Professional gemological identification when it really matters, often requires laboratory equipment that most studios simply don't have access to.

The tools make you more capable. They don't make you infallible. Most of what actually protects you in stone buying is not equipment, it's relationships. It's working with people who know their material deeply, who have built their business on accuracy and integrity, and who will stand behind what they sell to you.

That is the most reliable quality control system available to the working jeweler. Cheap stones tend to become expensive mistakes. Not always. There are genuine values in the industry, and a good eye and a trusted relationship can find them. But the pattern I've seen over and over again [00:13:00] is the person who optimized for the lowest price at every step is rarely the person building the most sustainable business because at some point.

What you put in a client's hand reflects on you regardless of where you sourced it or what you paid. The best. Materials rarely come from chasing the bottom of the market. They come from working with people who know what they're selling, who care about accuracy. Who have built something worth protecting. That kind of sourcing costs more in the short term, but it costs significantly less in the long term.

And the trust that you build with clients who know they can rely on what you tell them, that's not a soft asset my friend. That's the foundation of a business that lasts. In the next episode, we're gonna talk about something that matters just as much as understanding the stones themselves, and that's the relationships inside this [00:14:00] industry,

this industry runs on relationships more than most people realize. And the jewelers who understand that early move through it very differently, those who figure it out late. Alright, hoping to get you there a little bit sooner. That's enough for today. I'll see you next week. Keep building onward and upward. 

Thanks for listening to The Jeweler's View. If today's episode gave you something to think about, you'll find tools, coaching resources, and the transform course@courtneygrayarts.com. Remember you're not behind.

You're becoming exactly the kind of maker your business needs and that kind of depth. It takes time. I'll be back next week, same time, onward and upward. I.