diamond

What Should We Treasure

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The Notre Dame Cathedral fire reminds us that it isn’t shallow to believe there is value in material things.

This week the world has been stunned by the destruction of one of its most historic landmarks, the beautiful Notre Dame Cathedral. At first this wouldn’t seem like a jewelry related story, but in reality it’s a reminder that while losing a life is the greatest tragedy, the destruction of beautiful and meaningful works of art is also a mournful disaster. Losing these works is losing what these great past people spent their lives to build.

Sculptures, artwork, and jewelry are all material things and we are taught that material things are not what people should truly value. While it’s obvious that the people in our lives are most important, the material things that those people spend their lives building, creating, or cherishing is also of significant value. The amount of time spent by people on just one finished diamond, from mining it, to transporting it across the world, to cutting it, to grading it, to setting it, is incredible. That diamond is part of the legacy of those people and that has value and meaning.

Lives matter, but what also matters is what we spend our lives to create.

Moving on, this month we have a new featured piece, a high quality princess cut diamond with a pretty setting and diamond accents. At 25% off for the month, its not inexpensive but its still a good value and you can click here to find it.

We apologize that blogs are getting posted at a slower frequency, but we are still dedicated to keeping this site updated and adding new things. We are always looking for new ways to make it more exciting and more valuable for our visitors.

As always we thank you for visiting our website and reading our updates, we hope you can keep cool as the summer heat starts moving in.

A Beautiful Pendant for April

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We hope that April brought you the opportunity to find many eggs. 

This month is a great time to shop for two of our favorite things, candy and diamonds. We are not going to try and tell you that chocolate is less exciting then diamonds, but we do have a special deal on the latter. Diamond is the birthstone for April, and in honor of that we have a special custom designed white gold and diamond pendant as this months featured piece. This piece is 25% off until next month, and you can find out more about it here!

Or if you would like to learn more about diamond, you can view our diamond gemstone fact page here.

We have been slowly but surely working on more features for this website, more products are on the way and we close to adding a checkout process that is up to our extremely high standards of safety and security. We will also be adding articles and news more frequently in the coming months, including a new article soon from our very own Ashley Stone. Keep checking back with us, Ocala’s best jewelry store website, for more jewelry, information, and education!

 

What to Know Before Buying a Diamond (beyond the 4 C’s)

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Clarity grading matters, but always look at a diamond (with magnification and without) before buying it

Our best advice right from the start: After observing hundreds of thousands of diamonds, the best advice we can give is to look at any diamond in person before buying it. Every diamond is different, and two diamonds of the same quality will not look exactly the same, no matter what the salesperson tries to tell you. Diamond grading is important, and should be considered, but no one should ever buy a diamond based on its grading alone.

You can’t judge a diamond piece’s value based on total carat weight

Clusters of small diamonds have significantly less value than one large stone with the same total carat weight, given similar clarity grades. A tennis bracelet with a 3 carat total weight made of 30 stones will be significantly more valuable than a bracelet with the same carat total weight but made of 60 stones, if the stones are roughly the same clarity and color. Check out our post on the difference between Carats and Karats.

What type of jewelry will the diamond be set in?

Earrings typically look better with larger diamonds of lower clarity because they are often viewed from a further distance than rings

Some diamonds work better for different types and styles of jewelry. Earrings typically look better with larger diamonds of lower clarity because they are typically viewed from a further distance than rings. Diamonds set in yellow gold will look a few color grades higher than if they are set in white gold. Round diamonds larger than 2 Carats are often considered too big to look appropriate in rings, and a shopper looking for an extra large stone for a ring would usually do better with a pear-shaped diamond or another unique shape.

Diamonds need to be secure

There is always a trade off between style and security when considering what a diamond should be set in, and it’s something you should always think about. If you are considering a piece with many small diamonds and few, very small prongs around those diamonds, you should know that the diamonds may be far more likely to fall out than a piece with slightly bigger stones and slightly bigger prongs. On an engagement ring, accident-prone people may opt for 6 prongs instead of 4 prongs for the extra security. Stones don’t magically stay in place and some styles are less secure than others. Always consider or ask about these issues when purchasing a diamond.

The 4 C’s

The 4 C’s are usually the first talking point when it comes to diamonds. There is a wealth of information available all over the internet on the 4 C’s, so we will be brief. The 4 C’s are Color, Cut, Clarity, and Carat. Color is how white the diamond is, Cut describes its symmetry and in theory how much it sparkles, Clarity is a measure of a stone’s inclusions and some other visible characteristics, and Carat is how much the stone weighs (how big it is). As each of those qualities go up, the value of a diamond raises. These qualities can be measured by trained jewelers with a very low margin for error, or graded in a laboratory for more exact calculations. No single category of the 4 C’s is definitely more important than another when judging how nice a stone will look in jewelry; however, the best-looking stones for the money usually have no category that is too low on the scale. Check out our guide on buying an engagement ring for more information.

 

We will be closed for Black Friday, Here’s a citrine to celebrate Thanksgiving!

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In a lot of places it’s starting to feel like Thanksgiving is becoming nothing more then Black Friday Eve. At Silver City, we always try to recognize that the most important things in life are family and friends, and so this year we will be closing from Thanksgiving through the weekend.

Karats or Carats?

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Easily the most confusing pair of words in the jewelry business, “carat” is a measure of weight equal to one-fifth of a gram while “karat” is the measure of fineness of gold. Today we’re going to highlight the difference between the meanings of karat and carat and how the confusing words came about. Both are pronounced the same as our favorite orange vegetable, “carrot”, but they actually came about from a different piece of vegetation- the carob seed.

 
Carob seeds were a seed that almost always grew to be the same size and weight as all the other carob seeds. Ancient jewelers found that they were small enough and consistent enough to be used to measure the weight of diamonds and other precious stones, thus they started measuring in “carats” which meant how many carob seeds the jewel weighed equal to. As technology developed, the weight was standardized to be 1/5 of a gram and is used primarily to measure gemstones. Everyone knows that a one carat diamond is fairly big, so jewelers divide carats into fractions of 100 called points. A 1/10th carat diamond is .10 of a carat or 10 points in weight. The earrings in the image above approximately 1 carat total weight, which means each of them are about .5 carats.

 
Its good to remember that carats are actually a measure of weight not size, and 2 different gemstones of the same dimensions will usually be different carats.

750 (18k) Mark On Cameo

 

 
Karat, the one that starts with a “K”, refers to the purity of gold out of 24 parts. Pure gold would be 24k, but nearly all gold made for jewelry is alloyed with other metals to make it stronger, improve its color, or in some cases to make it cost less. The term karat is believed to have come about when the Roman emperor Constantine minted a new gold coin that was 24 carats in weight. The amount of those 24 carats of weight that were pure gold was its “fineness” which means its gold purity.In the US most jewelry is 10k, 14k, or 18k, which are 41.7% pure 58.5% pure and 75% pure respectively. Different countries have different regulations, but nearly all gold jewelry should be marked somewhere with its karat.

 
On behalf of the jewelry industry, we at silver city apologize for the confusion caused by these terms being so similar and hope that this explains the different meanings and why they are used. Check back with us at silvercityjewelers.com for more informative articles like this if you like learning more about jewelry!

 

 

10k Mark On Clasp

A beautiful emerald to celebrate Dawn’s return!

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After 18 long months of absence taking care of personal business, Mrs. Dawn Moore aka Mrs. GEM has come back to Silver City for a limited time! Mrs. Dawn has been missed by many of our customers and ourselves for the past year and a half and we are so glad to have her back for the next few weeks.

Mrs. Dawn will be with us every Thursday for the next three weeks if you would like to visit!

April’s birthstone is Diamond

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If you have a significant other with an April Birthday, we have hundreds of diamond pieces from earrings, to pendants, to rings. We love diamonds and she probably does too!

If you want to learn more about diamonds, you can browse our diamonds page by clicking the “diamonds” button at the top of your screen or you can call or come talk to our GIA diamonds graduates in person any time!