Happy February! We hope that you have had a happy and safe super bowl weekend. Today we are featuring the birthstone for February, Amethyst.

Amethyst is a member of the quartz family and is known as the purple gemstone. Amethyst was once rare and expensive, only available to royalty, but the discovery of vast deposits across the world has made amethyst one of the least expensive of classic and well known gemstones. In addition to its abundance, amethyst is naturally of high clarity which makes for a special combination of beauty and affordability. If you would like to know more about amethyst, click here for a link to go to our gemstone fact page for amethyst.

The 14k white gold and amethyst ring pictured above is our featured piece for February. Custom made by our master jeweler and featured in the February issue of Ocala Magazine, it is a great combination of quality and value.  If you are interested in it’s price or details, you can find out more by clicking here.

Have a great month! Don’t forget to visit us at Ocala’s best jewelry store for all of your jewelry or repair needs.

Happy New Year everyone! January’s birthstone is garnet, a stone displayed here in this 14k white gold and garnet ring with diamond accents. The checkerboard cut is popular in garnets and we really tried to show off its fancy facets.

Garnet has been inlaid as a gemstone since the bronze age. Its more commonly known for its dark red color, but it comes in a variety of other colors including green, purple, and even blue.

We have many January babies on the Silver City team, so Garnet is an extra popular stone with us. If your interested in Garnet, come in and check out our inventory which includes the beautiful ring shown above.

Until next time, have a happy January!

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

Opal is an amazing gem stone that represents October births.

Though opals are fairly soft, they make up for it in amazing color. Opals can show a kaleidoscope of colors brilliantly saturated for viewing pleasure. At Silver City we love opals and are always happy to show you our inventory of opal jewelry.