Kim G

Walking out of the jewelry store, little bag in hand, the buyer is generally a happy one. In the process of finding the perfect item, you have dodged pushy sales staff, negotiated the best deal, and you are confident that you won’t have to think about jewelry for a while. Right? Not so fast. Are you covered if something happens to your precious little prize? Not as covered as you might think.

Ideally, you buy jewelry to wear. But with the variety of bobbles out there, it is not realistic to think that you will wear every piece of your jewelry wardrobe at every moment of the day – especially if you are a bit of a collector. You will need a safe place to store your gems until you wear them again and a jewelry box is ideal. As a jewelry fan myself, it stops my heart to hear when people store their jewelry on the bathroom counter top. Whether you have a few pieces or an entire collection, invest in a jewelry box. Not only will a jewelry box or an armoire keep your jewelry neat and tidy, it also serves a protective function. Many jewelry boxes and armoires come with hooks to hang your necklaces, which is the ideal condition to keep them from tangling and breaking. Likewise, most storage boxes will come with a sorter for rings to stand them up so as not to rub against each other, thereby preventing scratching. You’ll find that whatever the variety, all jewelry boxes are lined with a soft fabric to prevent items from damage.

Unfortunately, if your house is ever broken into, an organized jewelry box is a thief’s jackpot. You are far more protected if your home has a security system, but you can never assume that you are safe from a break-in. A serious jewelry collector will need to take additional steps to assure security. Consider buying a safe. A properly installed quality safe will not only protect your jewelry, but also your important papers from theft as well as fire or flood damage.

Even the best protection can go awry however, and there may be situations in which your jewelry is gone for good. Before such an event, you’ll need insurance to re-coop the monetary value of pieces lost. What’s that? You thought that little warrantee booklet containing important looking papers from the jewelry store protected you from loss? Nope, that’s usually never the case. The warrantee given to you, or even purchased by you, at the jewelry store will only cover certain things such as a stone loss or crack, and even then, only if you’ve had the item inspected according to their guidelines. If an entire item is missing, you are most likely out in the cold.

Yeah, but I have home owner’s insurance, so I’m covered, right? Not always. Every home owner’s insurance policy is going to be different of course, but it is common that many insurance agencies only cover jewelry up to a certain dollar amount under a regular policy – anything above that amount is not covered. If you are a jewelry collector or if you have one substantially costly item, such as an engagement ring, it is a very good idea to obtain a separate jewelry rider for your home owner’s insurance. In order to obtain this, you’ll need receipts for your jewelry or an insurance replacement appraisal from your jeweler. If you don’t have that, or if the pieces you need to cover are inherited, you can obtain an independent appraisal from a reputable appraiser which will cost anywhere from $30 on up. Once obtained, the average cost to maintain a jewelry insurance rider is approximately $1.30 per year for every $100 in jewelry value. Simply put, if you have a $5,000 engagement ring, it will cost you $65 per year to insure it. When you think about it, would you rather pay $65 a year to insure your ring, or another $5,000 to replace it if it’s stolen?

The bottom line is this: when you buy jewelry, you’ll want to keep it forever. Protect it from wear and tear, and most importantly, protect it from theft or loss. It’s the best investment you can make.

Tom B

What do you associate with the color pink? Femininity? Tenderness? The fist of a baby? A mohair sweater? If you’re like me, like most Americans, pink is the color of love. And since love and jewelry are so inexorably intertwined, we’re fortunate to have so many pink gemstones from which to choose.

The queen of the pinks is the diamond, unmatched for fire and durability. However, the color of most colored diamonds, including pink, yellow, brown, orange, blue, and green, aren’t pure. Only the rarest are free of hints of gray or brown that muddles the hue. Diamonds with any amount of red are the rarest of all diamonds, so a fine pink is among the priciest stones in the world. If you find a pink diamond at a reasonable price, be very wary. It could have been be treated, or even coated to produce the color.

Happily, there other great gems with more satisfying color at a more reasonable price. One of the prettiest is the little-known kunzite, a pink gem with a hint of violet. Kinzite wasn’t discovered until 1912, but quickly became popular when Tiffany & Co. began using it in art deco pieces. With kunzite, the depth of color changes depending on the viewing angle. In a well-cut stone, the deepest saturation appears with the stone face-up. The jewel is, however, somewhat fragile, and its nickname, "The Evening Stone", refers to its propensity to fade if exposed to strong sunlight.

Another popular choice is the pink sapphire. While we usually associate sapphires with the color blue, the gem takes on a rainbow of colors, including the red that we call rubies. While natural pinks are uncommon, man-made pink sapphires with deeply saturated color are readily available. This is a great choice if durability is an issue for you, as sapphires are second only to diamonds in hardness.

Morganite is a member of the beryl family, which also includes emeralds and aquamarines. The pink stone was named after tycoon J.P. Morgan. Perhaps because of this, it never caught on with the American public, although the price, durability, and beauty of the stone suggests it deserves more recognition. Morganite is now being marketed under the name ‘Pink Emerald’. Time will tell if this increases its appeal.

‘The great imposter’ is the nickname give to spinel because it comes in a variety of lovely colors that mimic more expensive gems. Natural pink spinel is rare, though, and priced accordingly. However, man-made spinel is readily available, inexpensive, and durable. If you’re looking for great color without a great price tag, a pink spinel could suit the bill nicely.

My favorite pink stone, though, is the tourmaline. This gem comes in a full spectrum of deeply saturated colors, including a lovely pink. Pieces of excellent clarity are reasonably priced, and the gem is hard enough to stand up to daily wear. My wife sports a beautiful 5-carat oval that I mounted for her 10 years ago, and it still looks like new. If you want a large, durable pink, tourmaline is your best bet.

There are still more choices for pink stones; pink topaz, rose quartz and pink cubic zirconium, however, are all on the fragile side for rings.

The color of love makes a great choice for fine jewelry, and the variety of stones available puts a fine pink in almost anyone’s price range. So think pink!

Tom B

For as long as man has been able to craft jewelry, the gold standard for shiny ornamentation has been, well, gold. And for good reason. Gold is reasonably abundant, but not so much as to detract from its value, malleable (one gram can be pulled into a thread almost two miles long), stable, and can be polished to a sun-like finish.

However, gold is not your only choice for, say, your wedding bands. If you prefer white metal jewelry (and many people do), a world of alternatives open to you.

The most prevalent alternative to gold is white gold — gold alloyed with a white metal such as nickel. White gold became popular during the Art-Deco 1920’s as a lower-cost alternative to then-popular platinum. It has remained a popular choice for engagement rings, because it doesn’t threaten to add a yellow tinge to the colorlessness of better diamonds.

The downside of white gold has been the allergic reaction that some people experience to the nickel commonly used to give the metal its white color. The response, nickel dermatitis, is common enough that the European Union does not allow gold/nickel alloys in jewelry. Fortunately, white gold can also be made with non-allergenic silver or palladium in place of nickel.

Silver is another very popular choice for rings. Its greatest advantage is low cost; silver prices are often 5% that of gold. It too is easily worked, and can be cast (melted and formed in a mold) and soldered into intricate shapes.

However, silver is relatively soft, and therefore doesn’t stand up to the abuse most rings experience. Also, typical sterling silver (92.5% silver, 7.5% copper) is prone to tarnish, as you probably know if you’ve ever had to polish the family formal dinnerware. New alloys of sterling silver such as germanium help prevent tarnishing, but do little for the durability question.

Perhaps your best choice for durability, strength and beauty is platinum. When alloyed with a smidgen of palladium, this metal takes a beautiful, long-lasting shine. Platinum prongs (the fingers that wrap around your diamond and hold it in place) wear much more slowly than white gold. Hold on to your wallet, though; platinum is about twice the price of gold.

Many people who are concerned about allergic reactions are drawn to a more uncommon, but excellent jewelry metal, palladium. This white metal also takes a high polish. It is also lighter than platinum, making it a particularly good choice for ornate earrings. Palladium came into use during WWII, when platinum was restricted to military use only.

There are good reasons why Palladium isn’t more widely used in jewelry, though. It is very hard to cast, because it oxidizes, resulting in unacceptable pitting.

For the space-age set, titanium can be an exciting choice. The strongest metal on Earth is better known for use in joint replacements, and as a whitener in paint, paper, and even toothpaste. However titanium rings are virtually indestructible, and can be polished to a high gleam. Titanium can also be anodized (colored by passing an electrical current through it) producing a lovely gray/black finish that is permanent. On the down side, titanium cannot be soldered or cast, which rules out most applications other than bands.

An even more esoteric choice is tungsten carbide. Tungsten carbide might appeal to machinists, since it is the compound used to cut and shape steel. The metal is so hard that one retailer of tungsten carbide rings guarantees to replace the ring should even a single scratch appear. As you can imagine, something this hard is going to be weighty, a concern for some.

Gold, white gold, platinum, and more — choice is good. In the end, though, there is no correct choice, except the one that delights you.

Or, for some of us, that choice could be – one of each?