OK. Before we carry on with our UK jewellery insurance issues, it is probably the right time now to expose a couple of other scammers. This does impact in jewellery insurance as unsuspecting tourists buy faked, treated or poor quality jewellery or loose stones whilst on holiday for top dollar and get ripped off in the process.
This fake jewellery can even come with some pretty convincing certificates which fool the majority of jewellers when they do their own appraisals for insurance. This is not their fault, the scammers are very clever and know how the industry works. The net result is you end up with a valuation of, say, several thousand for jewellery or stones which you paid a few thousand or even hundreds for.
How does this happen?
Well. We're not just talking about passing off a Cubic Zirconium costing a few pounds as a diamond costing a few thousand pounds, the scammers are experts in their field using advanced techniques to rip you off royally. Here is a few examples of how you can be hoodwinked into parting with your hand earned cash for trash.
1. Heat treated gems (sometimes normal commercial practice but watch out for diamonds)
Many coloured gemstones are sold on the intensity of their colour. The quality and cost of the stone is usually directly related to the desirability of its colour. In many cases, colour can be enhanced by "irradiating" the gem and in over 95% of cases it actually is - this is accepted as a normal commercial practice in jewellery and may not actually class as a scam, only nobody tells you. These heat treated gems are only actually worth a fraction of that which a naturally occurring gem of the same colour intensity would be. Expensive examples of these commonly include Fancy Diamonds, Rubies, Sapphires, Tanzanites (tanzanites are actually heat treated to get the blue colour - naturally they are brown - again, normal commercial practice) Aquamarine, etc. The treatment is usually permanent though it can deteriorate if it hasn't been done right. This is not only something which happens abroad, the majority of high street jewellers in the UK carry jewellery made with heat treated stones without making this clear (this refers to diamonds mostly) when you buy them so you think you are buying the real thing when you're not. Hey, you didn't really think you could buy real natural pink diamonds or sapphires for earnest Jones prices, did you?
2. Oiled gems (normal practice for certain stones such as emerald)
To hide surface flaws in poor quality gemstones which are all but worthless they can be "oiled". This treatment infuses a resin type substance into the flaws which covers them up. On polishing the treated stones, they mimic a higher quality stone than they actually are. This treatment is not generally permanent and is commonly used with Jade, Garnet, Emerald and so on - just to be clear, its normal practice to oil some stones, especially emeralds, though some treatments are better than others. If your garnets leak colour all over your skin when it gets hot or it rains, then you'll know that wasn't really the best oiling treatment that could have been used
3. Sandwiches
Two cheap stones glued together to make one larger much more expensive stone - this is a real fake and a total con. The resultant stone is worthless.
4. Laboratory grown
Literally these are the same gem composition os one occurring naturally, so its almost impossible to tell without going back to a lab for analysis. Any gem can be grown in a lab, faked if you like. They are actually what they say they are, only instead of taking millions of years to develop under a natural process, they have taken a few months under simulated conditions. Hence their values are much much less than a natural stone.
5. Poor quality stones
Most tourists are not well versed in determining good quality stones from poor quality stones. This is just experience, and you can easily be fobbed off with something which is not worth anything like the dealer claims.
These last 4 scams are most prevalent in China, Thailand, Mexico, India, and the like. But don't be lulled into a false sense of security if you are buying from the UK, Europe, US or Russia. To compound the problem MOST high street jewellers buy in goods or have their own brands made abroad in the very countries where these scams are absolutely rife. Half the time, the company has never even met the supplier or workshop they are using. I get to that in a later blog. They just trust that the supplier is giving them the right quality. Many of them don't even know what the right quality is - you are buying into their brand image and not a quality by merit.
To compound the problem still further, some unscrupulous jewellers produce fake certificates for this jewellery and then sell it at reduced prices to make it look like a bargain.
Watch out - there's a scam about.
