Aquamarine, a Blue Green Beryl, is birth stone for March. Until the 1970s, pale colored Brazilian aquamarine was mined in 3 to 10 ct sizes. Brazil’s famous Key blue topaz was often confused with Aquamarine. Many jewelers mistakenly sold blue topaz as aquamarine, and heavily contributed to confusion and mistrust of both gems.

On the up side, there are no common laboratory substitutes for aquamarines, so the odds of fakery is low, while the odds of mistaken identity are quire high. Please read on. If you are not an expert and want to make sure that what you are buying is an aquamarine, and not a blue topaz or other gemstone, there are three inexpensive steps that you can take to protect your investment.

1. Genuine, natural aquamarine always has a greenish to green overtone even in the best and finest blue aquamarine color. You must observe this beautiful obvious greenish blue luster, because the most common imposter, sky blue topaz, will never exhibit this greenish undertone in natural bright light.

2. The aquamarine beryl crystal is very unique and unlike the topaz crystal which is usually an eye clear white topaz irradiated to sky blue color. Aquamarine crystal inclusions usually show under magnifications or 60 power microscope straight grown lines or what might be called rain drop like inclusions. These inclusions do not occur in Topaz crystals. Many quality aquamarines will exhibit crystal formations to the naked eye and are commonly described as inclusions or partials.

3. If you do not have a refractometer to test the refractive index of the gem, try to get an Aqua filter available from many tools and jewelry supply stores. By looking at the gem through the glass filter, if you see green, you can be relatively certain that what you are looking at an aquamarine. Pure undifferentiated blue usually indicates a heat treated blue topaz.

Both aquamarine and blue topaz have a market value, however, the less treated natural stone is a generally a stronger investment. Beauty is a high indicator of both these stones’ intrinsic value.

AFRICAN AQUAMARINE

Aquamarines from Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Zambia were mined and introduced in the gem market in quality that broke all the rules in Aquamarine. In fact, many African and Australian gems break all the rules in our industry these days. Keep your eye out for those beautiful African aquamarine exceptions. Recently, stones up to one carat in size with the deepest color ever seen have been sold in the market. Huge, pale color Brazilian Aquas can not compete with these rich, deep hued stones.

A TRADE OFF BETWEEN COLOR AND SIZE

While Brazil is well known for producing large crystals of Aquamarine, but never deep color in small sizes. Africa produces the best aquamarine colors but in much smaller sizes, as of yet, hardly ever in very large crystals suitable for pendant work.

HEATING AQUAMARINE

Heating Aquamarine is a common practice in Brazil, used to permanently remove common green overtones from the stone but heating treatments never deepen the stone’s color, or completely remove the green undertones. Heating is not commonly used on African Aquamarines, specifically those hand cut in India.

Imagine wearing the sky, your dream color around your neck! Color of life and dreams sky mined on earth, and a whole beauty of blue eternity. Ancients called it the water color gemstone a crystalized water crystal, a beauty that nature produced ages and ages ago.

Unheated aquamarine may display wider color variations, but it is always a better investment to buy a stone that has not been heated or scenitifcally manipulated.