What about a Lab Report/Certificate?

To start, while we are asked about certificates from labs, it should be noted that all labs only issue reports, not certificates, and those reports are professional opinions, not guarantees. When it comes to guarantees, we guarantee that our stones are exactly as stated for gem species and treatment. If any of the major labs state differently, we will refund your purchase and the lab fees. For our guarantee, we consider the major labs to be the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), AGL New York, GRS, Gübelin, SSEF, or Lotus in Thailand. We do not make this guarantee for origin, as the accuracy of origin determinations by labs is very limited—many times, the major labs will disagree on an origin opinion. Because we source our rough from a very short list of trusted and vetted miners, most of the time we know precisely where it comes from—if we cannot guarantee that, we simply won’t purchase the rough or we will sell the gem as unknown in origin.

Why don’t we send all of our stones to a lab? The primary reason is that it’s an unnecessary expense, and doing so would add to the cost of every stone we sell. As noted earlier, we know exactly where our gems come from and what treatments, if any, have been applied to them. The majority of gem dealers buy second-hand in markets overseas, and as a result have no knowledge of where their gems were originally mined, nor the treatments that may have been applied to them. As a result, they are often forced to get certificates on their gemstones just so they can comply with regulatory requirements for treatment disclosure. We are very unique in providing gems that have a clear chain of custody from the mine to you, so we don’t need to rely on a lab report for this information.

Some of our gems, mainly the Sri Lankan or “Ceylon” sapphires, we have to buy already cut. The primary reason for this is that Sri Lanka does not allow the export of rough, uncut gemstones. Unfortunately, most gems are still cut to fairly poor standards of symmetry and polish, and the focus is purely on weight, not optical beauty and ideal symmetry. We purchase the best sapphires we can find from sellers in Sri Lanka and Thailand, and when we can we purchase them from the mine owners as well. Many small operations in Sri Lanka mine and cut their own stones. Most of these gems we then recut here in the U.S.— either a simple cleanup to fix symmetry issues, or more typically a complete recut to create an ideal gemstone. With these gems, we take two approaches to reports.  If they are smaller stones and we know they are heated, we simply sell them without any report. There is no value added by an external report as a heated stone will not sell for a premium. We are experts in colored stone analysis and can readily identify the majority of heated stones with our sophisticated lab. For most larger unheated stones, generally those over 1.5 carats, we will send them off to GIA for a report just to provide third-party verification of their treatment status.

The second reason we don’t send most of our gems to labs has to do with what a lab can and will tell you. Most people are familiar with lab certificates because of the ubiquitous nature of the GIA diamond grading system. However, colored stones do not have a standard system for grading—they are simply too varied for one simple system like GIA’s “4 C’s” to work. That means all the certificate will tell you is very basic information–what the gem species is, and whether it’s been treated or not. While some labs will offer origin identification for an additional fee, they are very explicit that their origin “determinations” are opinions only. In other words, no lab right now will guarantee that a sapphire is from a given locale. We can guarantee that, because we are buying them right from the mine, directly from the people that have mined them.

If you want an outside lab certificate, we will facilitate that for you after you purchase a gem, and of course that is subject to our guarantee. We only charge you the lab fee and shipping costs, which typically range from $175-300 dollars depending on the gem and its size. Keep in mind, it typically will add anywhere from two to four weeks to the delivery time.