Jewellery Certificates

For all the Jewellery buyers, it is always recommended to review the Jewellery certificate or diamond certificate/ grading report before making a purchase. Reviewing the certificate will make you sure that the Jewellery item has passed through a professional inspection. Jewellery certificates are basically reports, made by a professional and experienced team of gemologists, given after thorough examination of the Jewellery items. Jewellery certificates or diamond Jewellery certificates are sometimes confused with another similar term; Jewellery Appraisal. Both of these are reports about your Jewellery items like gemstones, diamonds etc but they both have different purposes.

Jewellery appraisals are usually assessments or evaluation that be done for any Jewellery item, regardless of its composition. It is also not necessary that a Jewellery item must contain a gemstone for its appraisal. The main purpose of the appraisal is to give a value to the Jewellery item which can be given for many purposes like insurance purposes or for verifying true price/value of a Jewellery item.

Jewellery certificates on the other hand are also called as lab certificates and they focus usually on the valuable items of your Jewellery e.g., gemstones, diamonds etc. These certificates document important characteristics of the Jewellery item like its dimensions, color, carat weight, cut and shape, clarity grades etc. These reports usually focus the unmounted gemstones. You are not required to get the Jewellery certificate after every 6 or 12 months, as you do for the Jewellery appraisals, since the gem or the diamond will not change throughout its usage unless it goes through a specific alteration process. Once you get the certificate, you will feel more confidence about your diamond.

As mentioned earlier, Jewellery certificates are issues for unmounted Jewellery items like diamonds, gemstones etc. These diamonds or gemstones are evaluated and inspected thoroughly by a professional and experienced team of different gemologists and finally they are graded according to the international standard which has been set by an organized body e.g., Gemological Institute of America (GIA). Different teams may use different tools and techniques to inspect your Jewellery item for example microscope, jeweler’s loupe etc.

Some examples of different standard bodies, other than the GIA, are:

• AnchorCert: it was produced by the Birmingham Assay Office. It is a non-profit organization and has been a centre of excellence for more than 200 years. They provide expert assessments and guidelines about different Jewellery items. It has also received a formal accreditation to ISO 17025.
• IGI: Acronym for International Gemological Institute. It is considered to be one of the largest institutes for gem appraisal and certification. Having offices world wide, IGI usually issues around 1 million certificates in a calendar year.