Emeralds are less durable than diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, but does that mean they break easily?
Emeralds are resistant to light damage like scratches, but they are very brittle and can easily break if they experience a strong blow. They tend to have a high count of internal imperfections that can lead to them smashing even from something as simple as being dropped.
Read on to learn more about emeralds, how they occur, and how easy they are to damage.
Take It Easy With Your Emeralds
Reportedly, fine emeralds are chosen and prized for their color more than any other aspect. They’re quite varied stones that can occur in a range of hues, with the most common being medium to dark green.
The most popular hue is undoubtedly a deeper green – almost every notable emerald throughout history has boasted this attractive shade. In fact, an emerald must be deep-toned for it to be an emerald; stones with a lighter hue are simply named green beryl.
This can be explained by examining the base material that makes up an emerald – beryl. It can take around one hundred thousand years for beryl to fully form into an emerald, and it’s a process that’s easily influenced by outside interference.
While beryl is forming into an emerald over thousands of years, it’s susceptible to the intrusion of gasses and other splinter elements. These intrusions cause inclusions, which are slight imperfections within the stone itself.
As it grows, there might be small air bubbles, which are the result of gas and liquid particles being trapped in the beryl. However, they’re considered a natural feature for emeralds and – allegedly – up to ninety-nine percent of these stones will feature them.
In fact, it’s these inclusions that ultimately drive up the value of emeralds, as jewelers will cut around the worst of them to produce a cleaner emerald. This in turn raises the value, as it means there’s a smaller yield available per-stone.
It has been recommended by industry experts that you closely examine your emerald before purchasing it, even if it’s already set into jewelry. The goal is to avoid any inclusions that are too large or close to the surface of the stone.
Let’s say you’ve purchased a one thousand dollar emerald ring that has an air bubble inclusion close to the surface of the stone. If you strike the ring against a hard surface, it’s almost certainly going to fracture on the inclusion site.
You can learn much more about the inclusions found in an emerald in another article we posted.
A Mystical History
It’s thought that the first emeralds were discovered well over two thousand years ago, in Egypt. In fact, history suggests that historical figures like Egypt’s Cleopatra took an immense liking to the beautiful green jewels.
There are those who believed emeralds carried with them immense powers and abilities, such as granting the gift of foresight. Once upon a time, emeralds were even thought to have disease-curing abilities, having been endowed with a power granted by God.
The stones often found themselves being used as currency, particularly between European and South American civilizations. Their value as a commodity was appreciated even hundreds of years ago when the Spanish traded with the Incas of the New World, exchanging fine emeralds for precious metals.
Arguably, one of the most infamous emeralds in history is the Bahia Emerald, an enormous boulder of a gem that has consistently been declared as cursed. It weighs almost a thousand pounds
It’s said that everyone who comes into contact with the Bahia Emerald faces a lifetime of bad luck. Bizarrely, despite its size, the Bahia Emerald isn’t actually all that valuable, with some estimates ranking it in the low hundreds of dollars.
While it might be gargantuan, it’s by no means practical, and the actual ‘emerald parts’ of the rock itself are of an intensely low quality. In fact, one article suggests that if the emerald were broken down into smaller stones, they’d be no more than “fish tank emeralds”.
However, that’s not to say that there aren’t some dramatically expensive emeralds out there. In 2017, a single high-quality emerald was sold at auction for more than five million dollars, making it the most expensive emerald, per-carat, every sold.
In 2011, a diamond, emerald, and white gold brooch sold for just over six million dollars. The emerald at the heart of this piece was particularly fine, with a charming design created by Bulgari, an Italian jewelry brand.