Finding the true value of gemstones and feng shui stones in Vietnam

The Vietnamese market is currently bustling with gemstones and feng shui stones, but consumers are often ripped off or buy fake goods.

Gemstones are stones with high durability, hardness usually from 8 to 10 (on the Mohs scale) such as: diamond, emerald, ruby, sapphire... These stones have beautiful colors, high purity and are often crafted into jewelry. For crafted gemstones, the 4C standard (Color, Carat, Clarity, Cut) is often used to determine quality.

Feng shui balls are made of glass.

Semi-precious stones are stones that usually have a hardness of about 3-4 to 6-7 (Mohs hardness) such as: Quartz, agate, jade, peridot, tourmaline, garnet, fluorite, spinel, malachite, azurite, calcite... These stones also have beautiful colors, high purity and are also crafted into jewelry such as pendants, rings, bracelets, necklaces...

Feng shui stones are semi-precious stones but are often large in size and color, and have low transparency, so they are often carved into statues, mascots, spheres... for desks, displayed in homes or in halls, in front of doors...

The Vietnamese market is currently very vibrant with popular precious and semi-precious stones (jewelry stones, feng shui stones...) such as ruby, sapphire, topaz, aquamarine, quartz, agate, petrified wood, tourmaline, garnet, tektite... and even stones that sellers "name themselves" such as quartz...

Inflated value

In fact, it is difficult for ordinary consumers to know exactly what the real quality of those stones is, and they may even be "ripped off" or "blindsided" and buy fake goods at high prices.

The statues are made from stone powder and then dyed.

In Vietnam, if you look up the price of feng shui stones on Google, it is like getting lost in a maze, because the prices at online stores are very different. Some places only cost a few tens or hundreds of thousands per product, but others cost up to several million.

Many people, due to lack of knowledge about stones, are often fooled when buying, sometimes buying fake stones, poor quality stones, buying natural stones but in fact they are dyed stones, stone powder, artificial glass, or even plastic.

A very common phenomenon in the current feng shui stone trading market is that stone sellers do not have deep expertise in stones, so they call the stones by the wrong name, or confuse this type of stone with another type of stone, so the true value of the stone is also affected.

The bracelets are made of plastic.

If you are not knowledgeable or have expertise in stones, buying a 100% natural stone is not easy, even experienced people cannot accurately identify all types of gemstones and feng shui stones on the market, especially when they have been crafted into items such as pendants, rings, spheres, statues or animals. Therefore, to accurately identify many types of stones, they need to be analyzed and tested in the laboratory by specialized machines and glasses.

How to avoid "trick"?

On the market today, there are popular types of artificial stone made from stone powder and then dyed or made of glass, plastic... So how to buy genuine products at the right price?

According to Mr. Do Quang Khanh, a stone expert, to distinguish between real and fake stones, the first thing to do is to observe. A natural stone, if not a jewelry stone, often has cracks, fissures, veins, and impurities inside the stone, which can be observed with the naked eye. Except for white quartz, smoky quartz, and obsidian, which are clean and very cheap stones, the rest of the stones can be identified in this way.

Bracelets or feng shui mascots that are crystal clear without any ripples and have bright colors of green, red, purple, yellow are generally fake.

The plastic mascot can be recognized by close observation.

In addition, to distinguish between real stone and glued stone powder (a very popular type of fake stone in the feng shui stone market), Mr. Do Quang Khanh said that these two types are completely different in terms of manufacturing methods. For real stone, the craftsman must use a chisel to carve on the stone surface, so the lines will not be perfect, but will be uneven, not sharp, and there will never be 2 identical pieces. On the contrary, with stone powder, people take crushed waste stone, mix it with glue, dye and press it with a mold. The finished product will be very smooth, shiny, colorful, with extremely sharp and precise lines, and thousands of pieces will be exactly the same.

The most accurate way to determine real or fake stones is to have them tested. The test results from reputable centers will provide full information on the type of stone, natural or artificial, treated or not, size, weight, and shape.

A lecturer at the University of Mining and Geology, who is also passionate about gemstones and feng shui stones, noted: The best advice for stone buyers is to choose reputable stone sellers or the products they buy should be accompanied by a stone quality certificate provided by gemstone testing centers.

According to VOV