Fake stones: why is a counterfeit sometimes more valuable than the original?

Everything becomes more interesting with imitations. Poor quality materials are not always used for them. For example, pressed chips impregnated with epoxy resin are often presented as natural turquoise. It’s cheap material.

But if, instead of turquoise, they use the rare natural mineral howlite, then the question of which is more expensive becomes open.

Another example is when natural turquoise is replaced with improved turquoise, impregnated with special solutions. Ordinary samples with this treatment are cheaper than untreated stones. But sometimes the deciding factor is not the origin, but marketing and aesthetics. So, famous world brands often use impregnated Arizona turquoise, and jewelry containing it is more expensive than products with natural minerals, especially from Russian manufacturers. While it’s not always a simple branding issue, most companies don’t specify that their turquoise is treated, simply calling it natural.

Synthetic stones have the same physical and chemical properties as natural stones, but are created in a laboratory. They are not as rare and valuable as minerals that formed deep within the Earth over millions of years and are therefore much cheaper than their natural counterparts.

But there are exceptions. For example, sultanite, or diaspora, is a precious stone found in jewelry quality mainly in Türkiye (Salkuk deposit). It is incredibly fragile: up to 99% of the raw material is destroyed during cutting and polishing. Therefore, only synthetic sultanite is on sale and it is expensive. The Turks realized that the effect of the color change of this stone delighted buyers and they began to cultivate it. As a result, the entire global market lives on expensive laboratory analogues.

A similar situation occurs with synthetic garnets – yttrium-aluminum. The technology for growing them is quite expensive, so the cost is high. Some companies sell these stones even more expensive than natural almandines – red garnets.

Sometimes modern technology literally saves a bad option. So, low-quality natural beryl can cost only 100 rubles. However, using it in the laboratory, it is possible to grow a synthetic emerald costing 50,000-100,000 rubles. This is a typical case when a synthetic stone turns out to be more expensive than its low-quality natural counterpart. In the laboratory, the imperfection is transformed into a pure specimen.

“Ennoblement” is a compromise between nature and science. We are talking about natural stones that have undergone modifications: they are impregnated, irradiated, heated, filled with lead glass, oiled with oils or polymers to improve color and transparency. Any intervention other than cutting and polishing is considered refining.

Typically, these stones cost 30-40% less with conventional heat treatment and 70-90% less with crude methods such as irradiation or glass filling.

But there are also exceptions here.

For example, zircon is a beautiful gemstone from Cambodia. Its natural color is red-brown, but when heated it turns bright blue. This option is called “starred”. Its color is so beautiful and rich that the jewelry costs 10 to 15 times more than before heating.

Another example is tanzanite, found only in Tanzania (Merelani deposit, Kilimanjaro). In its natural form, it has a lilac-green-blue color of low saturation, but when heated it acquires a bright blue or blue-violet tint. These stones are so expressive that they are often preferred over sapphires. The cost of heated tanzanite is 2-3 times higher than that of a natural sample.

Thus, refining may increase rather than decrease value if the result exceeds the natural aesthetic. And buyers, seeing the ideal play of color and shine, often prefer them.

The modern market is increasingly blurring the lines between “real” and “artificial”. Laboratory technologies make stones cleaner, more stable and shinier than their natural counterparts – which is why imitation, synthetic or refined minerals are sometimes more expensive. It all depends on technology and demand, and how the illusion of perfection is created.