Frequently Asked Questions

We provide one super-magnified photo taken under 5000 Kelvin “daylight” balanced light to show any inclusions or flaws. For our most popular categories of stones we have a video too, taken under “neutral daylight” lamps. We purposely take photos under a reproducible “neutral” type light and not “daylight”, since the daylight conditions in San Diego don’t necessarily represent anyone else’s local conditions.
Light conditions vary geographically, and colors can appear very differently on individual screens and monitors. (For a brief article on the many variations of “daylight”, see “Light and Color 101” here: gemstone-facts )
Because of this, we don’t provide additional photos or videos.
Most of our customers agree that our written descriptions are very accurate!
There is no substitute for seeing a colored gemstone in person, in your unique lighting and surroundings, that’s why we offer a 7 day inspection period to review your purchase.

If you are trying to narrow down your choices, please contact us with your criteria and we will do our best to help!

We are only permitted to ship to a cardholder’s billing address because of fraud protection protocols our processing bank requires. Please save time and enter only your billing address on your order; your order will not go through if you enter any address other than the billing address your credit card company has on file. Please see our Shipping Policy page for more details: shipping-returns

Please see our page: shipping-returns

We price everything we sell as low as we possibly can right from the beginning. After decades in the business we are very familiar with the fair market value of our stones. We don’t mark up our stones so that we can then have “sales” or offer “discounts”. In this way, you can be sure you are getting our very best price all the time.

We operate on a first-come-first-served basis so that the first customer that places an order can make a purchase. We do accept credit cards!

If you order the item, we cannot ship it to a jeweler, or other third party (see above). If you want your jeweler to order the item for you, they must purchase it, have it shipped to their confirmed billing address, review it on your behalf, and decide if you will like it or not within the 7 day period. Obviously, we don’t recommend this!

*We do not ship internationally.

Many of them do, and it will be noted in the description. We stand behind everything we sell and guarantee that our stones are as described. If you decide to send one off for certification, we guarantee it will come back certified as we described it, if not, you can return it to us for your money back, including the cost of certification.

We no longer do any custom cutting.