Don't Buy a Cheap Engagement Ring
The worst financial and relationship decision you could ever make would be buying your future bride a cheap engagement ring and telling her it's the real thing. Many men have been busted by their bride-to-be, right after she returned from the local jewelry store. Even is she does not find out right away, she will know later on when her finger turns green.
If you want the marriage to last, then don't buy her a cheap engagement ring. Instead, save a lot of money by designing the engagement ring yourself. Because you will need to select the precious stones to be used, you might want to break tradition and get her involved.
Precious Stone
A gemstone or gem -- also known as a precious stone or semi-precious stone - can be cut and polished so that the mineral can be used to make jewelry. Most gemstones are very hard, and this attribute can be used in detecting counterfeit cheap engagement rings. Of course, the rarity of a gem greatly affects its value. Besides hardness, genuine gems have attributes of a refractive index, dispersion, specific gravity, cleavage, fracture, and luster.
Diamonds
Real diamonds -- not the counterfeit ones found in cheap engagement rings - are a girl's best friend. The diamond is a gemstone whose value is determined in a different way than all other gemstones. Traditionally, a diamond is valued mostly for its physical properties such as hardness and brilliance.
Rubies
Ruby originates from the Latin word "rubber," which means red. Rubies have an ancient history in civilization, being the most frequently named precious gem in the Bible. Known as one of the four precious stones, rubies have a hardness level of 9 on the Mohs scale, but diamonds are the hardest of all, with a level of 10. Oftentimes a bogus, fake, cheap engagement ring can be uncovered by the recipient trying, and failing, to cut glass with the "diamond" or "ruby" gemstone.
Sapphire
Being as hard as a ruby, with a 9 on the Mohs scale, sapphires are used in many applications in addition to jewelry, such as infrared optical components, watch crystals, and wafers for the deposition of semi-conductors. Although blue is considered the normal color for sapphires, they can be found across a full range of spectral colors like brown, colorless, grey, and black. Some natural sapphires are completely transparent, or "white." They usually come out of the ground as light grey or brown and are then heated to make them clear.
Emerald
Emeralds have a hardness of 7.5 on the Mohs scale and are included, so their brittleness is classified as generally poor. Emeralds come in many shades of green and bluish green. There is a large spectrum of clarity, depending on the inclusions and fractures in the crystal. Remember that there are a lot of counterfeit, cheap engagement rings out there that are very difficult to detect. If the deal appears too good to be true, then it probably is!
