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This Gem Looks Like Amethyst, Has A Color Range Like Quartz, But Isn’t Often Used In Jewelry

Yet, there’s hardly a gemologist who doesn’t own at least one specimen.

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This Gem Looks Like Amethyst, Has A Color Range Like Quartz, But Isn’t Often Used In Jewelry

A CLASSIC GEMOLOGY LESSON is to place me beside amethyst and see who — based on color alone — can tell us apart (it is but folly to try). While purple is my hallmark color, it is but just one in my wide spectrum. In terms of range of color, I am rivaled only by quartz. And whereas some varieties of quartz can dazzle, I glow. I am luminescent, sometimes even phosphorescent. I’m also pretty darn useful. I am used as a flux in the production of steel and aluminum, as an added mineral in water, to make camera lenses and telescopes. The one area I’m not so commonly employed is jewelry — too soft they say. Still there’s hardly a budding gemologist in the world who doesn’t own at least one specimen of me.

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He Doubled His Sales Goals with Wilkerson

John Matthews, owner of John Michael Matthews Fine Jewelry in Vero Beach, Florida, is a planner. As an IJO member jeweler, he knew he needed an exit strategy if he ever wanted to g the kind of retirement he deserved. He asked around and the answers all seemed to point to one solution: Wilkerson. He talked to Rick Hayes, Wilkerson president, and took his time before making a final decision. He’d heard Wilkerson knew their way around a going out of business sale. But, he says, “he didn’t realize how good it was going to be.” Sales goals were “ambitious,” but even Matthews was pleasantly surprised. “It looks like we’re going to double that.”

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