5 Interesting Jewellery Facts

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1. The oldest known jewellery are 100,000 year old beads made from Nassarius shells.
2. 24 carat gold is 99.9% pure. Whereas many US and European jewellers refrain from utilising 24 carat gold for jewellery due to it's softness, 24 carat gold is the norm across Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
3. Amber is an organic gem made from fossilised tree resin. For it to quality as amber, it must be at least 1 million years old! You can test for it's authenticity, as real amber will float in water.
4. Most sapphires are heated, but unheated sapphires command twice the price if not more. Heat treatment is used to improve a sapphire's colour, remove colour zoning and improve clarity. Sapphires can come in a variety of colours, the rarest being the Padaparscha, which is a pinkish orange. 
5. The largest diamond ever found was a 3,106-carot diamond chirstened, the "Cullinan". It weighed 1.33 pounds and was discovered in 1905 in the Premier Mine in Pretoria, South Africa.

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