The difference between Aquamarine and Blue Topaz
Emily Justice
What is the difference between Aquamarine and Blue Topaz?
So we have included some information about that below.
Facts about Aquamarine and Topaz
Aquamarine (March’s Birthstone)
Aquamarine’s name comes from the Latin for seawater, and it was said to calm waves and keep sailors safe at sea. March’s birthstone was also thought to enhance the happiness of marriages. The best gems combine high clarity with limpid transparency and blue to slightly greenish blue hues. Like many beryls, aquamarine forms large crystals suitable for sizable fashioned gems and carvings.
Aquamarine is the green-blue to blue variety of the mineral beryl. (Emerald is the green to bluish green variety of the same mineral.) Its color is usually a light pastel greenish blue.
Heat treatment usually gives it a more bluish appearance.
Aquamarine crystals are known to be large in size and relatively clean and well-formed, making them particularly valuable to collectors of mineral specimens. Fine aquamarine is rare and expensive. Large gems with intense color that are selling for less than $100 are unlikely to be aquamarine.
Why does aquamarine cost so much more than blue topaz that's almost the same color?
Blue topaz is more common because the color is produced by treating colorless topaz with radiation. Aquamarine is more rare in nature, especially in fine color. Its long history as a gem also adds to its collectability.
Blue Topaz (One of December’s Birthstone)
Precious Topaz (November Birthstone)
Many consumers know topaz as simply an inexpensive blue gem. They’re surprised to learn that its blue color is hardly ever natural: It’s almost always caused by treatment. They might also be surprised to know that topaz has so many more colors to offer gem lovers, including pinks and purples that rival the finest fancy sapphires.
Topaz is allochromatic, which means that its color is caused by impurity elements or defects in its crystal structure rather than by an element of its basic chemical composition. The element chromium causes natural pink, red, and violet-to-purple colors in topaz. Imperfections at the atomic level in topaz crystal structure can cause yellow, brown, and blue color. Brown is a common topaz color, and the gem is sometimes mistakenly called “smoky quartz.”
Topaz actually has an exceptionally wide color range that, besides brown, includes various tones and saturations of blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink, and purple. Colorless topaz is plentiful, and is often treated to give it a blue color.
The color varieties are often identified simply by hue name—blue topaz, pink topaz, and so forth—but there are also a couple of special trade names. Imperial topaz is a medium reddish orange to orange-red. This is one of the gem’s most expensive colors. Sherry topaz—named after the sherry wine—is a yellowish brown or brownish yellow to orange. Stones in this color range are often called precious topaz to help distinguish them from the similarly colored but less expensive citrine and smoky quartz.
Topaz is also pleochroic, meaning that the gem can show different colors in different crystal directions.