How can you tell a good emerald from a bad one?

Beautiful and increasingly on the radar of collectors, a good emerald is just as rare, and arguably more difficult to come by, as diamonds.

One among the big three precious gems – the other two being sapphire and ruby – the emerald requires more knowledge when buying one than simply understanding the four Cs when purchasing a diamond. 

Colour, clarity, origin and fire all play into the pricing of the green gem. But the greatest determining factor of emerald prices is whether they’ve been treated to enhance their clarity and minimise their inclusion. Since these gems are finding their way into auctions in greater numbers, we visited Poly Auction Hong Kong’s showroom to look at emeralds that recently went under the hammer and spoke with Sze Sze, who is an in-house jewellery specialist and the head of department for jewels and prestige collections.