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Amora Production - significant volume expansion, June sales +88% vs May sales: As you can surmise from some of the announcements above, our production is rapidly expanding at long last. Thus, with both TIGERs running full steam ahead, we've been able to start catching up on not only the Eternity but starting to expand into the long awaited fancy cuts. This is shown by the jump in our monthly sales which increased 88% vs May sales. We have a large amount of 8mm Eternity's in progress now and those will start being available end of next week. We also expect to have everything from 8.2mm (~2ct), 9.2mm (~3ct), 10mm (~4ct), 11mm-11.50mm, 12mm (~7ct) and of course 14mm (~10ct!) ready over the next four weeks!
Amora 'Super Ideal' Princess cut finalized: With the production expansion, we've been able to finalize our new 'Super Ideal' Amora Princess cut. The Super Ideal is because after completing, it just happened to turn out that the parameters for it ended up at AGS-0, where 0 is the highest grading cut score (0-10) as verified by DiamCalc under the AGS latest grading standard.
Here's the computer render of the Amora Super Ideal princess in spotlighting so you can see it's personality:
GIA Research review of Amora Gem: GIA Research was kind enough to do a review/measurement of the Amora Gem this week. We sent down two Amora Eternity's and a piece of Amora Gem rough. The idea was for them to measure the Refractive Index, Dispersion Index (Fire), cutting parameters via the Helium system, and I also asked them to check the surface smoothness to check our nano-polish process.
Unfortunately, after a week we got precision cut measurements back for the Amora Eternity's via the Helium system, but they were unsuccessful in obtaining both the Refractive Index as well as the Dispersion Index. They also did not have the right equipment to do the surface profile to verify the nano-polish.
So a bit unfortunate as I was looking forward to GIA having exact optical measurements for the Amora, but on the flip side, GIA is now keeping a piece of Amora Gem rough in their permanent 'Gem library'.
Thus, Amora Gem has entered arguably the world's most complete library of gems at the GIA!
BTD News:
Overnight Earrings expansion: We have seen strong demand for our recently launched 'Overnight Earrings' program where we prestock Asha 4 prong martini studs and make them available with included overnight shipping, to allow for true 'Overnight' earrings for those last minute (or if you just don't want to wait) orders.
I'm happy to announce that we'll be adding some Amora Eternity earrings now that we have some 7mm Amora Eternity's in stock. These will be 4 prong platinum martini's with protector backs!
Overnight Earrings - Asha Stud Earrings
Majority of Moissanite is being sold with inflated "Diamond Equivalent weights" - how you can protect yourself: As discussed previously we purchased a number of Moissanite to compare whether their claim of '58' facets was true. It was not, all round cuts from Charles and Colvard are 57 facets even though companies like MoissaniteCo continue to display that false 58 facet info claim.
Regardless, one thing that stood out was that the vast majority of Mossanite was underweight, by up to 10% or more vs the claimed 'diamond equivalent'. After testing hundreds of stones, both Moissanite, Amora Gem, etc. we've developed a quick conversion formula that will let you take the 'on the scale weight' and convert it to a pretty accurate 'diamond equivalent' weight for most Silicon carbide polytypes.
That formula is this:
Scale Weight * 1.101 = diamond equivalent carat weight. (or put another way, increase the scale weight by 10.1% to get diamond equivalent estimate).
It's not 100% perfect, but it's quite close with it usually getting it within +/- .01ct on the majority of stones tested vs the gold standard of volumetric measurement which requires either an OGI HD, Sarin HD or Helium system to do. That's equipment very few jewelers have but all of them have scales so now you can quickly get a pretty accurate number to see how correct, or how inflated, a moissanite sellers diamond equivalent is.
For reference, a lot of certs are floating around with inflated diamond equivalent weights because the lab doesn't even measure it.
Rather, if you follow the asterick on the cert, at the bottom you'll see "Diamond Equivalent Weight supplied by Moissanite seller"...which is shorthand for they just told us what to put, we didn't actually measure it. And no surprise what they tell them is usually higher than reality.
Example - a 3.00ct F1 "H&A" Moissanite (9mm) from MoissaniteCo was purchased and tested.
It's actual scale weight was: 2.47ct.
Now, knowing the above carat weight formula, you would compute:
2.47 * 1.101 = 2.719 diamond equivalent carat weight.
The volumetric computed diamond equivalent via OGI HD system was: 2.71ct.
(Thus .009 difference between actual and formula, showing the formula is quite accurate).
More importantly though - The claimed diamond equivalent weight for this 2.71ct was 3.00ct diamond equivalent!
Thus, someone buying has clearly overpaid for an imaginary .29ct (10%) air, while likely thinking they purchased a true 3.00 ct. In effect they are being tricked out of, and paying for, nearly 1/3 of a non-existent carat due to this inflated diamond equivalent weight. Without the knowledge of this formula though, previously a customer had no ability to know how roughly accurate (or inflated) a diamond equivalent claim is or is not.
Anyway we saw a similar trend across the majority of moissanite purchased, so make sure to employ the formula above as a rough check to ensure you aren't paying for 'air'.
(Note: I reference the F1 as "H&A" as the 62.4% table on this sample, and other F1's with 60%+ tables, is far too large too qualify as an H&A cut.
H&A requires <= 57% table, though using larger tables while claiming it is an H&A, is great for saving weight at the expense of beauty, to make it less expensive to produce...but we'll get into that in the future).
Anyway, this formula also maps very closely to the actual atomic density difference between diamond and most polytypes of Silicon Carbide, which is ~ 9.96% difference (or 1.0996 vs 1.101%). So beyond testing over hundreds of stones, it's also supported by atomic density which is very close to the 1.101 (or +10.1%) calculation.
Regardless, all Amora Gems are always certed with diamond equivalent weight determined by volumetric measurement, not by us telling the lab what to put and risking the 'inflated' carat weights seen in Moissanite.
Hopefully the above formula will help protect you, and clean up the Moissanite 'inflated carat weight' problem.
Misc:
Good news for elephants (like Amora!) - Japan's largest ecommerce site and arguably one of the worlds largest ivory internet sellers, will no longer allow ivory to be listed We haven't had an update on Amora, our sponsored elephant in Kenya for a while but I'm happy to report that there is steady progress on reducing demand for Ivory globally. That ultimately is the only solution to the elephant (and rhino) poaching that threatens to wipe out some of Africa's most majestic creatures. Japan's largest ecommerce site, Rakuten, has been considered one of, if not the largest, ecommerce site for ivory sales as Japanese customers apparently buy 'Hanko' or signature seals, usually made of Ivory, with almost every person having one to sign documents the way we sign with a signature.
In the next two months though, Rakuten has announced that all ivory sales will no longer be allowed - that is another substantial step for reducing demand for Ivory and thus poaching of elephants:
Japan's Rakuten retail site bans ivory sales - BBC News
Stunning star (and planet) images: To close out our 4 year extravaganza blog update, and with Amora's star history, I wanted to show 3 very nice images related to the stars.
First up - the closest ever photo of the 'Great Red spot' on Jupiter from NASA's Juno mission. Jupiter appears as a bright 'star' in the sky but it's of course a planet. Here's the closest humans have ever seen it's huge, centuries old storm!
Next up - the milky way as seen from a lake in I believe Washington state, taken by Kevin Roylance:
And last but not least, a stunning view from the Alps with summer flowers! (Photo by Marco Kern):
That's it for this 4 year Amora celebration blog update! We'll have more updates end of August as we continue the Amora Gem production expansion. Until then, have a great weekend and a great month and see you at the end of August!
Best regards,
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Can't wait until next month. And, as usual, LOVE all the sky and star pictures. My face is always looking at the sky and star, much to my husband's consternation. 
