Stefan Austermühle, General Manager of Gemrock Peru                                        June 2021

Sometimes a new client, who did not yet have a chance to hold our spheres in his own hand, tells us that he would prefer to meet us at a gemshow in order be able to see the quality of our products first hand.

Visiting gem shows in times of seemingly never ending virus-pandemics is however not a likely thing to happen. At the same time online-sales of crystal products are exploding and more and more people need to judge quality from a picure.

When it comes to polish-quality, recognizing quality and distinguishing it from bad quality just by looking at a picture is, however, surprisingly easy.

You actually have to focus on just one criteria.

What we explain in this post with spheres can be likewise applied to hearts, eggs or any other crystal object.

Here is the easy tip:

The better the polish the less diffuse are the light reflection of lamps on the sphere-surface.

Or say it the other way round:

The better the polish the sharper the borders of the light reflection.

Also:

The better the polish the more details of the photographers environment are reflected like in a mirror on the surface or the sphere: the photographers camera, hands and even face, windows, furniture or any other objects close to the sphere.

In the following we have prepared some comparitive examples. On the left side you will see examples for badly polished spheres that we have copied from the internet. On the right side you will see a typical Gemrock sphere with a high quality polish.