Article: Cheaper gems make the cut in today's jewelry market.(Daily Break)

staff and wire report

A little glitter for your sweetheart seems like an easy answer to the Valentine's Day gift quandary: pearl earrings, perhaps, or a gold heart-pendant necklace. However, jewelry cases are turning up more and more unusual names - fluorite, smithsonite , tourmaline, for example - that can leave a lover bewildered.

While searching for a gift for his wife's birthday, Chris Chiarella was baffled by the selection when the jeweler laid out piece after piece studded with brightly colored stones he had never heard of - all priced at more than $2,000.

"I felt like I do when I go to the mechanic - that I don't know enough and I'm in ...

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