It may seem to the casual observer as if citrine and Topaz was two different things. Indeed much of what is practiced about it makes it seem as though if citrine is a less expensive version of Topaz; citrine is its own stone and is distinguished in many different ways. For one citrine is not as hard as Topaz and while citrine's shape occurs in clusters, the cleavage of Topaz is allegedly perfect. For all other things considered, Topaz or citrine are both fine stones and should be well regarded when you are selecting jewelry of either kind. You should make sure that citrine is in fact citrine and not Quartz or Amethyst which was just heated by unscrupulous jewelers to achieve the yellow color of true citrine.
If you are interested in either topaz or citrine as a jewel for your next piece of jewelry you should do a couple of things just to assure yourself that you are getting the correct type of jewel. It is sad but true that many jewelers sell citrine as topaz giving the citrine such names as “Gold Topaz,” “Madeira Topaz,” “Brazilian Topaz,” or “Citrine Topaz.”
If you are shopping around for some of the more popular type of Topaz or citrine than you may need to look at a jeweler that deals in more exotic variety of stones. If you walk into a jewelry store and you see names like Imperial Topaz or Mystic Topaz you may need to take caution in buying the Topaz from a jeweler like that as these may just be mere facades of the real citrine or the real topaz.
However, if you feel comfortable enough with your jeweler than you should at least find out about what type of process was used in identifying this mineral and really pepper the jeweler with questions until your suspicions are satisfied. There will be many who would choose to lie to you if they knew that they could get away with it without recompense. Also it’s really more about what you find appealing; while many people are in the jewelry business to make money, most people buying jewelry are just doing so because they think that a piece would look good on themselves or on a person they know. So when it comes to the debate of topaz or citrine, there seems to be a missing element from the discussion; that is whether or not anyone cares whether or not there’s topaz or citrine at all.
