Maybe if you’re a jeweler or a savvy shopper, you might know at a glance whether the ring in my photo below has real or fake diamonds. What’s your guess?

When I’m out metal detecting for fun, I usually find and dispose of trash: aluminum cans, nails, batteries, rusty cans…you name it. But on occasion, something sparkles below my detecting coil.

I found this ring in a park buried only slightly below the surface – enough that it was covered and filled with mud. It’s an exciting moment – it feels good after so much effort to recover something with great value.

This happens in business life as well – especially when someone comes up with a great idea that they feel confident customers will LOVE. They sometimes want to be right about that so badly, that they quickly follow initial gut instincts (seeing the muddy ring) and declare they’ve found a winner!

Smart teams (and detectorists!) know to validate assumptions.

For a ring, you might use the “sparkle test.” Diamonds usually have gray/white sparkling inside the stone and scatter rainbow colors. But fake stones have more intense rainbow reflections without the gray/white. To be more accurate you’d use a diamond tester tool.

There are many other ways to validate and before long, you have real data to know what you’re looking at. And in this case…it’s a fake! Was your guess correct?

So don’t get faked out in your business decisions either. It’s okay to be excited – even a fake ring can look pretty nice. Just be sure you know exactly what you’re dealing with before making that investment.

P.S. Whether real or fake, I always attempt to find the proper owner. Whether it has large monetary value or not, I know these things can have emotional value as well.