Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Jewelry trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
48 free Jewelry trivia questions with answers. Jewelry is where geology, chemistry, royalty and marketing meet. This quiz covers all of it: how gem hardness is ranked and which mineral sits where, what a karat and a hallmark actually tell you, why the birthstone list looks the way it does, and the stories behind the world's most famous stones, from the diamond mailed to a museum in a brown-paper box to the one that only queens are allowed to wear. You will also meet the great houses and the people who shaped the trade: the goldsmith who made eggs for the tsars, the New York firm that invented the six-prong ring, the Paris jeweller a king called the jeweller of kings, and the mining cartel whose copywriter turned a diamond into a permanent engagement tradition. It works for a jewellery-lover, a pub-quiz round or anyone who has wondered what 925 stamped inside a ring means. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on the stones, metals, houses and crown jewels involved, and the source sentence sits under each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Mohs hardness scale used for gemstones was introduced in 1812 by a mineralogist of which nationality?
German
Friedrich Mohs, a German mineralogist who spent much of his career in Austria, ranked ten reference minerals in 1812 by which could scratch which.
Q 02Which mineral sits at 1, the softest point, on the Mohs scale?
Talc
Talc is 1 on the Mohs scale and can be scratched with a fingernail; gypsum is 2, calcite 3 and fluorite 4.
Q 03Rubies get their red colour from traces of which element?
Chromium
Chromium replacing a little of the aluminium in corundum produces ruby's red; the same mineral coloured by iron and titanium instead gives the blue of its sister gem.
Q 04Which gemstone is the modern birthstone for September?
Sapphire
Sapphire is September's birthstone on the modern list adopted by American jewellers in 1912; peridot belongs to August, opal to October and topaz to November.
Q 05How many carats does the Hope Diamond weigh?
45.52
The Hope Diamond weighs 45.52 carats; under ultraviolet light it glows with an eerie red phosphorescence, one of the traits used to identify it.
Q 06Trace amounts of which element give the Hope Diamond its blue colour?
Boron
Trace boron makes the Hope Diamond a type IIb blue; such boron-bearing blue diamonds are only about 0.1% of gem diamonds, while nitrogen tints stones yellow.
Q 07To which institution was the Hope Diamond donated in 1958?
The Smithsonian, Washington
The Hope Diamond was donated to the Smithsonian in Washington in November 1958, famously sent by registered mail in a plain package; it became the centrepiece of the Natural History museum's gem hall.
Q 08Which jeweller first lent jewels to actresses for the 1944 Oscars and later donated the Hope Diamond?
Harry Winston
Harry Winston lent jewels to Jennifer Jones for the 1944 Academy Awards, starting the red-carpet loan tradition; he bought the Hope Diamond in 1949 and gave it away in 1958.
Q 09Which French traveller bought the rough Hope Diamond in India and sold it to Louis XIV?
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, the gem merchant and travel writer, sold the roughly 115-carat blue to Louis XIV in 1668; recut, it became the French Blue and, much later, the Hope.
Q 10The Cullinan Diamond, found in South Africa in 1905, weighed how many carats when rough?
3,106
The Cullinan weighed 3,106 carats, about 621 grams, when found near Pretoria in January 1905; Asscher of Amsterdam cut it into 9 major and 96 minor stones.
Q 11The Cullinan Diamond was named after what?
The owner of the mine
Thomas Cullinan owned the mine; the stone itself was sent to Britain in a plain box by registered post while a decoy went by ship.
Q 12Cullinan I, the Great Star of Africa, is mounted in which piece of the British regalia?
The Sovereign's Sceptre with Cross
Cullinan I, just over 530 carats, was set in the head of the Sovereign's Sceptre with Cross in 1910; its 317.4-carat sibling, Cullinan II, sits in the front of the Imperial State Crown.
Q 13What does the name Koh-i-Noor mean?
Mountain of Light
Q 21What was the first Fabergé imperial egg, made in 1885, called?
The Hen Egg
The Hen Egg, commissioned by the tsar for Empress Maria Feodorovna at Easter 1885, has a plain white enamel shell that opens to a gold yolk, a gold hen and, originally, a crown and ruby pendant.
Q 22In what year was Tiffany & Co. founded in New York?
1837
Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young opened their stationery and fancy-goods store at 259 Broadway in 1837; the brand's signature blue is registered with Pantone as '1837 Blue'.
Q 23The 1886 Tiffany Setting ring holds the diamond off the band with how many prongs?
Six
The 1886 Tiffany Setting raises the diamond above the band on six slender prongs, letting light in from all sides; it became the template for the modern solitaire.
Koh-i-Noor is Persian for 'Mountain of Light'; the stone, recut in 1852 on Prince Albert's orders, lost about 40% of its weight to reach 105.6 carats.
Q 14In 1937 the Koh-i-Noor was set into which piece of British regalia?
The Queen Mother's Crown
For the 1937 coronation the Koh-i-Noor was mounted in the platinum crown made for Queen Elizabeth, George VI's consort, known after 1952 as the Queen Mother's Crown.
Q 15The 1849 treaty that ceded the Koh-i-Noor to Queen Victoria was signed in which city?
Lahore
The Last Treaty of Lahore, signed in March 1849 in the Sikh capital after the Second Anglo-Sikh War, surrendered the Koh-i-Noor to Queen Victoria on behalf of the ten-year-old Maharaja Duleep Singh.
Q 16An 18-karat gold ring is what percentage gold by mass?
75%
18 karat means 18 parts gold out of 24, so the ring is 75% gold by mass, marked 750 in the parts-per-thousand system.
Q 17Sterling silver contains what percentage of pure silver?
92.5%
Sterling silver is 92.5% pure silver alloyed with 7.5% other metal, usually copper; that is why sterling pieces are stamped 925, parts per thousand.
Q 18The word 'hallmark' derives from the London headquarters of which guild?
The Goldsmiths' Company
'Hallmark' comes from Goldsmiths' Hall, the London home of the Goldsmiths' Company, whose wardens assayed and marked precious metals there and introduced the date-letter system in 1478.
Q 19The 1300 English statute that began hallmarking required silver to be marked with which animal's head?
A leopard
Edward I's statute of 1300 ordered silver to bear the leopard's head, the mark of London; the leopard's head went on to serve as the London assay office's town mark.
Q 20Which symbol is the assay office mark for Birmingham on British hallmarks?
An anchor
Birmingham's mark is an anchor, reputedly chosen in 1773 at London's Crown and Anchor tavern, where Sheffield's lobbyists took the crown and Birmingham's the anchor.
Q 24Which luxury group bought Tiffany & Co. in 2021 for about $15.8 billion?
LVMH
LVMH, Bernard Arnault's group, completed its roughly $15.8 billion purchase of Tiffany in January 2021 after a bitter legal fight over the price; it had bought Bulgari in 2011.
Q 25Which king called Cartier 'the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers'?
Edward VII
Edward VII, who ordered 27 tiaras from Cartier for his 1902 coronation, called it 'the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers' and granted a royal warrant in 1904.
Q 26Cartier designed its first flat wristwatch in 1904 for which pioneering aviator?
Alberto Santos-Dumont
Alberto Santos-Dumont, the Brazilian aviation pioneer, complained to Louis Cartier that a pocket watch was useless in flight; the 1904 square-bezel Santos watch was the answer.
Q 27Which copywriter coined the slogan 'A Diamond Is Forever' for De Beers in 1947?
Frances Gerety
Frances Gerety, a copywriter at N. W. Ayer & Son, wrote 'A Diamond Is Forever' late one night in 1947; Advertising Age named it the slogan of the twentieth century in 1999.
Q 28The first well-documented diamond engagement ring was given in 1477 by which archduke?
Maximilian of Austria
Archduke Maximilian of Austria, the future Holy Roman Emperor, gave Mary of Burgundy a diamond ring on their betrothal in 1477; they married in Ghent that August.
Q 29On an Irish Claddagh ring, what does the crown symbolise?
Loyalty
On a Claddagh ring the crown stands for loyalty, the heart for love and the two hands for friendship; how it is worn signals whether the wearer is single or taken.
Q 30The Black Prince's Ruby in the Imperial State Crown is not a ruby at all but what?
A spinel
The Black Prince's Ruby is a roughly 170-carat red spinel, a mineral long mistaken for ruby; the crown also carries 2,868 diamonds, 273 pearls and 5 true rubies.