The AGTA Report Card — formally known as the AGTA Gem ID Report — is an identification document issued by the American Gem Trade Association's Gemological Testing Center (AGTA GTC) that records the species, variety, weight, dimensions, and treatment status of a coloured gemstone or natural pearl. Compact in format and designed for practical use at the point of sale, it functions as a factual disclosure instrument rather than a grading report in the diamond-laboratory sense: it does not assign colour or clarity grades. Its primary purpose is to support transparency in trade transactions by providing a laboratory-verified record of what a stone is and what, if anything, has been done to it.

The AGTA GTC and Its Role in the Trade

The AGTA Gemological Testing Center, headquartered in New York City, operates as the laboratory arm of the American Gem Trade Association, the principal trade body representing coloured-gemstone and cultured-pearl dealers in the United States. The GTC was established to give the coloured-stone trade access to credible, independent gemological analysis at a time when disclosure of treatments was becoming both an ethical expectation and, increasingly, a legal requirement in the United States market. The laboratory employs standard gemological instrumentation — refractometers, spectroscopes, polariscopes, ultraviolet lamps, and advanced spectroscopic equipment — alongside microscopic examination to reach its determinations.

Because the AGTA's membership is drawn from dealers, designers, and manufacturers who handle coloured stones daily, the GTC's reporting format has been shaped by the practical needs of the trade floor: a document that can be read quickly, filed easily, and understood by buyers who may not be trained gemmologists.

Document Format and Contents

The report card is issued in a compact, card-sized or small-certificate format, distinguishing it from the larger folded reports associated with diamond grading laboratories such as the GIA or HRD. Typical fields on an AGTA Report Card include:

• Species and variety: The gemological identification of the stone — for example, corundum, variety sapphire, or beryl, variety emerald.
• Weight: Carat weight recorded to two decimal places.
• Measurements: Dimensions in millimetres, typically length × width × depth.
• Shape and cutting style: A brief descriptor such as oval mixed cut or cushion brilliant.
• Enhancement disclosure: The central disclosure element, expressed through the AGTA Enhancement Code system.
• Comments: An optional field for additional observations relevant to identification or quality.

The report does not include colour grade designations (such as "vivid" or "strong"), clarity grades, or cut grades. This deliberate omission reflects the AGTA GTC's position that subjective grading of coloured stones — where colour appearance varies with lighting conditions and human perception — is better left to the market, while the laboratory's authority is confined to objective identification and treatment detection.

The AGTA Enhancement Code System

The most distinctive and consequential feature of the AGTA Report Card is its use of the AGTA Enhancement Code, a lettered system that discloses the type of treatment or enhancement detected in a stone. The AGTA has published and maintained this code system as part of its broader industry-wide disclosure standards. Key codes include:

• N — No indications of enhancement detected; the stone appears to be in its natural, untreated state.
• H — Heating; the stone shows evidence of having been subjected to heat treatment, the most common enhancement applied to sapphire, ruby, and many other species.
• B — Bleaching, typically relevant to pearls and certain organic materials.
• C — Coating; a surface layer has been applied to alter colour or appearance.
• D — Dyeing; colouring agents have been introduced into the stone.
• F — Filling; surface-reaching fractures have been filled with a foreign substance such as glass, resin, or oil.
• G — Irradiation; the stone has been exposed to radiation to alter its colour.
• I — Impregnation; a polymer or similar substance has been used to improve stability or appearance, common in turquoise and some jadeite.
• L — Lattice diffusion; a surface or near-surface colour change has been induced by diffusion of elements such as beryllium into the crystal lattice.
• O — Oiling or resin infilling without clarity-altering fracture filling; classically associated with emerald.
• R — Resin infilling, a more substantial form of filling than simple oiling.
• U — Heating with the use of flux, relevant to certain rubies where flux residues are detectable in healed fractures.
• W — Waxing or oiling of a minor nature.

Codes may be combined on a single report where multiple treatments are detected. The code N, indicating no detectable enhancement, carries particular commercial significance: for high-value stones such as Burmese rubies, Kashmir sapphires, or Colombian emeralds, an unheated or untreated determination from a reputable laboratory commands a meaningful premium in the market.

It is important to note that the designation N reflects the limits of current detection technology and examination methodology; it does not constitute an absolute guarantee that no treatment was ever applied, only that none was detected by the methods available to the laboratory at the time of examination.

Scope and Limitations

The AGTA Report Card is an identification and disclosure document, not an appraisal. It does not state monetary value, nor does it provide the origin determination (country or locality of formation) that is offered by some other major laboratories, such as Gübelin Gem Lab, SSEF, or Lotus Gemology. For high-value stones where geographic origin is commercially significant — as it is for Burmese rubies, Kashmir sapphires, and Colombian emeralds — buyers and sellers typically seek a report from a laboratory that offers origin determination as a specific service.

The GTC's report is, however, well-regarded within the United States coloured-stone trade for the reliability of its species identification and enhancement disclosure, and it is widely accepted by dealers, auction houses, and estate jewellery professionals operating in the American market. Its compact format makes it particularly suited to the high-volume, fast-moving environment of gem and jewellery trade shows, where AGTA's annual Tucson and New York shows are among the most significant in the world.

Relationship to AGTA Disclosure Standards

The report card exists within a broader framework of AGTA disclosure policy. The AGTA requires its member dealers to disclose treatments to buyers, and the Enhancement Code system was developed in part to give the trade a standardised vocabulary for doing so. The report card formalises this disclosure in a laboratory-verified document, lending it a degree of authority that a dealer's verbal or written representation alone cannot provide. This alignment between the trade association's ethical standards and its laboratory's reporting format is a distinguishing feature of the AGTA GTC relative to purely commercial testing laboratories.

Further Reading

• AGTA Gemological Testing Center — agta.org
• AGTA Enhancement Codes and Disclosure Standards — agta.org