United States Jewelry Guides

Any one of three conditions makes a treatment disclosure due

Section 23.24 of the United States Jewelry Guides states that failing to disclose that a gemstone has been treated is unfair or deceptive if the treatment is not permanent, if it creates special care requirements, or if it has a significant effect on the stone's value. The note attached to the section then states where that disclosure belongs when the buyer cannot handle the item.

One opening clause, three branches

Section 23.24 of the United States Jewelry Guides is built as a single opening clause followed by three conditions. The opening states that it is unfair or deceptive to fail to disclose that a gemstone has been treated. The conditions state when: if the treatment is not permanent, if the treatment creates special care requirements, or if the treatment has a significant effect on the stone's value.

The three are separate entrances to the same rule. The text does not ask for two of them and it does not rank them. A reading that treats them as a set to be satisfied together changes the outcome, because a stone can satisfy one condition without satisfying the other two.

Treatment appears a second time, in the general provision. §23.1 states that it is unfair or deceptive to misrepresent the type, kind, grade, quality, quantity, metallic content, size, weight, cut, color, character, treatment, substance, durability, serviceability or origin of an industry product, and the recorded list continues past that point. The same fact is therefore addressed twice in the document: once as a misstatement under §23.1, and once as an omission under §23.24.

What the section states, clause by clause

Each entry below is what the recorded text of the United States Jewelry Guides says, without extension. Where the text stops, the entry stops.

The subject of the section is the omission.: §23.24 opens on the failure to disclose that a gemstone has been treated. It is written against silence, and the three conditions attach to that opening.
First condition: the treatment is not permanent.: Under this branch the text states that the seller should disclose that the gemstone has been treated. The source read for this page does not place any named treatment on either side of the permanence line, and no such classification is supplied here.
Second condition: the treatment creates special care requirements.: The trigger named here is the existence of a special care requirement. Which treatments produce one is not settled by the recorded text.
Third condition: the treatment has a significant effect on the stone's value.: The recorded wording of §23.24(c) is a significant effect on the stone's value. The source gives no percentage, no ratio and no currency figure, so the condition has no numeric line behind it.
Diamonds are routed into this section rather than around it.: §23.14 states that a diamond is a gemstone product and that treatments to diamonds should be disclosed in the manner prescribed in §23.24.
The section reaches beyond the retail counter.: The note to §23.24 states that the disclosures are applicable to sellers at every level of trade, as level of trade is defined in §23.0(b).

Where the disclosure goes when the buyer cannot handle the item

The note attached to §23.24 of the United States Jewelry Guides sets a default and then removes it for one class of sale. The default is that the disclosures may be made at the point of sale prior to sale. The exception is the sale in which the buyer cannot examine the goods: where the product can be purchased without personal inspection, the note states that the disclosure should be made in the description of the product. The examples the note gives for that kind of sale are online services, catalogues and television shopping.

The location named is the description of the product. A shop-wide policy page, a store announcement and a shipping tab are different locations from the description of one item, and the note names the description. This page states what the note says; it does not state whether a particular sentence, in a particular position, satisfies the section.

The document uses the same construction elsewhere: the note to §23.23, which covers pearls, carries the same wording about products that can be purchased without personal inspection.

Form is treated separately from location. Note 2 to §23.1 states that qualifications and disclosures should be sufficiently clear and prominent, and it names what that is judged on: clarity of language, relative type size, proximity to the claim being qualified, and the absence of contrary claims that undercut effectiveness. The fourth of those is stated as part of the same measure as the other three, not as a separate consideration attached afterwards.

What the text names, in its own order

A reading list rather than an instruction list. Every line below is a statement the United States source makes; none of them is a judgement about a particular listing.

The trigger: any single one of the three conditions in §23.24, not the three together.
The first condition: the treatment is not permanent, and the text states that the seller should disclose that the gemstone has been treated.
The second condition: the treatment creates special care requirements.
The third condition: the treatment has a significant effect on the stone's value.
The reach the note gives the section: sellers at every level of trade, as defined in §23.0(b).
The timing the note allows in the ordinary case: at the point of sale prior to sale.
The exception: where the product can be purchased without personal inspection, the disclosure should be made in the description of the product.
The scope §23.14 adds: treatments to diamonds are disclosed in the manner prescribed in §23.24.
The four measures of prominence in Note 2 to §23.1: clarity of language, relative type size, proximity to the claim, and the absence of contrary claims that undercut effectiveness.
The thing the text does not supply: any number for the significant-effect condition.

What this page does not settle

The boundaries below are part of the reading, not a note appended to it.

One country. Part 23 is a United States federal instrument issued under the authority of 15 U.S.C. 45–46. Nothing in it sets a rule for the European Union, the United Kingdom, Turkey or any other market, and no such rule is inferred here.
Not legal advice, and not a sufficiency test. This page states that a rule exists and what its recorded text says. It does not state what any seller should do, whether any particular wording or placement satisfies the section, or how a regulator would read a given listing.
The Guides state their own standing. Part 23 says of itself that it does not confer any rights on any person and does not operate to bind the FTC or the public. A departure from the Guides is therefore not an automatic penalty on this source; the FTC would first have to establish a Section 5 violation.
No number for the third condition. The source gives no percentage, ratio or currency threshold for a significant effect on the stone's value, and none is estimated here.
No classification of treatments. The source read for this page does not sort named treatments into permanent and impermanent, so this page does not either.
Naming is a different subject: a stone containing a filler such as lead glass raises a question under §23.25(d) and an incorrect variety name raises one under §23.26, and neither is opened here.
Laboratory-created wording is not covered here.
The product makes no finding about treatment. Nothing in the app examines a stone, tests it, or reports what was done to it, and no output should be read as a treatment finding. The app does place a permanent disclosure strip on every completed result, which is a separate matter from the disclosure this section describes.
Photographing a treated stone belongs to the published photography guides, not to this page.
The source is dated. Every statement here was read from the recorded text on 2026-08-19 and describes that reading, not the state of the document today.

Questions

Do I have to disclose that a stone was treated, and where does that disclosure go in an online listing?

§23.24 of the United States Jewelry Guides states that failing to disclose that a gemstone has been treated is unfair or deceptive if the treatment is not permanent, if it creates special care requirements, or if it has a significant effect on the stone's value — any one of the three, not all three. The note to the section states that the disclosures may be made at the point of sale prior to sale, except where the product can be purchased without personal inspection, such as through online services, catalogues or television shopping, in which case the disclosure should be made in the description of the product. This is a description of the text rather than legal advice, and it covers the United States only.

Does the section change because the stone is a diamond?

§23.14 of the United States Jewelry Guides states that a diamond is a gemstone product and that treatments to diamonds should be disclosed in the manner prescribed in §23.24. On this source there is no separate diamond treatment clause.

Is there a percentage that decides whether a treatment significantly affects value?

No figure appears in the source. §23.24(c) of the United States Jewelry Guides states the condition as a significant effect on the stone's value; no percentage, ratio or currency threshold is recorded, and a number supplied from elsewhere would not be a reading of this text.

Do the disclosures apply when the sale is to another business?

The note to §23.24, in the United States Jewelry Guides, states that the disclosures are applicable to sellers at every level of trade, as level of trade is defined in §23.0(b). The note does not confine them to sales made to consumers.