Post subject: New member, antique ruby identification
Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2020 8:04 pm
New to the Forum or The Quiet Type
Joined: Thu Jul 23, 2020 2:00 pm Posts: 2
Hello, I' m Julian. I've been lurking here for a while, but this is my first post. I have a minor hobby of buying and selling antique jewelry, and I came across a ruby (?) today that I thought warranted posting. I'm wondering if it is worth my time/money to have this stone evaluated or if I should just sell it as a flame fusion stone.
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It's a nice art deco style piece from roughly the 1930's in 14k white and yellow gold. These pics are under fluorescent light but in person the stone is pretty much an ideal "pigeons blood" color.
I don't have much gemological equipment, but I do have a dichroscope. The stone shows the classic pink/orange that you would expect from a ruby, and even though the ring is well worn, the stone doesn't show any damage. Based on these factors, I initially suspected that it was a flame fusion ruby, which would be very common for the period.
Thinking this would be a good chance to learn to identify the stria of flame fusion rubies, I examined it very thoroughly with a good 10x loupe, but I couldn't find any stria or growth lines, or any inclusions at all. Of course with the stone in a setting it might not be possible to see them, but I decided to take a look with my monocular Olympus microscope. It isn't the ideal microscope for the job, but I did find a few inclusions. Only my 4x and 10x objective lenses had a long enough focal distance to be usable, but under 10x I did find a cloud of about a dozen small transparent inclusions. They where too small for me to see very clearly under 10x, but they looked like little bubbles. Some of them had flat sides, none of them where elongated, and they where oriented in kind of a random cloud formation.
My questions is mainly whether it is worth having this stone evaluated, and if so how I should go about doing that. I think it is likely a flame fusion stone, but if it where natural it could be worth a pretty penny. On the other hand, spending $85 on a GIA report wouldn't be worth it if there is a 99% chance it is synthetic. Would it be unusual to find a natural stone in a setting like this? Is there any affordable equipment I could buy to help make a determination?
Basically, what would you do if you had this ring? FWIW I payed $5 for it and could sell it without too much trouble for $200-$300 as an "art deco ring with red stone".
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