Recently bid on this apatite parcel from Kumar Prov. ,Afganistan. I wasn't paying attention at the auction close and didn't win. In the lot was one large raspberry colored piece. It was not the ruby color of the GSN material but sort of reddish. Gwen Travis from the G.I.A. did get back to me on the sample they received. ( natural with no indication of treatment). You would think that they would put out some kind of report or article if this was truly a new find. Since AIGS found no evidence of treatment on another red stone years ago (found to be wrong by further testing) ,maybe the GIA didn't want to stick their neck out with this one. Who knows?
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Hi all. I know this thread is old but I see Don Kogen is back to hawking Red Apatite on Gem Shopping. He states that GIA has endorsed his find as well as a few other labs. Yet, I see nothing on GIA’s site re Red Apatite. Am really curious how I missed this in my 25 years of collecting gems. Does anyone know for sure about Red Apatite? Thanks
The most important thing about the red andesine fraud was that it was diffusion treated. That was discovered was made with a dixi cup in a microscope well : classical gemology. Whether it’s source material was mexican, tibetan, congo, or mongolia was a secondary discovery of much less interest or importance.
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:22 pm Posts: 21602 Location: San Francisco
I don't believe anyone has mentioned andesine.....it's apatite being discussed here.
But by the by, treatment was determined with argon isotope studies done by Dr. Rossman and and John Emmett, PhD. All the Dixie cup studies have been empirically dismissed as nonsense. Also, the origin of the treated material was spectrographically determined to be from Mongolia. The material from Mexico was a different variety of feldspar.
This subject was put to bed 1/2 a decade ago. Let's let it sleep.
Hi all. I know this thread is old but I see Don Kogen is back to hawking Red Apatite on Gem Shopping. He states that GIA has endorsed his find as well as a few other labs. Yet, I see nothing on GIA’s site re Red Apatite. Am really curious how I missed this in my 25 years of collecting gems. Does anyone know for sure about Red Apatite? Thanks
You are not the only one. I contacted the GIA to get some information on cert.# 2175679300- nothing. Information from Gem Shopping-nothing. This guy claims he found a small pocket of a natural, untreated mineral that no one in the world knows of. I have been on the losing end of some of his wild claims before. My unprofessionalism opinion is that it is Apatite treated. in a hard to detect manner similar to the heating of pink topaz.I was kind of hoping that one of our G.O. members that works for GIA would have an opinion, since they did do a cert. I might have to jump on the grenade and buy one, submit it to AGL, and see if they can provide an answer.
I have seen the cert. I am not doubting that it is Apatite, I just think that there is an undisclosed treatment. I find it the absence of any legitimate publications of this new find very strange. Also I really doubt the the color is comparable to top ruby as stated on GSN.
No offense Nicky, but I feel like you jumped the gun on this. Even if it is treated the stones would still be just as unusual since there isn't any known treatment to produce this color in apatite from known finds. That's not to say it couldn't be treated or even that it's unlikely, but it being treated doesn't make the picture any simpler.
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