I actually like the color of this non cobalt stone over the 2 cobalt's I posted earlier. The Lotus report has it as a medium tone which is a big positive with these Sri Lankan stones almost always being dark. From what I understand the cobalt content of the Sri Lankan material is much lower than the Vietnam's. Also like the much lower price.
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Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 10:33 am Posts: 840 Location: Mars PA
I really love cobalt blue in everything from flow blue china to the wonderful blue spinels in this thread. But the ones with a color change/shift from blue in natural light to violet in incandescent really make me wonder. They change color in the normal way just like sapphire and seem to lie in the same part of the color wheel as cuprian/paraiba tourmaline. So why is the cuprian tourmaline that I got from Mozambique have a reverse color change, violet in natural light and blue/blue green in incandescent light? I have been trying to get research done on the unheated cuprian tourmaline I have come to call Laurellite (It is a new variety of Elbaite) for over 10 years with little success, after its original discovery.
I would greatly appreciate getting to see an absorption graph of a spinel color changer or borrow a sample so I can examine it with my spectrometer. Laurellite grows rarer every day since it can be heated to that pariaba blue and I am not getting any younger so the research needs to be done.
Stone on the left and right are from Vietnam - stone in the middle is per vendor from Sri Lanka ( unfortunately a larger iron stain) and the price was quite low compared to the vietnamese material so it wouldn’t make sense to import a rough one from Vietnam for a Sri Lankan dealer and sell for a low price. Who knows...
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That one is a new record as far as I know. I've seen 25, 30 and even 50k USD per carat before, but not 60k. Well, it was only a matter of time as the material gets more in demand while the production is low.
That one is a new record as far as I know. I've seen 25, 30 and even 50k USD per carat before, but not 60k. Well, it was only a matter of time as the material gets more in demand while the production is low.
I saw that stone at AGTA in Tucson this year and spent some time drooling over it. It was certainly the nicest example that I have personally seen. When I came back later to show it to a colleague, they had pulled it from the case and the owner told me that they were in negotiations to sell. I did not find out what the final price ended up at, but I'm sure it was significant.
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Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 10:33 am Posts: 840 Location: Mars PA
I have never seen the spinel in person, but it seems to have a beautiful color in photographs. I think it seems to be following a similar path of Paraiba tourmaline, another rare beautiful gem. A path that takes it out of the normal trade world into the very limited rarefied world of private collections and museums. I have search high and low for transactions that involve top grade Paraiba tourmaline. I think that hens teeth are more common. Yes The Guide has prices for top grade Paraiba in less than 3 carat sizes, but my feeling is that the price of a pure,well cut and glowing cyan Paraiba tourmaline (from Paraiba) in a 2.99 carat size would be negotiated (like the spinel) and not set by the market because there are not enough transactions to establish a price. By their nature negotiated purchases are erratic and volatile. And insulated from the great power of the trade to develop demand for a gemstone. If you don't have any product to sell who will spend resources to promote it? I personally think that the discovery of larger quantities of paraiba type material in Mozambique has helped push Paraiba into the realm of being a precious gemstone. Without similar support for the spinel ( reasonable availability) prices will not have the same price pressure that Paraiba has and will subside. Or at least not be more than a WOW factor to most people. Paraiba tourmaline as the sum of all the material from all locations (no one sells paraiba type material now) is truly blessed and I hope the spinel does not remain too rare.
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