Gem and Mineral Shows

If you saw some of my most recent listings, you know that I attended my very first mineral show here in NJ in May.  I didn’t know what to expect, especially since the advertisement for it (and the banner) said that I would also get to see dinos!

So ok, there weren’t any dinosaurs, no live ones anyway, but lots of fossils and mineral specimens, some of them costing in the 10’s of thousands of dollars.   And an entire bench made of agate, probably weighing several tons.  Apparently, that’s how a mineral show differs from bead shows, jewelry shows, and gem shows.  There were in fact very few gems to see at all, but tons of cheap stuff (beads, agates, crystals) and lots of people walking around who believe in the special powers of rocks.

In short, I really thought I was in the wrong place at first, especially since there didn’t seem to be a distinction between wholesale and retail.  And even I don’t want the public to get the same prices at which I buy. 

But after spending a little more time looking around, it turned out to be quite fun, and worth recommending.  First, there were several dealers that had gemstone rough.  I don’t use rough very much, and I think the prices weren’t that low, but it was very helpful for me to get an idea of how to judge it.  For instance, if it doesn’t look perfectly clean, it’s not going to get cleaner when you cut it (a simple truth which we forget very easily when looking at glitter).  I actually got very lucky picking out some pieces of Australian black opal rough.  Opal rough is stored in water so you can see how it might look after polishing, and a lot of it is pre-shaped:  the rocks are split open and the sandstone and other stone cut off so you can see how much opal there is and how it looks.  I dipped around in little wet bowls for a good hour, but I in the end I found three pieces totally worth having (and a larger one that was already finished).

Black Opal Rough (Wet)

Polished Fancy Shape Black Opal

Then, at the other end of the huge hall in which the show was held, I found a German mineralogist, a guy who also deals in rough, but largely the quality that goes to schools for cutting, or is used for industrial purposes, or sold as is in mineral shops.  Jochen Hintze lives partly in Tanzania and partly in Germany, has an M.A. in geology and has experience working in the mines.  He can converse in Swahili with the locals, and he has written articles in trade journals.  You can look at his ridiculously vast collection of specimens at

http://www.jentsch-mineralien.com/en/uebersicht/5/A/1/Lehrmineralien.html  (but you need to be able to read German I’m afraid).

Sphene and Tanzanite Slices

Tanzanite Slice on Silver Sheeting

Anyway, we hit it off right away and I pretty much spent the afternoon sifting through his items.  He had an entire box of unheated tanzanite, which I dug around in until I located a few excellent pieces of bi-color rough that were thin enough to set as slices.  He also had Madagascan sphene slices – something I had never ever seen before (apparently that’s how the rough comes sometimes).  There was also some spinel rough from Tanzania, and a mineral called Sanidine, which I had never heard of before.  Needless to say I bought some of everything. 

On my upcoming trip to Germany, I hope to pay another visit to Jochen Hintze; he has a whole house full of mineral stuffs he told me.  If not, I’ll have to wait till the next mineral show in the spring.  Or maybe my dream destination, Tuscon, if I can ever swing that.

Inclusion or Crack? A Fine Line

We’re getting sucked into the lore together, my customers and I.  Once you own a couple of pretty pieces, you want more: bigger, better, more perfect looking.  And so the stakes increase.  Most of you now own a loupe, and the new customers already come equipped.  That’s the reputation I built, for better or worse.

And with May, the birthstone month of emerald, just having ended, I can breathe a little easier, because as perfection goes, emerald is one of the greatest challenges.  A naturally included and somewhat brittle stone, emerald easily gets chipped and scraped during storage.  In the little plastic bags, diamond papers, and even in the gem trays, they bump into each other and nick the surface of their neighbor.  Given the ever decreasing stash of my gem dealer friend D, I now have to triple loupe everything.  Catching a flaw in a 4mm stone is not easy even with a loupe, and when you add to that the time it takes to match two stones, your afternoon can quickly get sucked out from under you.

Meanwhile, the numbers of those who want one of these pieces is increasing – perhaps because supplies are shrinking elsewhere as well, and prices correspondingly rise.

Add to that another problem with gemstones in general, and emeralds in particular: inclusions.  These are tiny little openings inside the gem where stuff gets trapped that makes the gem look ugly.  That’s what makes oiling, polymer, and other coatings so attractive for the seller.  They seep into the crevices and open spaces, smoothing out the ugly spots.

Emeralds are among the most highly included gems I work with.  And consequently the most problematic.  The line between an inclusion is as narrow as a tightrope.  Here’s why: when gems are faceted, it is the cutter’s challenge to make sure none of the inclusions reach the surface.  When they do, then that gets judged to be a crack or a nick, and the stone becomes a reject.  When you try to repolish the table of such a gem, the crack opens up more and more, until the stone is so flat you can’t use it at all.  That’s why with extremely rare gems, like larger alexandrites, the stone is left as is and sometimes still sold at a high price.  I’ve also seen this with a green diamond once. It had a “hole” as it was described to me, and there was no polishing it out.  Still it was worth over $40,000, because of its rarity.

When you slice the more included material, as is now done with emeralds, you face an even bigger problem.  For one, the rough is more included to begin with.  Secondly, when it is sliced, and the inclusions are too long, the stone can just break in two.  Or it can look like it has a crack that goes across the entire surface, as if you had dropped it or hit it with a hammer.  If you have rough sliced and are paying for it, you can end up with nothing but slices like that, and it’s your cost.  Or you sell them anyway – sometimes I do.  If you think they won’t break, then they are emeralds with inclusions on the outside, not cracks.

Emerald Rough, Included, not Faceting Grade

A smaller piece of rough.

So is it ever a crack?  Well, yes.  If it wasn’t there before the setter touched it.  If it wasn’t there before it went into ultrasonic for cleaning (generally not advised for emeralds) or when it was steamed at close range and there was no crack before.  Then it’s a crack.  But it’s still a fine line.  A stone had a fine inclusion that got bigger from the pressure of hammer setting.  The inclusion opened up into a crack, we say.  Or just “it cracked,” Or “it opened up.”  Take your pick. 

Same Rough After Slicing.  The top two are from the rough in the second picture, which looked cleaner initially.  But the inclusions came to the surface.  The second two slices (from the first picture) fared much better, though a piece broke off on the slice on the right and the stone had to be shaved down.

So in a way, there’s not always an intrinsic difference between the two.  You can tell, sometimes, more easily with less included stones for sure, that the stone did crack from some sort of pressure: in a sapphire, for instance, a crack will reflect light like a little rainbow, as opposed to the “silk”, the white lines, that are naturally part of the stone. 

The upshot: it depends on the stone, on what exactly you see, and on the before and after of cutting, setting, cleaning and polishing.  It’s just not a straightforward matter.  A very philosophical answer, I know.

On the Value of Value: Retail Appraisals

I’ve heard it time and time again when people show me their valuable jewelry: “this ring was appraised at…,” followed by a nice high numerical figure.  “Cool,” I say.  Politely.  While secretly rolling my eyes.  Why?  Because those appraisals, most likely, are too high.  They are done for insurance purposes and calculate full replacement value, or close to it: the amount the insurance will pay you if you lose it.  Since the odds are you will not lose it the insurance gets to charge a fat premium and be very happy. 

For example, let’s say you bought 14 K gold and sapphire ring 10 years ago for $1000.  Now you want to insure it.  The insurance appraisal will be done at what that ring will cost now, which is calculated as follows: material value of the goods, plus labor, x4 for full retail markup.  Assume your ring weighs 3 grams.  That will be multiplied by the current gold cost.  Make that $50 per gram = $150.  Then an appraiser estimates the weight of the stone, judges its grade (clarity and color), though usually not origin because that’s too hard to determine.  Make your stone 2 carats in weight, blue.  Then the appraiser looks up the current wholesale list price (i.e. in the Gem Guide or Rapaport List).  So they will go to the table for corundum - blue sapphire, let’s say the upper end of the column for “good quality,” 2-3 ct size, and multiply out the price.  Unless there’s a lab report that states otherwise (an appraiser is not a lab!), the assumption is the stone is heated.  So a 2 carat stone might be $1000 on average, more if Ceylon, much less if Thai – this is just an average.  If it were a 2 carat peridot, you’d be looking at maybe $60.  Precision cuts, stuff like that, are not likely to matter. 

Now what is the retail value of your imaginary sapphire ring?  $1000 + $150 + say $100 for labor (which is very low), = $1250 x 4 = $5000.  If it’s a $60 peridot, by contrast, the value is $1240.

Now let’s say you want to sell the ring.  This is where the “value” changes drastically, depending on how you go about this and how desperate you are.  Let’s make you…

1.      Very desperate.  You take the ring to your mall to show to the gold dealer.  Your ring will be weighed again.  The scrap value of 1 gram of 14K, right now, is about $30.  The dealer offers you $90.  The stone will have no value to him, he will tell you it gets scrapped or you can take it out. 

2.      Desperate New Yorker.  You take the ring to 47^th Street to sell it.  Someone takes out the stone for you and you scrap the gold for a slightly higher price than the mall (maybe $40 a gram).  You take the stone to a stone dealer.  If it’s a 2 carat peridot, it has no value there.  Everyone has peridot in that size.  A 5 carat, maybe.  But you won’t be offered the list price, because that’s what they sell it at.  If someone’s nice to you, you can get $10 or $20.   Assuming the dealer knows his stones (many don’t – they just move material), he can guess at the origin.  He’ll weigh and loupe it for cracks, rule out that it’s a doublet or fake.  Maybe he can look at it under a microscope to make a first determination of heat treatment.  If it’s Thai, heated, you’re out of luck.  A dime a dozen.  If it might be Ceylon, he may make you an offer.  But it will be at the price at which he buys, if he’s fair.  And that will be way below NY wholesale prices, because he’s a NY wholesaler and he doesn’t buy at the price at which he sells.  Duh.

3.      Desperate New Yorker (2).  You try to sell the ring as a whole on 47^th.  Again, you will be offered scrap price if it’s a peridot, more if it’s a sapphire. But the jeweler has to calculate his markup.  So you’re not likely to do much better.  The jeweler will claim he doesn’t know the stone, it could be fake, and not want to make you a different offer.

4.      Patient.  You sell the ring yourself to a retail buyer.  You can go to Ebay for instance.  If you put a reserve on the ring, it will take a while.  But you will get a better price, hopefully around wholesale, which is approximately 50% off your appraisal. 

By the way, I’m not assuming here that you own a 5 carat Burma with a GIA certificate or anything like that.  If you do, you can just take it to an auction house.  They will keep 50% of the sales price, but they may do well for you.  Anyway, if you’re reading this blog right now, that’s not you.

So, can you ever get full retail price for your finished jewelry piece?  Not likely.  After all, your potential buyer can just go to a retail store for that and get: a guarantee, a return policy, and royal treatment.  On Etsy, I charge approximately wholesale prices.  Sometimes less, on occasion a bit more (for the cheaper stones like peridot or amethyst, which are never a good deal for the buyer).  Otherwise I can’t compete.  That seems fair to me since I don’t actually have a store, and no store overhead.  For expensive stones, I charge standard wholesale prices because I usually pay less than that – NY wholesale prices are below the national wholesale average because NY gets so many direct deliveries from overseas.  I also often buy from people who sell to wholesalers.  On average, I get what you call “dealer price” – the price at which one wholesaler sells to another.  Then I charge for labor, gold price, and a small markup (20-30%). 

The upshot: if you want to sell my jewelry again, and you are in the patient category, you can make a good recovery.  Try to charge what you paid to start

If you get my jewelry appraised at retail, you’ll be very happy, but given what you just read, take that with a grain of salt.

Color Change Gems

Color change is a fascinating phenomenon in gems.  I have seen strong color change phenomena in three stones: alexandrite, garnet and sapphire.  But there are others, such as diaspore (which I don’t think I’ve ever seen).  There are also gems that have weaker color shifting effects, depending on the angle of the light.  This is called pleochroism.  Tanzanite, tourmaline, iolite and andalusite are examples. 

Alexandrite, garnet and sapphire, can exhibit a very strong and complete change to an entirely different color in incandescent light, whereas tanzanite, for instance, especially the unheated kind, just looks different from various angles in the same light.  Depending on the gem, it can have blue, green yellow, purple and pink hues. 

Alexandrite is of course the most well known of all the color changers.  It’s also the most expensive, with a nice 1 carat piece starting at around $5000 per carat, wholesale.  Brazilian alexandrite, in my experience, often has a better color changing effect than alex from other places, changing from a strong green with teal hues to a reddish purple.  It also has a more teal(ish) daytime color, whereas Indian and African alexandrite can often be more yellow.  Historically, it is said that alexandrite changes from green to red, but I have never seen that kind of effect.  Perhaps some old Russian specimens that have since disappeared were like that.  The more affordable alexandrite usually has less of a color change effect, with the better shifting stones often looking murky and dark.  If you see a clean and sparkly gem that also has strong color change, chances are you are looking at a lab grown specimen.




My Alexandrite Parcel in Daylight





My Alexandrite Parcel in Incandescent Light

Color change sapphire usually changes from purple to pink, or from blueish purple to more reddish purple.  The effect is less striking than in alexandrite because the colors are fairly close to one another on the color spectrum.  I also own a little grey blue to reddish purple color changer from Sri Lanka.  Those are less common.  More often, you find color change phenomena in African stones, in particular, in the dark colored gems from Madagascar.  Again, the deeper the color of the stone, the more striking is the color changing effect.  Clean and brilliant stones with strong color change are not as common.  Right now, sapphire is enjoying some steep price increases, but a 1 carat Madagascan color changer is nowhere near as expensive as a 1 carat Alex (think maybe $300 per carat wholesale).



Some of my Madagascan Color Changers



Same Parcel in Incandescent Light



My Ceylon Color Changer

Ceylon in Incandescent Light

Color changing garnet is relatively new on the market, and it comes mostly from Africa, with the nicest specimens right now originating in Tanzania.  I’ve seen two kinds of color change in garnet.  There’s a brown-pink color changer, this one is much less expensive, and the effect is not always that strong.  And very recently, I’ve seen blue-purple, green-purple and reddish brown-purple effects, mostly coming from Tanzania but also from Madagascar.  Right now, these color changers are my personal favorites (although I still love love sapphire).  While on average, the effect can be a tad weaker than in Alexandrite, this is not uniformly the case.  There are some specimens with very strong color change effects.  They are also less expensive than alex right now, even though, best I can tell, they are actually more rare.  Lastly, garnet is a much cleaner stone with better brilliance than alexandrite.  The per carat price on these varies, but for a nice 1 carat piece it may be $500, for the smaller pieces it’s around $200-300 per carat.



Tanzanian Color Change Garnet Parcel

Tanzanian Color Change Garnet Parcel

In terms of treatment, all three color changers are nearly on a par.  Alexandrite is never treated.  Garnet does not respond to treatment either.  Sapphires are often heated, but for reasons that are opaque to me at this point, the color changers usually aren’t.  Perhaps the heat treatment affects the color change phenomenon, or only the nicer deeper colors change in the first place, so no heat is required.    

A Typical Day

I wake up at around 7:30, to Toby’s loud and demanding purr hovering above my head.  My long haired 13 pounder cat wants breakfast.  Or attention.   Both.  I pull myself out of bed and make a pot of tea.  Still in my pajama’s, I head over to the computer to check my email and my Etsy.   There’s a transaction, that’s nice, but just a tie bar.  And 7 convos.  About half of them are about custom orders I’m working on, where we’re still sorting out the details.  Others are requests: more photos for a ring, questions about a gemstone, or the availability of something similar to a listing.  A request for reserve that I turn down (many “reservists” don’t buy, but each “reservist” creates another request for a reserve).

More than half an hour has gone by and I’m still answering convos and relisting items.  I better hop into the shower or I won’t make the 10:30 subway to NY.  Then more listings, a quick photo session.  I check my To Do list and the Marilyn cosmetic bag where I keep what I have to take with me: a tie bar to engrave, some borrowed stones, earrings for setting, gems to be fitted for settings, and pre-assembled jewelry.  There’s a ring I soldered together, and a few things I started but then ran out of time.  I’ll let someone else finish the assembly.

After a quick breakfast, and one last convo, I head out.  I check my bag again.  If I forget anything - like my checkbook, or my list, or, God forbid, Marilyn - I have to run back.  I move the car to the other side for alternate parking, and dash to the subway.  I text the setter (“coming in today”), and the gemstone dealer, D.  

After a trip to the bank (mostly taking out money), and standing in line at the gold dealers, where they don’t have what I want in white gold, I go to the setter to pick up and drop off.  Something is soldered together wrong, I’m not happy but I swallow my anger.  I had added extra jump rings to the baggie (because sometimes they vanish) and now my dangly earrings have an extra hoop.  Ok, “let’s leave it,” I decide.  Not worth redoing because the item is stock and anyway, it would now have to be lazered because the stone is already set.  We discuss the new orders, I listen to a few jokes, pay for the orders received and head down the hall to the polisher with my pickups.

The setter could have just had it all polished of course, but him and the polisher hate each other.  Both are excellent, so I don’t want to switch.  Oil and vinegar, that’s what they’re like.  They try to mix, but each time they end up separating again.  I get free coffee at the polishers and drop off the jewelry that has to be rubber wheeled, sandblasted, rhodium plated. 

My next stop is the engraver, I give him the tie bar and instructions, then drop a ring with the guy who resizes for me.  He’s the best I know, never breaks a stone.  He’s bored though, so we chit chat, and I dash off to the casting service.  That place is slow, and there’s always a line, so I call ahead as I’m walking over and ask for my invoice to be prepared.  They put me on hold, and I stay on hold until I reach the building.  Oncein the elevator, I hang up.  Then I wait in line.  One order is missing (rose gold is cast only every two weeks), something else didn’t come out right.  It happens.  I inspect what I get, and realize that some items have to be prefinished (twig rings).  I head back to the polisher.

It’s 1:30 already and I don’t even know how that happened.  I need a break, I get more coffee and some hummus, and sit down at the gem dealer’s booth.  That’s my favorite place of course.  Someone comes by with a parcel of something, wants to sell.  “Nobody’s buying,” D. says.  Or: “Too much,” after having heard the price.  A jeweler pops by who broke a stone.  A really expensive tanzanite.  “Don’t have,” D. says, but feels bad.  He’ll call around.  I give back some stones I don’t need and pick up others for orders, for new listings, or just for fun.  Time really flies now, I look up and it’s 3:05.  I had better check on my orders. 

I pick up the tie bar, the ring, but the polisher’s not done though so I head back to D.’s booth.  Another gem dealer comes by with interesting emeralds.  But they should be double checked in the lab for treatment.  D. takes a sample out on memo, and I will take it with me the next time.  Another dealer shows up at D.’s booth, someone whom I owe money.  Oops.  I’m out of cash.  I need more anyway, so I run back to the bank.  I pick up with the setter, take stuff to the polisher.  Again.  And pay a bill.  Again.

It’s 4:30.  D. packs up.  “Done for the day.”  I’m pooped.  I inspect my orders, D. loupes the more difficult setting jobs to make sure nothing’s broken or cracked.  Then we head upstairs to the diamond cutter’s, where D.’s cousin is still busily shaving down a 25 pointer and J. is cursing out someone to blow off steam – he does that a lot but he doesn’t mean most of it.  D. has a beer, joins in the cursing.  I have some chocolate and a little Pinot Grigio out of a plastic cup, looking out of place but actually feeling at home.  J. shows me some diamonds he wants to sell to make money for the weekend.  Someone else with old jewelry shows up that will either be resold or melted.  I peruse but don’t find anything.  I’m out of cash anyway.

I catch the 6:00 subway back home.  I have to bend and polish the tie bar still, answer a convo and let someone know their order is finished.  Send out a paypal bill, print labels.  Eat dinner.  Pet Toby, who’s been waiting, and who keeps jumping up on my desk, blocking my view.  I think I need to go to bed.

The Origin of my Sapphire, and News on Pricing

A few weeks ago I told you about the 1 carat sapphire I got through the internet.  I finally got it back and I got an answer.  Generally, with a sapphire, you can approximate origin by color.  The more vibrant and dark colors are usually African, the very dark blackish blues are Thai.  But the teal colors now often come from Africa as well, no longer just Australia.  Sri Lankan stones, by contrast, are medium to lighter colored, ranging from white to yellow to true blue, purple and baby pink. 

Most labs do not give you the origin of a stone, there are too many variables and too much testing is required.  My little baby went through FTIR (Fourir Transform Infrared) and Raman Spectrometer.  Basically, both of these are micro analyses of what other compounds are in the stone that help you determine the region of origin.  Wikipedia had an article on FTIR – but I didn’t understand a word, lol.

Anyhow, long story short, my sapphire is Sri Lankan (Ceylon) after all.   So when I picked up my stone, I figured I’d ask Josh from GAL if that affected the estimated retail value.  Because Burmas are usually (much) more expensive.  Well, this might have been the case a few months back, but it isn’t right now.  So the $1900 stays on the cert and Josh swears by it.  But of course I'll list it on etsy for less.

Here's my Baby Sapphire - You'll See it on Etsy Soon

Gem prices have gone up all across the board.  But some stones are particularly badly affected: they are sapphire and spinel.  Sapphire has approximately tripled in the last couple of years, with certified unheated pieces being nearly unavailable or only at astronomical prices.  Spinel from Sri Lanka seems to have gone up by 30%, Mahenge by a little less but my curve starts only last summer because I never had access to any before. 

What’s going on that has affected prices so much?  Word of mouth and a recent article in the Economist provide these reasons:

1.      Increase in world demand, especially China

2.      Investor interest, especially in known stones like sapphire

3.      Decreasing supplies in certain areas, i.e. Sri Lanka

4.      Increased public awareness of treatments and gems (i.e. spinel)

Some footnotes to 2 and 4.  Private investors have always been buying gemstones, but with so few other investments paying off these days there has been more activity in that regard.  This dovetails with 4: more people are also aware of treatments, and some treatments devalue a stone (i.e. diffusion treatment in star sapphires, lead glass filling in rubies).  This makes people want natural stones instead.  Some treatments don’t last, i.e. the fillers in emerald come out when the stones are cleaned, glass filled rubies turn lighter in lemon juice, diffusion treated sapphires cannot be repolished or the star will come out.  For all these reasons, treated stones – at least certain kinds of treatments – should be avoided if one seeks long term pleasure or gain.  Very low heat in sapphires, rubies and aquas, possibly due to the cutting wheel only (which is unavoidable) is about the only acceptable treatment in my view, because these are permanent.  Oiling emeralds is also not such a bad thing, it can actually protect the emerald over time and the oiling can be repeated (you can do it at home by submerging the stone in warm baby or linseed oil for a day or two).  The oil should not be colored however, because that amounts to adding dye, and that will also come out. 

The million dollar question, of course, is whether gem prices will decrease again, thus rendering some investments a bad choice.  But I don’t think that’s going to happen.  The only way it could is if supply increased drastically.  New mines are found of course, and that affects price, but mines get exhausted too.  Plus if one knows that a sapphire is Burma or Ceylon, or the tourmaline is Paraiba, or the alex is Russian (insofar as that’s possible), no amount of new finds are likely to destroy the pedigree that comes with that origin.  At least that’s how it seems to me, because prices of Paraiba have not gone down just because some Afghani stones have the same color now.  Burma rubies are still expensive even though again, Afghanistan has produced some nearly equally fine stuff.  Spinel has even gone up in value because of the new Mahenge finds.  It’s largely the mid to lower grade stuff that can get affected, so apatite might go down because of new finds, and some of the lesser tourmaline (i.e. the forest greens).  But those are not really investment stones anyway.

Getting Cheated: How to Avoid Buying Fake Alex

It happens; it can even be unintentional.  You buy some alex, you and the seller think it’s real, and then it turns out to be lab created.  Alexandrite is one of the most imitated gemstones on the market today, and fakes have been around for a long time.  The lab guys I use hear it all the time: “But this was my grandmother’s, it can’t be fake.”  One of my colleagues had a ring just like that, with a huge stone, that she thought was the real deal from Russia – and it even came from Russia some 70 years ago, believe it or not.  But it was just a poor replica – even I suspected it immediately.

But the more recent fakes are much more difficult to tell.  This past month, I was at the lab twice with an alex, and twice the stone turned out lab created.  One was a customer’s stone, the other was (almost) mine.  Here are both stories.  My customer bought her alex (several of them) at an Ebay store that claimed to have real Russian alex, and at a good price.  I didn’t know at first that’s where she got them, and didn’t suspect anything when I made her earrings.  The color change was nice, the stones not perfect, and even a couple of dealers that eyed the stones said they seemed ok.  But then she lost an earring and bought another set.  This time the color change was sort of weird (more purplish and more complete) so I showed the stone around.  Two dealers shared my suspicion so I went to GAL.  The stone turned out to be lab alex: real alex material but grown from alex crystal in the laboratory.   So the refractive index test showed it to be alexandrite, but the inclusions looked too regular to be natural under the microscope.  (Some fake alex is actually corundum, lab grown sapphire, and the refractive index test will show that.)

Here’s the second story: I was offered a super clean cushion alex for a low price on the street, from one of the dealers I know but don’t normally use for that kind of thing (she’s not very knowledgeable).  The color change was weak.  I said I’d buy it subject to lab report.  I was allowed to take the stone out on memo.  Again, the refractive index test checked.  Then the lab guy showed it to another lab guy and both conferred for a while.  The stone got turned this way and that under the microscope.  They verdict: 90% certain that it was lab grown.  I returned the stone.  The dealer was upset, and requested a lab report from her supplier in turn.  This time from GIA.  Fake.  So she, too, returned the goods.

So how can you tell?  The bad fakes are easy, like my colleague’s glass stone.  It was huge, it looked purple all the time, and it was clean.  That’s not a real stone.  But today’s fakes are not like that, they look pretty much exactly like alex.  So what to do?  One rule for alex is this: if the price is too good to be true, then it isn’t real.  If it’s cheap, and looks wonderful, forget it.  Alex often looks murky, and the ones with brilliance have low color change.  Secondly, if someone says it’s Russian, they don’t know what they’re talking about.  Those are gone.  Except for a tad bit of private stock here and there, or a few pieces at a reputable gemstone dealer’s, there’s no more.  Precious Pebbles, the supplier I use, has a few pieces.  And they have the largest alex collection I’ve ever seen.  Plus, it’s actually very hard to tell origin on an alex (like most stones).  The Brazilian ones and the Russian ones look totally alike, the Indian ones are a little lighter in color, more grassy.

Thirdly, see if you can get a look at the parcel from which it came.  It should be a uneven in terms of brilliance and color; and when you do the color change test (you can use a flash light for that so long as it’s incandescent, not fluorescent), then the parcel should light up very unevenly.  It should not, ever, look like this:



Also the color change is far too strong and too even.  

For comparison, here’s my parcel.  There are much much better and more expensive parcels than mine of course, but still, this is much closer to what these are like.