If you enjoy rare and precious gemstones and their related stories, here you will find a litany of gemstone ramblings, gemological observations, and useful and time-wasting trivia bought from behind-the-scenes in the rough and cut gem markets of Asia and Africa.
A 2 Carat Diamond, from the Marange Diamond Fields in Eastern Zimbabwe displays a shocking green fluorescence.
The Chameleon Zircon That Gets A Fading Suntan One week ago a huge and quite spectacular color zircon was bought to my office in Chanthaburi, Thailand, which was an intense and almost neon pure-yellow color — like mandarin color zircon. Showing a vivid yellow color, we photographed and videoed it, and amongst other places, posted it to Gemology Worldwide.
Fluorescence in Ruby
Enclosed
S OMEWHAT jokingly, we were going to name this 225 carat rough sapphire the “The Lion Of Judah” because I initially thought it was perhaps the first noteworthy golfball sized sapphire-crystal of deep-blue lusciousness to originate from the new Ethiopian Aksum sapphire-fields. My eyes nearly popped-out of my head when I first saw it. However, reality bites. And bites hard.…
An unusual 24 carat piece of gueda type sapphire came into the office a while ago. From an unknown location in Africa, the piece was heavily silky and showed a reddish light-scattering Tyndall effect as shown in the video. As the piece was performed and lost mass, the Tyndall effect loss the reddish hue and became more greenish-yellow. Peeking into…
A SUPERB & SPECTACULAR RAINBOW colored tourmaline crystal from Goma in the Eastern Congo. Showing purple, pink, orange, yellow, green and a light blue, this crystal comes so close to having every color of the rainbow, in the right order of spectrum colors, but doesn’t quite have the full red. Also attached is pics and vid of the kaleidoscope of…
How the Opal Got It’s Rainbow, According to the Ancient Australians1 In the beginning, when the world was young, when the Dreamtime legends were being made, and all the beings of Australia lived under the diurnal blazing sun and brilliant night lights of the Milky Way. In these endless lands the dingo, the emu, the snake and all other creatures…