Saturday, January 1, 2011

Rare Faceted Ruby

Have you ever shopped for the best faceted ruby money could buy in Bangkok Thailand? Well, maybe not the very best but let's say a pigeon blood red, unheated, eye clean and over 5 carats. Sounded impossible to me.
Ruby is a category 3 gemstone which means they are almost always included and that has little effect on value. We expect rubies to be included. The only eye clean ruby I had ever seen were very small sizes and leaded glass filled rubies. Normally ruby is heated to help clear away some inclusions. Unheated and eye clean are generally never used in the same sentence to describe any ruby over a carat.
Though I do sell mostly ruby and sapphire, I previously never had any reason to bother asking what the very high end goods cost or even what was available. This last week I got a call to meet with an associate in order to find the answer.
After raising a lot of eye brows and listening to quite a bit of stammering ruby dealers, I did locate a stone that I doubted would be for sale that filled the bill. Over 6 carats, pigeon blood red, eye clean, unheated, untreated, from none other than Mogok Burma. The cut was good but I was surprised to see that the symmetry could have been improved with very little weight loss. Had to smile but refrained from shaking my head.
What does such a gem cost? Well, since I was not the actual buyer I am not in a good position to say but I will say that one can buy a nice home in many parts of the world with the price of just one carat of this six carat stone. I could not be sure if it was any influence of the price tag or simply the stunning beauty of this stone that made my heart beat so strongly. It compared to once while I was hunting and had hidden myself inside of a pine tree then had a huge 12 point buck white tail deer come within six feet of me and snort while looking right at me. I didn't move a bit but my heart pounded so strongly that I thought he would hear it. While looking at that ruby I also had to wonder if anybody there could hear my heart pounding as I certainly could. It would be interesting to make such a stone into a ring so that one could look at it whenever things got a little too quiet.

1 comment:

  1. I really feel happy and got new information on the natural unheated rubies
    Really a nice blog written by you.
    Where to buy unheated rubies in Singapore

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