- Joined
- Jan 26, 2014
- Messages
- 1,029
Thanks. not sure how the color will be but in the rough the clarity was really nice, even the mine guys who will be cutting it were like wow. I was hoping on getting around 100-200. I know its not going to be precision cut, but the clarity is good and a 10x14mm oval is a decent sized stone.Can you make a few daylight photos of the rough?
We don't know what the color is, what clarity is like, what the final polished stone will look like.... Garnets are a huge and incredibly diverse family and a 7 carat can cost you anywhere between a few coffees to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in some cases. Impossible to say without knowing more about the stone...
EDIT: Sorry, just saw the rhodolite/pyrope part and provenance. Color, brightness and clarity would be the determining factors; if it's a bright, nice stone that looks bright and lit up even indoors, it'll probably go for a few hundred. If it's dark, has trouble lighting up and suffers from the usual garnet dimness/blackish undertones, the value would be low (in perhaps a couple hundred, but even then difficult to sell).
Hi its being cut into a 10x14mm oval it didnt start out that size. based on other garnets that size i have seen online that is what i estimate, but I won't know for sure until i receive the stone backYou will generally get around a 30% yield after cutting, so 7 carats is a rather generous estimate.
no worriesI misunderstood! My apologies.
Thank you for this information. I am getting the garnet faceted. I have seen low quality rough garnets come back cut and could not possibly be the same stone form the mine since that clarity was way better in the faceted stone. All I can say is the garnet I found was actually gem quality in the rough, so i would assume it would actually be cut, but who knows. I remember the color so I will see when I recieve the stone back. I have been to the cherokee unsalted ruby and sapphire mine, and has a couple ruby cabs cut from there that i panned, so heres hoping the garnet will be good lol.I have been to a few of these North Carolina gem mining sites along the road years ago. Gem Mountain comes to mind. You buy a bucket of "mine run dirt" and then pan through it. These buckets are salted with material from all over the world. Back when I was there, a bucket ranged from around $20 to $35.
The idea being if (and you always do find gem material), you can leave it to be cut and a few weeks later the finished stone mailed out to you.
Now here is my theory: If you are getting something cabbed, as most material is really low cab grade, I think they do cut it locally. I did meet and visit one of the local cutters. I believe most stones you leave to be faceted are simply tossed back into another bucket, and they ship of off an inexpensive commercial cut stone. People will often leave a colorless topaz to be cut and then heated, and get a very pretty blue topaz back in the mail. Now these places claim they heat the stone, but we all know that heat alone will not turn a colorless topaz blue.
We went to a place in NC about 15 years ago, found a bunch of stones and had a few cut. None of the returned faceted stones could have come from the rough stones we left them. It's a lot of fun, a bit addicting, almost like gambling, but don't expect to find anything of any real value in the bucket.