Diamond or not

[denverappraiser]

Didn't sound self serving. The issue is that I've had three different "qualified" individuals review the stone with three different answers. The sandpaper didn't do anything to the stone and I'm just trying to get some sound advise. I believe it's still ok to ask for help and education.

Your story involved one inspection by someone who wasn't even working for you. She was buying, well trying to buy. Did she even charge for this? Did she put it in writing? Did she sign it? I don't disagree that there are some charlatans in the appraisal business and it's good to choose your expert with some care, but from what I can tell from the above you haven't even come to that step yet. It's not even clear to me that she was wrong, although I'm not wild about her methodology. In any case, what she did wasn't an appraisal, which is what you're asking for.

 

[partgypsy]

My non expert opinion is that it is some kind of synthetic such as synthetic sapphire. If your mom spent 30K on it without even a report of any kind, what can I say. Not smart. Everyone will have an opinion but If you want to know for sure get a grading report or real appraisal. I have been surprised (in a bad way) how poorly informed many people working in jewelry stores are, as the vast majority of their business is diamonds they don't know or care much about gemstones especially rarer ones. So what one person in a jewelry store says, from visual inspection only, I would take with a grain of salt.

 

[Lookinagain]

My 10 cents. In my humble opinion, no, it's not a diamond, it's just not cut as a diamond would be. An orange diamond of that colour, size and clarity would have been given the Rolls Royce treatment by any cutter.

I have absolutely no idea what kind of stone it is or if it is real or synthetic, but at first glance, when I saw it, it looked like an old cut marquise to me. So if it is, in fact, an antique stone then that changes the what you'd be looking for as far as cut, I assume.

 

[ChristineRose]

People have been known to use the term diamond for all sorts of stones. Some of these people don't have English as their first language.

The people you've spoken with may have been experts, but they haven't given you expert opinions. Can you tell us the refractive index? The specific gravity? The color makes me think of beryllium heated corundum. Did the experts do an immersion test? That's a dead simple way to detect Be heating. Did they look at it through polarization filters? Did they examine it under a microscope? Does it have zoning, air bubbles, striations, metallic inclusions, glass filling? All of these are indicative of synthetic or treated sapphires.

By the way I'm NOT an expert and wouldn't tell anyone I was. I have degree in physics and spent some time reading about optics and crystals and why different crystals have different optics. You haven't even begun to get an expert opinion.