Extinction?

[RTols88]

how would you rate this stone in terms extinction?

 

[LD]

Dead!

It's soooooooo dark that I doubt you'll see much red from it and it's highly likely that in sunlight it will black out even further. I have a stoplight red spinel that is phenomenal in incandescent light but take it outside and it looks like a lump of coal. Nothing to do with extinction it's just how it reacts and I believe red spinels show this trait fairly often.

 

[RTols88]

Will a recut do any thing to help it? Could it also be a bad vendor pic?

 

[LD]

From experience, I don't buy gems that need a re-cut because (a) it's an added expense and most importantly (b) you can't predict the outcome. This spinel just looks like it's a dark material to begin with so it's highly unlikely to improve much with a recut.

As for it being a bad Vendor pic? Well, look at it this way, if that was a bad photo, why would the vendor use it? It's probably a good likeness in all honesty.

Sorry to be so blunt and I hope you don't take offence? If I were you, I'd continue the hunt. Finding a red spinel isn't easy though but you really do want to see red not black with flashes of red.

Here are photos of mine. You can see how lovely it looks in incandescent lighting but outside (the shot on my hand), it really does turn black.

 

[Lady_Disdain]

I don't think extinction is the problem, but rather that the material is just too dark. In this case, no recut will turn it into a beautiful stone.

 

[chrono]

I don't think extinction is the problem, but rather that the material is just too dark. In this case, no recut will turn it into a beautiful stone.

Ditto that; in this case, the tone is so dark that no amount of cutting will remove that blackness. Well, maybe if a huge window aka bay door is cut, then it’ll allow light to leak right through and let the eye see some colour.