- Joined
- May 17, 2014
- Messages
- 7,322
Introducing Chancy my white whale. The pink of my dreams. The one I’ve spent five years looking for. I thought I was happy with my red pink heart rubellite (and I do love her) but I had a hankering for a pure, big, sapphire pink that I couldn’t shake. Preferably one that glowed. I knew I didn’t have the budget for a perfect or what PSers call “fine” one so like I always do, I had to settle.
Thing is there aren’t many big pinks to settle on! I looked everywhere over the years. Yes if you have that kind of money you can go to Bayco or Oscar Heyman but I don’t have that kind of money and there were no big pinks to settle on. Plus some of the stuff actually has massive windows. And I don’t/can’t settle on windows! At one point I was ok with settling for a baby pink. Well there are not many big baby pink sapphires to settle on either!
Came close when I was offered a 6 carat heated purplish pink. Logically I should have settled but I wasn’t keen on the heated and the purplish. Then there was a 6.5ct super clean heated pink. Beautiful but I didn’t feel that it glowed and it still had more purple than I wanted. It was also like a 12 by 8 or something which I found oddly skinny.
And then one day out of nowhere Chancy said hello. Initial two videos were somewhat terrible. Inclusions galore. I asked if she looked even worse in real life and was told that the videos were as bad as it gets. It was……a decent number of inclusions but “settleable.” She was/is 10 carats and unheated. And she glowed. Oh by golly gosh she glowed. And no window. And I could forgive the inclusions. I was told to take as much time as I needed to decide but I paid for her that afternoon, inclusions be damned. As with all things I do there are no take backsies. I told myself that if this ended poorly, I would just end my search.
We sent her to Lotus. She wasn’t sold to me as being of any geographical designation and I didn’t care. I just wanted her to be unheated. She came back from Lotus as an unheated Vietnamese sapphire. 12 by 11.7mm. Intense saturation and medium tone. Pure pink sapphire no other colour variations noted.
We thought Vietnam as a location was pretty interesting and unique so we sent her to GFCO for fun. They came back with unheated Mozambique.
I commissioned a dress for her and she’s finally arrived today. Yes there are inclusions but you have to tilt her to find them and I’ve discovered that glow will hide just about anything. Oddly enough every time the vendor snapped a random picture of her in a bag transiting between labs I could not see any of the inclusions that were magnified in their initial videos to me. I kept asking “Is she as included as the videos? Cuz she looks really good in your transit photos” to which they would reply “At some angles there are inclusions. But it’s a beautiful stone.”
I should also add that during this process I would browse pages of various vendors and see vendors making fun of silly people who would rather die on the unheated hill and buy super included, peculiar looking stones. I was all “omg what if I’m one of those idiots???”
And then Avondale mentioned to someone in another thread that at a certain inclusion level the stones are worthless (to paraphrase). Of course I freaked out internally. And it was so hard to do a price comparison because there are so few freaking big pinks to compare.
Still I just trusted the process, trusted that the vendor was an honest person, told myself that if it didn’t work out, big pink was just not meant to be.
She arrived today. She is BEYOND anything I could have hoped for. Her “very visible in video inclusions” need a lot of tilting and the right lighting to be visible in real life. Seriously they must have worked hard at it to get the most terrible videos possible. There looked like iron staining in one of the videos. And I bought it anyway because they told me “It’s beautiful, you’ll love it.”
So without further ado here she is: Chancy, 10+ carats, unheated, 12 by 11.7mm, pink sapphire, the rock of my dreams set with 4mm diamonds and 18k yellow gold.
Thing is there aren’t many big pinks to settle on! I looked everywhere over the years. Yes if you have that kind of money you can go to Bayco or Oscar Heyman but I don’t have that kind of money and there were no big pinks to settle on. Plus some of the stuff actually has massive windows. And I don’t/can’t settle on windows! At one point I was ok with settling for a baby pink. Well there are not many big baby pink sapphires to settle on either!
Came close when I was offered a 6 carat heated purplish pink. Logically I should have settled but I wasn’t keen on the heated and the purplish. Then there was a 6.5ct super clean heated pink. Beautiful but I didn’t feel that it glowed and it still had more purple than I wanted. It was also like a 12 by 8 or something which I found oddly skinny.
And then one day out of nowhere Chancy said hello. Initial two videos were somewhat terrible. Inclusions galore. I asked if she looked even worse in real life and was told that the videos were as bad as it gets. It was……a decent number of inclusions but “settleable.” She was/is 10 carats and unheated. And she glowed. Oh by golly gosh she glowed. And no window. And I could forgive the inclusions. I was told to take as much time as I needed to decide but I paid for her that afternoon, inclusions be damned. As with all things I do there are no take backsies. I told myself that if this ended poorly, I would just end my search.
We sent her to Lotus. She wasn’t sold to me as being of any geographical designation and I didn’t care. I just wanted her to be unheated. She came back from Lotus as an unheated Vietnamese sapphire. 12 by 11.7mm. Intense saturation and medium tone. Pure pink sapphire no other colour variations noted.
We thought Vietnam as a location was pretty interesting and unique so we sent her to GFCO for fun. They came back with unheated Mozambique.
I commissioned a dress for her and she’s finally arrived today. Yes there are inclusions but you have to tilt her to find them and I’ve discovered that glow will hide just about anything. Oddly enough every time the vendor snapped a random picture of her in a bag transiting between labs I could not see any of the inclusions that were magnified in their initial videos to me. I kept asking “Is she as included as the videos? Cuz she looks really good in your transit photos” to which they would reply “At some angles there are inclusions. But it’s a beautiful stone.”
I should also add that during this process I would browse pages of various vendors and see vendors making fun of silly people who would rather die on the unheated hill and buy super included, peculiar looking stones. I was all “omg what if I’m one of those idiots???”
And then Avondale mentioned to someone in another thread that at a certain inclusion level the stones are worthless (to paraphrase). Of course I freaked out internally. And it was so hard to do a price comparison because there are so few freaking big pinks to compare.
Still I just trusted the process, trusted that the vendor was an honest person, told myself that if it didn’t work out, big pink was just not meant to be.
She arrived today. She is BEYOND anything I could have hoped for. Her “very visible in video inclusions” need a lot of tilting and the right lighting to be visible in real life. Seriously they must have worked hard at it to get the most terrible videos possible. There looked like iron staining in one of the videos. And I bought it anyway because they told me “It’s beautiful, you’ll love it.”
So without further ado here she is: Chancy, 10+ carats, unheated, 12 by 11.7mm, pink sapphire, the rock of my dreams set with 4mm diamonds and 18k yellow gold.
Chansey is one of my favourite Pokémon characters. Hooray for your glorious, happy, sumptuous Chansey. Worth the hunt and worth the wait!
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