deorwine
Shiny_Rock
- Joined
- May 5, 2005
- Messages
- 348
Recently my parents and I went to go see my aunt and uncle. My aunt loves gemstones and started selling jewelry about five years ago (mostly an out-of-her-home operation... you can probably figure out that this is code for "buys lots of jewelry and occasionally convinces one of her friends to buy a piece from her), meaning that she and I have found a subject we can talk about together! (Before this, we had nothing in common.) However, my aunt... is in general a big fan of quantity over quality. On previous visits she's done things like show me a hideous opaque star ruby -- and don't get me wrong, I actually like opaque star rubies and have a couple of my own, but this one was truly hideous -- and proclaimed to me, "It's thirty-seven carats!"
Anyway. During this visit, my aunt showed me a blue sapphire she got at a recent gem show. She'd been able to score an awesome deal! It was a 7-carat sapphire, I think. I was very impressed because as I've said, my aunt usually tends towards the hideous-but-large gem, and this one had great clarity and (though maybe just a trifle dark) amazingly saturated color -- that deep saturated blue that's so beautiful. She bought it wholesale (because of her jewelry business) and got a great deal: only $7000.
So I was impressed by my aunt! (Hey, I know, I should have clued in at this point, but I can't afford to buy 7-ct anything, so I don't have a good idea how prices scale!) But the clue dropped on even my thick head when she brought out the matching pair sapphire. Yes. That's right. She had TWO 7-carat sapphires with perfect clarity and saturation. Which were also perfectly matched in size. And color. $7k each.
(At this point I started asking questions like, "Have you sent these to a lab?" "No, why?")
...so what do you think: the possibility she paid $14k for a pair of synthetic sapphires -- is it 99.999%, or 99.99999999%?
The even sadder thing is, as I said in the first paragraph, she actually tries to sell things to other people. So there's probably some poor sap out there that she's going to try to pass on these stones to.
Anyway. During this visit, my aunt showed me a blue sapphire she got at a recent gem show. She'd been able to score an awesome deal! It was a 7-carat sapphire, I think. I was very impressed because as I've said, my aunt usually tends towards the hideous-but-large gem, and this one had great clarity and (though maybe just a trifle dark) amazingly saturated color -- that deep saturated blue that's so beautiful. She bought it wholesale (because of her jewelry business) and got a great deal: only $7000.
So I was impressed by my aunt! (Hey, I know, I should have clued in at this point, but I can't afford to buy 7-ct anything, so I don't have a good idea how prices scale!) But the clue dropped on even my thick head when she brought out the matching pair sapphire. Yes. That's right. She had TWO 7-carat sapphires with perfect clarity and saturation. Which were also perfectly matched in size. And color. $7k each.
(At this point I started asking questions like, "Have you sent these to a lab?" "No, why?")
...so what do you think: the possibility she paid $14k for a pair of synthetic sapphires -- is it 99.999%, or 99.99999999%?
The even sadder thing is, as I said in the first paragraph, she actually tries to sell things to other people. So there's probably some poor sap out there that she's going to try to pass on these stones to.