Red spodumene/kunzite

[Barrett]

Check out this photo from a Pak seller on facebook.

"Beautiful kunzite crystals for AUCTION!! Crystals are terminated the color is awesome and 100% natural with gurrante .
Weight:- its more then 500 gram but i am metioning 500grams here"

Do you see the red spodumene? I have never seen this color before from normal irradiated material. I notice Justin Zzyzx who runs Fakeminerals.com has never seen this color before either. A new type of irradiation maybe? Notice how deep purple the one in the back looks as well. I have seen some fairly dark purples before but never that dark. The red is what gets me though. Figured I would pass this along to all my PSer friends

 

[pregcurious]

Hmm, when I think of kunzite, I definitely imagine light to medium-light. I wonder how they did that. Can you flux treat kunzites like sapphires?

 

[LD]

Interesting!

I know some of the super expensive Kunzite has been a very very deep purple but I've only seen about 3 or 4 examples. As for red? Never seen that. Is it definitely Spodumene? Can you tell from the pics? I know that spodumene is often irradiated for colour but I don't know of any other treatments.

Are you tempted to buy it and run a few tests?

 

[davi_el_mejor]

Very interesting. I'd love to see that same set up under longwave and shortwave UV. It'd be very telling I think

 

[LD]

Oooooooooh look at this!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Very-fine-KUNZITE-crystal-California-2010-/190581273855?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c5f8774ff

 

[chrono]

Wow, never seen a red one either but I have seen one fairly dark purple only once, so that's quite possible.