Chicago Girl
Shiny_Rock
- Joined
- May 9, 2011
- Messages
- 104
I've been browsing the PS recommended precision gem cutters, and I've noticed that amethyst seems considerably cheaper than some of the other types of colored stones. Why is this?
smitcompton|1333908511|3166248 said:Hi.
For myself, I don't care how cheap it is. I think it is a beautiful stone. I have a 3 carat zambian ammy, which shoots off blue and red flashes. There are so many shades of purple to choose from, i hope if you like the color, you get one. I think it is under appreciated.
Better for us if it is cheap.
Annette
JewelFreak|1333909400|3166255 said:Rarity by itself doesn't confer beauty.
Michael_E|1333913612|3166277 said:Good natural amethyst is not plentiful and is only low in value because about 80%+ of the amethyst floating around is synthetic. Testing to tell the difference between synthetic amethyst and natural is rather expensive, usually more so than the stone being tested, so most just skip it. With so much hard to test synthetic material floating around and without a broad base of demand for natural material there is nothing to push the price up.
Speaking of cheap, have you seen the cost of large synthetic colorless diamonds here: http://gemesis.com/diamonds/single?base_color=421 Yep, colorless...scary.
Barrett|1333918893|3166313 said:Michael_E|1333913612|3166277 said:Good natural amethyst is not plentiful and is only low in value because about 80%+ of the amethyst floating around is synthetic. Testing to tell the difference between synthetic amethyst and natural is rather expensive, usually more so than the stone being tested, so most just skip it. With so much hard to test synthetic material floating around and without a broad base of demand for natural material there is nothing to push the price up.
Speaking of cheap, have you seen the cost of large synthetic colorless diamonds here: http://gemesis.com/diamonds/single?base_color=421 Yep, colorless...scary.
Great post, Michael!
GRS in 2008 had 60% of all quartz tested at their labs turn out to be synthetic. I agree that good color natural amethyst is not to common.
JewelFreak|1333929335|3166391 said:Good point, Pandora. Because it's less expensive than many other desirable stones, it's tempting to the uninformed to pick up "a beautiful amethyst" cheap, but they're probably not gonna get an amethyst at all. True of so much these days & sadly more to come as new synthetic techniques are thought up. I guess the labs have longterm profitability ahead!
--- Laurie
Good natural amethyst is not plentiful and is only low in value because about 80%+ of the amethyst floating around is synthetic. Testing to tell the difference between synthetic amethyst and natural is rather expensive, usually more so than the stone being tested, so most just skip it. With so much hard to test synthetic material floating around and without a broad base of demand for natural material there is nothing to push the price up.
Speaking of cheap, have you seen the cost of large synthetic colorless diamonds here: http://gemesis.com/diamonds/single?base_color=421 Yep, colorless...scary.
Kim Bruun|1334004153|3166819 said:That is quite a gorgeous amethyst, TL! I recently bought a Zambian amethyst from multicolour - just short of 5 carats and about 15 dollars a carat. It is not as nice as yours, but still nice. Very dark, though - at first, I thought the material very dark purple, but I also think there is some extinction going on. The colour is a rich, velvety purple with what I would call red flashes. And it has some fine needle inclusions and some colour zoning (both of which are only visible with the bottom up) - two things I wouldn't expect to see in synthetic material (but it must be said that I'm no expert).
The Zambian Ammy's I had George Ellis cut for my wife is much like you describe, although they are a bit lighter in color than your gorgeous ring. I wouldn't go so far as to call them "Tanzanite-looking" in some light, but they do throw off a strong blue component. The JXR stuff I still have left are much more like that. When I turn on the dining room light and look into the display case, they are almost glowing while they just look dark purple when no lights are on in the room.TL|1334013170|3166940 said:My biggest problem with most amethyst is the fact that many lack a secondary color. A good amethyst should be a nice violet color, not a flat grape juice color, no matter the tone. The stone above looks much like a tanzanite in some lighting and it can go very bluish purple.
I'd halo that!
It's the purple form of quartz and therefore available in large quantities. Quartz makes up around 12% of the earth's crust. Premium colour can be quite expensive.
Until the 18th Century, amethyst was considered a 'cardinal' gemstone along with diamond, sapphire, ruby and emerald due to its rarity. The value was once the same as that of a white diamond of the same weight - at the time, most amethysts came from Indian, Sri Lanka and the Urals in Russia.
In the late 18th Century significant deposits were found in Brazil and the bottom dropped out of the market. The conditions needed for amethyst to form are uncomplicated (compared with emerald for example which theoretically shouldn't exist), they are relatively stable when subjected to wide pressure and heat ranges and are resistant to weathering.
Stones such as rubies, sapphires, emeralds etc are very rare and extremely rare in fine qualities. Tsavorite garnets are 200 times rarer than emeralds and are expensive - almandine garnets pretty much grow like weeds and are very cheap in comparision.
Basically it comes down the the fundamentals of supply and demand...
Quartz has about a gazillion different forms that can be used as gemstones, it can also be treated easily - 99.9% of citrine on the market is produced by heating the less desirable shades of amethyst. It can also be treated to produce praisolite (erroneously marketed as 'Green Amethyst')
ETA: Although the premium colour for amethyst is called 'Deep Siberian', the finest amethysts have tended to be Sri Lankan, Brazilian and more recently Zambian rather than Russian.