Chatoyancy sapphire, NEED HELP!!!

[oliver]

The picture of my cats eye sapphire is to the left (my profile picture)
It is 3 carats and comes from Anakie gemfields Australia.
Does anyone have any information about chatoyancy sapphires, please reply!
No one could tell us anything about it so far, we went to gemologists, asked at the sapphire fields, all not much help.
You guys are my last hope!!

Thanks a lot!
Oliver

 

[katbadness]

Oliver,

Here's a previous thread that touches on chatoyancy on (green) sapphires.

For more, I'd suggest you contact either:
- rubydick - Dick Hughes of Palagems, a foremost expert on corundum or
- mogok - Vincent Pardieu of AIGS Lab, Thailand.

These are the 2 that comes to mind immediately..

There are a few others who can give you some information, I'm sure...
Richard M, yowahking, Wink are the others that frequent this forum. I'm sure I'm missing a bunch, to the others, I truly apologize.

Good luck, and do post any information that you can find.

 

[rubydick]

First question, of course, is whether it is truly a sapphire. That is a simple determination for most any gemologist. In the case of green sapphire from Anakie, a strong Fe spectrum with lines at 451, 460 and 470 nm would quickly ID the stone.

Given a sapphire with many planes of inclusions lying along the basal plane, it is possible to get a chatoyancy of sorts by cutting the base parallel to the c-axis. So if your stone is a sapphire, that might be the case. But such chatoyancy is generally weak, at best.

 

[mogok]

Hello,

Chatoyancy in ruby and sapphire is very rare, I've myself seen only once a bluish sapphire from Burma showing this effect but it was weak and not sharp and the stone was quite ugly.
The stone you are presenting looks really nice compared to the one I've seen.
So as Richard I ask myself if its really a sapphire?
Did you have taken a refractive index? or bring the stone to a laboratory? Anyway for such unusual gems a lab report could be a good idea to eliminate any doubts.

All the best,

 

[oliver]

Hello guys,

Thanks for the reply.
We brought the stone to a gemologist here in Australia, the head of the Queensland Gemology valuers association. It was confirmed by him that it was in fact a sapphire with a strong chatoyancy. However, he had not previously had experience with chatoyant sapphires. So...he couldn't tell me anything about rarity or value.
Any other thought would be appreciated.
Thanks again guys!
Oliver

 

[yowahking]

If it is truly sapphire, truly strong on the chatoyant eye, and truly the color that you show, very nice. I bet the Japanese market would snatch it up. I often get outbid by a Japanese guy on odd, fun gems. Looks much like chrysoberyl in the picture.
I love Phenom gems, from cheap ones like chatoyant malachite from AZ to color changers, cat's eyes, and stars.