Sad to say, Natasha and I are not getting any younger -- she is 59 and I am 54. What this means is that both of us are getting to have terrible eyesight. I need really strong light and high magnifications, and she does, too.
So, the week before last, she saw this yummy looking rubilite -- by yummy, I mean the color, because the cutting was not that great and the stone could have used a bit more altura.
[Height? Depth? I'll have to come back and correct this post once I learn the proper cutting terms. Natasha speaks no English, and I speak no Russian, so we have to communicate with each other in our bad Portuguese; thus, most of the gem business vocabulary that I know, I learned in Portuguese, not English. UPDATE: yup! Altura is the distance between the very bottom of the stone and the table.]
But on this particular trip to Teófilo Otoni, we really didn't see much to buy. There was a real lack of decent merchandise for sale, particularly of tourmalines.
I will come back to that later.
But first, I just want to point out something about the photo above. That stone had really nice color and flash, a lot of life, but the cutting could have been better, and the stone could have had more depth, which brings me to its window. The windowing wasn't the worst that I have ever seen, but notice how most of it has been hidden by a convenient reflection covering at least a third of the table. (Whenever looking at oval cut stones, notice the windows! More altura usually means less of a window if the cutting is done properly.)
Convenient (NOT!) -- I took the photo like that on purpose!
more later...
Baaack! OK, why was Natasha thinking of buying this particular stone? Answer: she wants to resell it to a jeweler in Moscow.
Sound of loud warning buzzer going off...
Look, if she had wanted to buy it for herself because of the yummy color and because the price was low, then that would be all right.
But, she wanted to resell it.
We were in Teófilo Otoni for only two days, running around like crazy, so Natasha did a smart thing -- she made a deal with the seller to take the stone home and come back in two weeks and pay for it.
Whaaat!?!
Yeah, sure, the dealers in TO know Natasha, and they have this thing they do, which always makes me feel funny when they try to do it to me -- they say, "Take them with you!" and they try to put the stones right into your hands.
They want to close the deal, and if they think they can count on you to pay and if at the same time they think they can afford to risk losing the merchandise, they just put it in your hands, then, yes, you can go home with the stones and pay later (within the month, or then you have to pay interest charges of 5% per month -- not per year).
To make a long story short (because I need to finish up this post), we came back home with this stone, I had a real good look at it with a loupe, and, having seen at least two major problems, I borrowed it from Natasha to take photos just to post on this blog, because the stone has such great examples of typical tourmaline problems.
First, click on the photo below so it will enlarge to show you the real deal.
Do you see the two major problems (although there are others)?
OK, obviously the big black inclusion coming up from the bottom, at the girdle (which is called a rodízio in Portuguese), but notice also the gray spot up on the top.
Both of these are likely to be the result of the polishing material entering the stone via a fissure (like the black one) or a tiny hole (growth tube?) (like the gray one). Well, they are both the result of tiny holes, but let's leave that aside for the moment.
I have to try to get my hands on that stone, again, to see if I can take photos of the entrances.
To be updated...
UPDATE: well, I didn't take any more photos of the stone, but Natasha printed out the one just above so that she could show it to the seller when she returned the stone (because I finally managed to talk her out of buying it).
Personally, the only thing that I could think of doing with this particular stone was to have it recut, but even if the price were right, there would still be a good chance that the same thing might happen again -- polishing material going into tiny growth tube holes and ruining it. So, why bother? Skip it! Keep looking. Don't imagine that this will be the only yummy-colored rubilite you will ever see in your life. If you have money to burn -- whatever. But if not, give this stone a pass if you are looking for top quality rubilite tourmaline in Brazil -- there is better available (but naturally it will be more expensive).
Copyright © 2009 N. Tenney Naumer -- All rights reserved.
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