Is this sapphire any good?

[elepri]

Another ebay impulse buy. Do you think this might be a decent stone worth setting? It was really cheap, which makes me nervous but the seller had a 100% positive feedback so i took a chance. Of course i won''t know what it looks like in person until i get it.

 

[elepri]

Another picture of the same stone.

 

[elepri]

Last one

 

[rubydick]

The stone looks nice. One must be extremely careful nowadays with yellow and orange sapphires and orangy red rubies as many stones are artificially colored with beryllium. For more on this, see:

The Skin Game

While you didn''t mention the size of the piece, when things are sold very cheap, there''s usually a good reason

 

[elepri]

Richard,
Thanks for your reply. If the stone is colored with beryllium, would the color be unstable? Are there any other problems with it? The stone is 1.95ct and I got it for $35 so either way, it's not a big loss. According to the seller, it's heat-treated, they didn't mention any other treatment. They do specify Be treatment for red sapphires though. Also, are there any signs of Be treatment that I could look for when i get the stone?

 

[valeria101]

Date: 11/16/2005 7:58:36 AM
Author: elepri

If the stone is colored with beryllium, would the color be unstable? Are there any other problems with it?

In the meantime...

No & maybe: the color is stable but there is only a layer of it on the surface so if you want to recut / repolish the stone than the outer layer of color is cut away completely.

There is a good chance to end up with a color enhanced sapphire (yellow, orange, reddish-orange sometimes labeled pad, and blue are possible - as far as I know).


Now, there is one thing I would ask about too: I''ve found a pair of golden yellow ''whiskey'' sapphires that look natural (unheated) and pretty darn cheap. Not huge pieces - about 3 cts. The seller tells me that the prices are as they are because the bad reputation resulting from doubts over color origin. I''ve heard this before, but this was the first sapphires I could look at and end up convinced they are not enhanced themselves.

 

[rubydick]

Date: 11/16/2005 7:58:36 AM
Author: elepri
Richard,

Thanks for your reply. If the stone is colored with beryllium, would the color be unstable? Are there any other problems with it? The stone is 1.95ct and I got it for $35 so either way, it's not a big loss. According to the seller, it's heat-treated, they didn't mention any other treatment. They do specify Be treatment for red sapphires though. Also, are there any signs of Be treatment that I could look for when i get the stone?

At that price ($18/ct.) it is almost certainly beryllium treated. Let the seller know you are onto their scams. This is not your mother's heat treatment.

Color is stable, but so is the color of the synthetic and glass.

It takes an expert to identify this stuff, but the price is a dead giveaway, sort of like seeing a Corvette selling for a VW price. Gotta be something wrong. A knowledgeable seller will know this. So that leaves you with two choices: incompetence or fraud. Either one ain't good.

 

[mogok]

Date: 11/16/2005 7:58:36 AM
Author: elepri
Richard,

They do specify Be treatment for red sapphires though. Also, are there any signs of Be treatment that I could look for when i get the stone?

Hi I will second Richard Hugues on this issue, the price can be a very good indicator but for a potential buyer... but not for a lab as we dont take this type of information as relevant for gemstone identification. Yellow sapphire are to my experience the most difficult stones for a gemologist to give a statement based on facts... they are most of the time clean and growth line or color zoning are difficult to examine in such stones. Somewhere the color itself can be a strong indication for people which are experienced with naturally colored yellow sapphires. Anyway heat treatment with additives like beryllium is difficult to prove without some advanced equipment even if some experienced people can have "feelings" about it. But you can sometimes identify that the stone was submitted to some very high temperatures which is already somewhere suspect, but nevertheless some stones are also heated at very high temperatures without additives like beryllium. It is a complicated issue, some people like these stones, some other dont...
To my personal opinion: as long as you know what you are buying it is Ok, at least the stone was formed naturally and was then turned more attractive using some treatment and cutting work.
Nothing wrong with that if you are fully aware of it... But somewhere it is a little bit sad as natural yellow sapphires, which have their own beauty get flooded in the mass of the too bright beryllium heated yellows and people begin to think that natural gems are far too expensive...
It is sad as they are not easy to get! I hope that there will still be people understanding and appreciating the delicate beauty of natural yellows!
All the best,


Note for the signs, you can have a look there is your stone is lucky to have some "tale tell" inclusions. Well you know that I like native cut gems with inclusions! just make my work more easy! LOL...

Inclusions in Sapphires heated using beryllium heat treatment technology.

 

[elepri]

Thanks for your replies. I emailed the seller about Be treatment, I"ll let you know what they say. Apparently, the seller also has this website, gemselect.com. I looked at the stones there and they seem to be pretty forthcoming with the treatments. Most of their red and orange sapphires are in fact Be treated, most yellows don''t seem to be. According to them, Be treatment is a legitimate and colors the entire stone, not just the surface: http://www.gemselect.com/gem-info/berylliumtreatment.php, would someone confirm that?

And of course, I too would rather have a beautiful, unheated, untreated, completely natural sapphire myself, when i can afford one.

 

[valeria101]

Date: 11/17/2005 5:58:53 PM
Author: elepri

Be treatment is a legitimate and colors the entire stone, not just the surface: http://www.gemselect.com/gem-info/berylliumtreatment.php, would someone confirm that?

No, because it just does not happen. Either the ''Skin game'' article or another on the same topic on Ruby-Sapphire.com goes at length to debunk that myth. For better or worse, Be diffusion it is a surface treatment.

Whether it is ''legitimate'' - yeah, well, that makes me a legitimate blond who just happened to be born with black hair

It is not the $35, but honestly, the whole enhancement story feels sad somehow. Nothing practical, just some bad gut feeling. I''d probably get myself an ice cream instead of sapphire

There is some inside-out color enhancement, but I don''t think it produces yellows. Here''s the thing: LINK to AGTA lattice diffusion report


Next week, there may be other stuff coming up. Who knows... I wouldn''t jump to conclusions though and assume this particular seller has his own new-new sapphire enhancement. Perhaps not. Writing a carefully worded disclaimer is cheaper ''technology''.


I don''t hate color treatments in general, some results seem to make a good point. Some of the colors from Be-treatment are virtually impossible and totally jaw-dropping. The sets of matched stones would not have existed without treatment aside fair tales... Disclosure is such a nice thing

 

[mogok]

Hi,
In my personal opinion everything is legitimate as long as both parties know about it. I used to make the following comparison to my students at AIGS: Some women willing to llok more beautiful will use make up, some others will go to silicone, and esthetic surgery. Everything is legitimate and a new nose, new lips or new breasts are more permanent than lipstick or face powder...
But well some people think that gemstones should not be a mass market product and that too much and too efficient treatment are killing the appreciation that people can have for naturally beautiful gems. Beryllium treatment is very difficult to detect in small gemstones and especially in yellow stones and it is really an efficient treatment. A real alchemical work turning some unatractive muddy greenish stones into bright lovely yummies...
But well again and again some people like these stones some others dont. At the end you are the person making the decision as long as you are doing an educated purchase, in my opinion everything is fine.
It is the same for synthetics, you can buy a synthetic, no problem as long as you know it and pay the correct price.
All the best,

 

[rubydick]

Elepri,

Be diffusion can be both superficial or through 'n through. This treatment produces yellow color. So if you take a pink sapphire and diffuse just a bit of Be into the surface, you'll end up with a stone that is a mixture of pink and orange (i.e., padparadscha). Take a purplish ruby and diffuse a bit of Be into the surface and you end up with a redder and more valuable stone (typically these stones are from Songea in Tanzania; Vincent, care to weigh in on this? They often have a 'spinel' red appearance).

In the case of the yellow stones, these are often produced by diffusing Be into green or near-colorless sapphires. Since Be produces a yellow color, the idea here is to get a lot of beryllium into the stone. Thus they cook the stones for longer periods and the Be goes right through the stone, often coloring the entire stone yellow. Unlike the pads and rubies. This makes identification more difficult, but still, it can be done. Cooking stones at high temperatures for long periods of time (necessary for this treatment) causes many changes in the stone which an experienced gemologist can recognize. While we often cannot say 100% that a yellow sapphire is Be diffused, I'd bet I could probably be 95% accurate with just my experience and a microscope. To get that extra 5%, you'd need either SIMS, LA-ICPMS or LIBS testing, which will run $300-500 per stone.

But with your stone, the fact that it is yellow and heat treated and $16/ct. means that either the seller is:

1. an ignorant buyer (selling far below his cost price)
2. an ignorant buyer who bought from an ignorant seller (both selling far below the market price)
3. an ignorant buyer tricked by a dishonest seller (the buyer didn't know that Be diffusion produces yellow colors)
4. a con artist himself

Hope I'm not being too harsh, but take your pick, none are particularly nice choices. Now as Vincent has said, there is nothing wrong with buying Be diffused stones. Only problem is that the seller did not declare the true nature of the treatment (assuming it is indeed Be diffused). Certainly the asking price is fair. But if I sell you glass for the price of glass, but tell you what you're buying is sapphire, Houston, we still have a problem.

 

[elepri]

Thanks again for all the information. I did get a response from the seller who said the stone is only heated, not Be treated and that Be treatment is specified if it''s done. They do in fact note Be treatment for many other stones so I don''t see why they would conceal the information for some stones but not others

Perhaps this stone looks nothing like the pictures in real life. Guess i''ll just have to wait and see.

 

[rubydick]

I took a look at their web site. They say this about Be treatment:

"Beryllium treatment is the latest, popular treatment for colored gemstones. This procedure takes weak colored sapphires, adds beryllium powder, and then cooks the stones in a kiln. The results are nice, permanent colored sapphires, especially in the yellow and orange ranges. The great thing about beryllium treatment is the new color is in the entire body of the stone, unlike diffusion treatment, which only colors the surface of the stone. Do not be afraid of beryllium treatment treatment, as this treatment is accepted in the gem business as a legitimate and popular method for treating stones. Brilliant colors have resulted from this exciting method of heat treating stone. Just make sure the stone you are interested in has been labeled as “Beryllium Treated”.

There are a number of distortions here. This treatment is not "accepted in the gem business as a legitimate and popular method for treating stones." Indeed, the head of a well-known Japanese lab was sacked because the lab failed to flag such stones.

Today these stones are selling at firesale prices because no one is buying.

I also looked at their descriptions of other treatments. Here's a quote:

"A treatment that one should be aware and cautious of is diffusion treatment."

And another:

"However, for star sapphires, this practice is more accepted."

Huh?

Trust me, if the stone looks anything like the pictures and it is not lattice diffused with beryllium, sell it to me. I'll pay you triple and I'll still make money. But if I send it off for SIMS testing and it comes back dirty, you pay for the testing. Deal?

 

[valeria101]

Elepri, I must apologize for missing a bunch of points above...


Fortunately, they''ve been more then covered in the meantime

 

[elepri]

Valeria,
No need to apologize. I posted here so i could get as much feedback as possible.

 

[LaurenThePartier]

Date: 11/16/2005 11:13:11 PM
Author: Richard Hughes


It takes an expert to identify this stuff, but the price is a dead giveaway, sort of like seeing a Corvette selling for a VW price. Gotta be something wrong. A knowledgeable seller will know this. So that leaves you with two choices: incompetence or fraud. Either one ain''t good.

Apparently you haven''t priced out VW Phaetons or Touaregs lately. Hehe.

 

[elepri]

Well, I got the stone today and I''m quite pleased. It''s sparkly and clean and I think well-cut. I took a few pictures but I just don''t seem to be able to capture its actual color. It looks orange on the pictures but it''s really golden-yellow, very close, in fact, to the ebay pictures.

 

[elepri]

Here''s a bigger picture.

 

[elepri]

And here''s one taken with a flash, it shows more of the actual color. Now I just have to figure out how to set it.