7 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Rubies
Victoria Gomelsky | March 5, 2015
"If you were paying attention at last month’s Tucson gem shows, you probably noticed rubies from Myanmar—which I’ll call Burma for the purposes of this post because that’s how the trade still refers to it—are next to impossible to find.
There are a couple reasons for the dearth of supply. Not only is there a lack of production in the Mogok and Mong Hsu regions of Burma, but—for buyers in the United States—there’s also an embargo: the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003 made it illegal to import rubies and jadeite from Burma. The JADE Act of 2008 further strengthened that prohibition. Despite the recent easing of sanctions against Burma, the gem embargo remains in place.
I’ve always been a sucker for the gem, and recently did a ton of research on the ruby market that yielded some interesting trivia:
1. Unheated Burmese rubies are going for nearly $1 million per carat on the auction block.
Limited supply combined with high demand—especially from dealers in China, where the color red is highly sought after—has turned the market for Burmese stones (especially the unheated variety) into a free for all. Take the Graff Ruby, an unheated 8.62 ct. cushion-shaped gem that sold for $8,600,410 at Sotheby’s Geneva in November, setting a world auction record for a ruby. Here’s what the London-based diamantaire Laurence Graff had to say about his prize stone:
“The Graff Ruby has a life and legacy that extends beyond us all. When you buy such a stone, you are not just a trader; you are a collector and guardian while you own it.”
Courtesy Sotheby’s
The 8.62 ct. cushion-shaped Graff Ruby is an unheated stone from Burma that sold at Sotheby’s Geneva in November for $8,600,410, establishing a world auction record for a ruby.
2. The reason rubies from Burma are so sought after—besides the legendary source—is that they often boast a super-charged fluorescence.
Like their sister gems, spinels, rubies from Burma have a strong fluorescence, a consequence of their low iron content. “If you shine a strong light on them, they have a red body color but they will also fluoresce red, super-charging the color,” says gemologist Richard W. Hughes, author of Ruby & Sapphire: A Collector’s Guide.
“It’s a very dramatic effect,” Hughes says. “If you have access to a blue or green laser pointer, you know there’s no red light going in and yet the stone will go red. That’s why in ancient times, people thought there was a fire burning in the stone.”
3. “Pigeon’s blood” rubies are most coveted, but the next best color is “rabbit’s blood.”
In Burmese gem trading nomenclature, the term used to describe the best rubies is “pigeon’s blood red.” According to Hughes, J.F. Halford-Watkins, a Brit who lived in Mogok in the 1920s and ’30s, and worked for a British ruby mining company, is the most authoritative source on the origin of the term. “He claims it’s probably of Chinese origin,” Hughes says. “But, literally, nobody knows.”
“But the No. 2 color in Burmese nomenclature is called ‘rabbit’s blood’—and that’s a slightly darker red,” Hughes said.
Even more interesting is another color term of arcane Burmese origin: “The crying Indian”—named that because Indian dealers of yore tended to buy darker rubies, “but this color was so dark that even the Indians would cry when they’d see it,” says Hughes.
4. The Montepuez ruby deposit in Mozambique is being hailed as the biggest ruby find in history.
A massive ruby find was discovered in northern Mozambique in 2009. The deposit, known as Montepuez, is so rich that in 2011, it attracted the attention of Gemfields, the London-based mining company that owns a stake in the Kagem emerald mine in Zambia, and promotes its gems as ethically and responsibly sourced.
CEO Ian Harebottle said the the mine has at least a 50-year lifespan and is ..."
Access the rest of the story here, and check out Mila Kunis, representative for Gemfields, modeling a killer ruby necklace.
http://www.jckonline.com/blogs/chain/20 ... -306540353
