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Burmese Rubies? Make Sure They Are.
Rapaport News reports that several rubies between five to 10 carats, ranging from good to very good quality, were submitted to the Gubelin Gem Lab, under the pretext that they were from a "new Burmese mine."
Gubelin Gem Lab concluded that the rubies were submitted by gem dealers as "Burmese rubies," but advanced microscopic, chemical and spectral analyses, found that the gems were not consistent with known Burmese deposits but rather closer in property to those found in the Pamir mountain area of Tajikistan.
Daniel Nyfeler, managing director of Gubelin Gem Lab, told Rapaport News, "We recognized that the material is not matching the properties of the rubies from our reference collection of any of the known Burma mines.
"However, the properties of the stones we have seen from our clients well match the stones from the Murghab area in the Pamir mountains of Tajikistan."
The rubies were purchased in Bangkok, Thailand, and Yangon, Myanmar, under the assumption that they were from Burma (also called Myanmar.) Lab results proved that gemological features of the rubies did not match those of Burmese deposits of Mogok, Namya Sek, and Mong Hsu, but rather were similar to rubies found in the Pamir mountain area in Tajikistan with gemological properties of marble-type ruby deposits
The gemstones submitted to the laboratory display a pinkish-red to red coloration, often combined with a faint bluish sheen. These characteristics are often displayed in rubies from other marble-type deposits such as Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Nyfeler added that one of the lab's gemologists went to Asia last week to further investigate the matter, and inquired with dealers familiar with the trade routes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, China, and also with the market in Yangon "We are now having sufficient certainty that these stones are indeed of Tajik origin, and we are also writing the respective origin on our reports," he said.
The findings were not the first time gemstones were sold from Burma as local finds, which would "achieve a higher price," Nyfeler said. Certain labs have certified the lesser quality rubies as Burmese or from the New Burmese mine, he said.
Comments
I am deal in diamond jewellery & loose diamond .
Posted by: ABHISHEK on September 28, 2006 3:03 PM