Print Page - 12 hour auction ***5.51 carat Swiss blue topaz*** FREE SHIPPING

This is a spectacular Swiss blue topaz trillian with beautiful color and lots and lots of brilliance! Plus, it is over 5 1/2 carats!!! The clarity is also excellent at VS (very slightly included- small inclusions and not many of them). The dimensions are 10.60 x 10.60 x 6.83mm deep. Shipping is FREE- you even get registered air mail with online tracking.

Most topaz is white when it is mined, and it is irradiated to give it the wonderful blue hue.

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Trillians are very popular with gemstone collectors because they often have outstanding brilliance. That is the case with this beautiful Swiss blue topaz. The pavilion is properly cut so that when light enters from the top of the stone (the "crown") it hits the pavilion and reflects back to your eye. That is always the goal for a cutter who wants to produce a beautiful gemstone- get lots of those facets inside the stone to "light up"!

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There is a big problem with this kind of cutting however. Gemstones come out of the ground in typical crystal shapes. MOST- maybe 95% of cutting houses here in Thailand- cut to retain the maximum weight, NOT to get the most sparkle or brilliance. Why? Simple math- it's the economics involved.

You are a gem cutting house and you buy 1 kilo of rough topaz. If you tell all of your cutters- OK, guys- let's keep the most weight we can from this rough- you will end up with maybe, on average, 40% of the rough weight. So 1 kilo is 1,000 grams or 5,000 carats. You will get 2,000 carats of cut stones.

In the next scenario, you tell your cutters to cut the stones for maximum brilliance. You might expect to get approximately 30% of the rough weight. WOW- this decision cost you 10% of 5,000 carats, or 500 carats. Where is that material? It was ground into dust. That is some expensive dust on the floor! If you normally sell blue topaz for $10 per carat as a wholesaler, you just told your workers to grind away $5,000. OUCHY!

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But when Melanie and I are selecting stones in the markets, we strive for the ones that are cut for beauty, not for maximum return from the rough. Of course sellers want more money for this material, because it cost them more to produce, and also because when we pick the cherries out of a parcel it leaves them with a parcel that is not so pretty that they have to sell. This blue topaz is a superlative example of one of the "cherries" that we picked!!! :)

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This auction is only 12 hours!!! Starting bid is 7BTC and increment is 1BTC.

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Economy => Auctions => Topic started by: tiptopgemdotcom on January 07, 2012, 07:59:30 AM