Alexandrite?

I have what I believe to be a roughly 2.3 carat natural Alexandrite (7.7 mm diameter x 4.7 mm deep). It is a bit on the dark side but has a pronounced color change from yellow green to reddish brown. Fairly clean. Under normal light conditions, it is quite dark but not black.

Does this stone have any value?

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Personally, the green looks a little off for alexandrite, but possible. I’d try to eliminate color-change garnet first, however, just in case.

Natural alexandrite and natural color-change garnet are both valuable stones given that they’re good quality in terms of color and the cut is good (looking at just these pics it’s hard to est cut/color/clarity qualities), but I believe the alexandrite would be the more valuable of the two if you could make a distinct identification or have it verified by an expert. Pricing is less my area than identification, but natural alexandrite can be more expensive than equivalent-size diamonds depending on quality of the stone.

You could use RI to eliminate alexandrite, but not garnet (as their RI overlap and color-change garnet has a broader range of possible RI). It’s possible you may be able to eliminate garnet by determining if it has double refraction (determining birefringence) as garnet should not be doubly refractive.

Only other thing I can think of is maybe diaspore (csarite)? Not sure how likely that is, but still, can’t be ruled out just from a picture since the color-change matches what’s been found in Turkey.

Sorry for the rant! Hope that helps a little!

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Your instincts are right. I took it into Pacific Gem Laboratory (Portland, OR) yesterday and they mulled over it for a long time. RI was 1.62-1.64. It is doubly refractive using a polariscope. It contains chromium. Inclusions are natural. They guessed Tourmaline but weren’t convinced because its birefringence was much higher than expected for Tourmaline. They considered Diaspore, too, but then settled back on Tourmaline. But mostly they were puzzled.

So, color-change Chrome Tourmaline with birefringence on the high end…

Alexandrite is a favorite project of mine, Ive been building this pendent over a span of @ 12 yrs to get the most favorable & matching stones I could find. They range from Russia, Brazil, & India. My jeweler built the setting per my design, 12 stones in a circle, 5 catseye alex in the center, the latest appraisal is shown. Im very happy with the results, all comments welcome-steve…

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WOW! What a beautiful piece!

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This needed a thread of it own, an amazing piece

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Responding to the original issue of Identification … since the stone is loose, a positive identification can be made by measuring the Specific Gravity.
Alexandrite is denser than Tourmaline. SG of Alexandrite = 3.73
SG of Tourmaline = 3.06 Hope that helps. ;))

Excellent work. Gorgeous.

As a novice I can only say I would be very suspicious of a jeweler who didn’t test gravity.

Not all jewelers have specific gravity scales. Most jewelers have very basic equipment for gem identification unless they have an in house gemologist. At least this has been my experience meeting and working with jewelers in Los Angeles, Madrid, New York, Hong Kong, and the Philippines.

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