Hi to all the Gemmy people around the world.
Im noticing a number of “colour change Zircons “ on the market Atm. I’m only aware of a rare pink/orange from Australia ( where I live) but others are now advertising them in a green/blue. Or are they just Irradiating/treating/ heating ……. etc, etc them. Apparently they are coming out of Africa (I’m aware that Nigeria & Tanzania are traditional areas of zircons) but haven’t heard of “colour change ones”
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Cheers,
KateMc
The green/blue Zircon in natural and said to be coming from Burma. I will attempt to purchase one for inventory in the next few weeks when I am over there in the area….
In my 45 years in the trade, I haven’t heard of a pink/orange coming from Australia.
Allen B. / All That Glitters / http://www.allthatglitters.co
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I’ll have to watch the TV series I saw it on.
We have a few Gem hunting shows & I can’t remember which one one had it on. They Are from Northern Territory from memory. I’ll keep you posted
I have seen them fluoresce under UV light but not change colour so to speak.
found the episode in which the “colour Change” are shown. Gotta love the media!!…amateur’s…they aren’t colour change its more tenebrescent. Apologies to all.
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The tenebrescent orange ones come from the Mud Tank carbonatite in central Australia. Some Vietnamese zircons are reputed to be also tenebrescent ie change reversible color on exposure to light. Also, some reductively heated blue zircons from Cambodia/Thailand can go from blue to grey-green and the blue color is re-activated on heating. Such changes are presumably due to electronic effects within the crystal lattice as distinct from color changes due to changing the incident wavelength on a gem, as seen in alexandrite. Zircon color is a challenge to the researcher because zircon can host a large suite of impurities, many of which exert fluorescent and other electronic effects not seen in many other gems.
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