A friend of mine posed a question to me this morning about a very
large piece of Aquamarine rough. It’s a mineral specimen weighing
several kilos. According to her, it has some surface damage that
makes it unsuitable for a museum collection. Would anyone know how she
could go about selling such a large piece? I would think production
stone cutting houses might be interested, or a collector. Thanks in
advance!
Jesse Kaufman
“Surface damage” could mean just minor imperfections . If possible,
email me a jpeg and I will give you some idea about its value.
Dear Jesse, I am interested in the piece. Please have the individual
contact me with full about the piece including pictures
and asking price.
Gerry Galarneau
If you want to e-mail me a photo and more detail,I am sure I can be
of help.Perhaps this general will do and be of interest to
everyone on the list.Your stone if valuable,is not for the size of
it.Large Beryl is quite common.This will be your problem to offer it
“as is” to allmost all cutting factories.Just like a carpenter does
not go out into the forest and cut the trees,he buys from a lumber
yard that has prepared it into boards,the roughs stones are worked
over before offered in the market.The crystals are first cleaned and
cobbed,that is,a process using special hammers,the two most commonly
used are South American “swing” hammers.A small lightweight steel
hammer head mounted on a thin stick of wood.The idea using this hammer
is to continously “swing” the hammer to the workpiece and chip away
until you have removed the gem sections.Or German carbide tipped
hammers,nicknamed “German Knives”.With the German hammers you place
your workpiece on a tempered steel “V” block,and precision crack along
faults or to your desire.Used properly,the stones split just like the
nickname implies,as if sliced by a knife. Then in the case of
Beryl,other treatments might be done on the smaller roughs before they
are offered for sale.Again,a comparison might be the dark blue-green
color of the ocean as oppossed to a clear glass of water in a cup.As
you cobb the Aquamarine smaller,the color is lost in the removal of
the mass.So prior to sale as rough,an irradiation process might be
done to add color,or a heat treatment to remove the greenish or gray
cast. Seems sad to observe that many large crystals are completely
usable,yet still broken down into smaller pieces.The price per kilo
actually reverses at a certain point,and the market size of the
interested buyers.A 10 kilo Beryl crystal at say $100/kg,is $1,000.And
most buyers are reluctant to invest all their capitol in one
basket.But a 5 gm piece of Beryl roughs for say $5,000/kg.is a mere
$25.So the stones are broken down mainly to increase the price per
gram,realizing more return and to open the larger market,as small ones
sell briskly,the large big ticket can sit on the shelf. If you have no
facility to process the stone for the lapidary market,and it is too
damaged for the collectors market,there too large crystals are slower
sellers,you might investigate the interior decorator market.Your local
jeweler first.There is another saying’The big one,sells the little
ones".Many a jeweler can use a large natural crystal to display in the
showcases to enhance the sale of sets of smaller Aquamarine. Mark
Liccini http://www.LICCINI.com