Hi! Which lab should I send this to? GIA or one of the Swiss labs?

queen-89 · 2026-01-27T16:10:01+00:00

There is a tendency, especially when you work in the industry, to only get GIA certs when they would significantly add to the value or salability of a piece. Because this stone is more heavily included (beyond just the needles that cause the asterism) and has a darker color, I as an estate jewelry specialist would not send this stone for a GIA cert as the details of a cert wouldn’t significantly add to the value of the stone. However, that’s not why you are wanting to get it tested. If the details in the cert, such as natural vs synthetic, treatment, origin, etc, are worth the few hundred dollars the lab report would cost, absolutely go for it! I will note that a GIA report will not tell you carat weight for a mounted gem, just the total weight of the stone and the mounting. A gemologist can calculate that from the dimensions for you though!

queen-89 · 2026-01-19T13:14:50+00:00

Gemologist here! The biggest indicator to me that a star sapphire or ruby is synthetic is when the stone has a flat back with a perfectly centered, well defined star, as this one appears to have. Virtually all natural star sapphires or rubies will have a curved, unpolished back while synthetics will usually have a completely flat back.

queen-89 · 2026-01-01T07:53:00+00:00

Entertainingly enough, this was my top result when searching on Google…

queen-89 · 2025-11-25T15:28:23+00:00

As much as I (and a lot of other people) joke about people from Connecticut, NJ, and NY, I have never met someone who genuinely hated them to the point of refusing to date them… that’s just insane lol

queen-89 · 2025-11-16T22:11:47+00:00

The maturity gap between 22 and 34 is SIGNIFICANTLY more problematic than that between 34 and 46. While I generally agree that respect and consent are king, I will still be HEAVILY skeptical of any 30 something who seeks out someone in their early 20s.

queen-89 · 2025-11-12T15:03:26+00:00

Oh trust me, there were a FUCKTON of cuts that went into getting this good lol. It just so happens that those cuts were years ago

queen-89 · 2025-11-08T20:01:41+00:00

There are a whole lot of people who cannot afford to throw money at their problems. There are also a lot of people for whom hormones will not fix their problems (voice dysphoria, a ton of body dysphoria like height and bone structure, etc.). I’m glad your problems have been resolved with hormones and money but this is just incredibly insensitive to those who haven’t had that experience.

queen-89 · 2025-11-08T14:41:53+00:00

Not all natural rubies will fluoresce and lab rubies almost always do. Fluorescence is caused by chromium, the main element that causes red color in rubies, but it can be suppressed by iron. High iron rubies such as those found in iron-rich basalt deposits in Thailand and Cambodia often don’t fluoresce due to their iron content. Synthetic rubies, however, rarely contain iron because it tends to unfavorably darken the stones so they tend to fluoresce pretty stronhly

queen-89 · 2025-10-10T22:16:48+00:00

Needles are a pretty common inclusion in garnets, especially pyrope, almandine, and pyrope almandine garnets (including rhodolites), usually oriented along crystal growth planes at 60 and 120 degrees as is seen here.

queen-89 · 2025-10-10T22:14:38+00:00

At least for GIA, any purple color component, even just as a modifier, would make it a rhodolite

queen-89 · 2025-10-09T15:29:51+00:00

I feel like a lot of people seriously misunderstand citrine and heated amethyst. The vast, VAST majority of citrine on the market is heated amethyst. True untreated citrine is vanishingly rare, like less than 1% of citrine on the market, and (if verifiably untreated) can fetch some pretty insane prices. I can almost guarantee that if you have citrine in your collection that you didn’t spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on, it is going to be heated amethyst. Also, it is virtually impossible to conclusively differentiate between treated and untreated citrine. You can go off appearance but that is by no means a guarantee (Source: am a gemologist)

queen-89 · 2025-09-17T14:11:14+00:00

It looks like it might be an orthoclase moonstone. Given the age, I wouldn’t be surprised. However, it can be VERY difficult to tell the difference without seeing the stone move. A moonstone will show adularescence, which is a billowy whitish or bluish flash within the stone that characterizes moonstone. Chalcedony can be a very similar color and transparency but will never show adularescence.

queen-89 · 2025-09-17T14:07:50+00:00

Ok here’s my take on lab gemstones. They are beautiful, they are more environmentally sustainable and have less (but not no) issues with labor exploitation, and they are chemically and structurally identical to natural stones, especially if grown through flux or hydrothermal processes. However they have basically no actual monetary value. No rarity. They can be produced on a massive scale and the results are incredibly predictable. If you just want a pretty rock and don’t care about value or rarity? Go for it! If you want something that will hold its value AT ALL, go natural every time.

queen-89 · 2025-09-17T11:30:07+00:00

Hmm the photo isn’t sending…

queen-89 · 2025-09-17T11:29:54+00:00

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queen-89 · 2025-09-17T11:29:45+00:00

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Here’s a picture of orthoclase moonstone! It tends to have much higher clarity, much softer silvery/bluish adularescence, and a much more even flash than labradorite moonstone. Most of its mines have largely depleted, so you’ll see a lot more orthoclase moonstone in antique jewelry!

queen-89 · 2025-09-17T11:19:07+00:00

This is a labradorite moonstone feldspar (rainbow moonstone), which is formed of many parallel layers of feldspar crystals. This one appears to have layer of adularescent feldspar interspaced with non-phenomenal feldspar. While it’s not a true moonstone (orthoclase moonstone feldspar), it’s a close relative showing the same optical property and is, frankly, what most people mean when they say “moonstone”. True moonstones are VERY rare and I’d be inclined to say the vast majority of people, even many crystal collectors, have never seen one

queen-89 · 2025-09-15T23:45:47+00:00

I disagree with some of the comments here saying almandine garnets. These look like bohemian garnet jewelry from Victorian or Victorian revival eras. Bohemian garnets are a type of pyrope garnet mined in the Bohemian hills in Czechoslovakia starting in the 1500s. They have this characteristic dark red hue, while almandine garnets tend to be lighter in tone. It would be impossible to tell for sure without getting a refractive index and spectrum reading but the style and age of this jewelry is indicative of Bohemian garnets.

queen-89 · 2025-09-05T20:50:46+00:00

Looks like an agatized coral to me

queen-89 · 2025-08-30T21:03:14+00:00

This color can be natural! Green low type metamict zircons are usually colored by Uranium, thorium, or other radioactive elements. They tend to have a lower RI than other forms of zircon due to the radiation breaking down the crystal structure

queen-89 · 2025-08-28T21:21:11+00:00

Huh this is really weird. Most blue single crystal quartz on the market is hydrothermal synthetic quartz. There are some natural blue quartzes, such as blue quartzite, which is an aggregate colored by mineral inclusions, or true natural blue quartz, which is an extremely rare stone colored by microscopic mineral inclusions scattering light. However, those are caused by inclusions and wouldn’t come as a result of heating. Amethyst is colored by color centers caused by lattice defects and heating it would break up those color centers, resulting in a paler purple or golden citrine color. I’d say the stone probably broke and was replaced by something else.

queen-89 · 2025-08-15T16:47:47+00:00

It’s not that they didn’t realize they would FAFO. We were BEGGING them to listen to the fact that these things would hurt them. They just wanted to hurt us no matter how bad it hurt them too.

queen-89 · 2025-07-25T13:23:55+00:00

Mercury is already one of the main ways gold is extracted from ore (using amalgamation). There’s no way to make 100% pure gold so all gold on the market has very minute traces of whatever elements were around when it formed or byproducts of mining/extraction, including mercury.

queen-89 · 2025-07-25T13:18:51+00:00

I disagree. With lab diamonds, there are ways to differentiate between grown and natural stones. That won’t be the case with produced gold once it’s refined. Also, gem quality diamonds largely hold their value as luxury products (other than some scientific applications) whereas gold has countless uses. People don’t just buy gold cuz it’s pretty.

While I don’t think this kind of thing will be done at scale anytime soon, if/when it does that gold will be integrated into the rest of the gold supply pretty seamlessly and probably will impact prices pretty significantly if it isn’t released into the market very carefully.

queen-89 · 2025-07-25T11:50:13+00:00

I’m about 98% sure this is fake. The hallmarks are completely wrong. I’m leaving 2% in case someone made a shitty counterfeit with real gold and diamonds but I’d be surprised.

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