Jack, The most unusual thing about the stone you described is its size. A cut alex as big as your thumb nail would be more than 5 carats and those are very, very uncommon. And a stone that large would have "feathers" and other inclusions. It would not be clear as, say, a garnet or an amethyst, which is closer to clear as glass with color added. Second thing I would question: most of the natural stones are cut as rounds, sometimes ovals. Squares are unusual. The man-made ones are just as "real" as the natural ones. I agree that they haven't quite got the formula for color change quite right, and the inclusions that distinguish the real ones are hard to get just right, too. One good thing is that most of the man made stones I've seen were real perfect, no internal blemishes, so in a sense they're more beautiful, if the color is good. But I've seen some that will make you look twice or three times before you're sure if it's man made or not. <g> They're getting much better at the inclusions. There's also some color-change garnets from Sri Lanka that are just beautiful that, unfortunately, are sometimes sold as alexandrites by unscrupuless people. The garnets, as special as they are as garnets go, sell for $120/carat or less, so you can see why they'd want to sell them as a high quality alex for $6,000/carat. They're very 'clean', almost no inclusions. If you gave one to a GIA person to identify, the only way that they differ from an alex in the various tests is in refraction, so someone could easily be fooled. (Though I think the clarity is a red flag.) Anyway, if you're serious about getting an alex sometime, let me know. I've got an unset 1 carat stone from Russia that I'll sell for less than wholesale, if you'll give it a good home. <g> Jan G. ----Original Message Follows---- From: "JACK CHILDERS" <jaxone1234@msn.com> Reply-To: BLACKSHEEP-CHAT-L@rootsweb.com To: BLACKSHEEP-CHAT-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [BSChat] Jewelry Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 17:04:09 -0500 Well, I THINK it was a real Alexandrite, and someone who knew stones told me it was. I use to buy things in lots. For instance, I would buy old wrist watches from a jobber. Some worked, most didn't, some were junk, but sometimes you found a real good one thrown in the lot. I would repair them, shine them up, replace a cracked crystal, etc, then resell them. Made a fair amount of money doing that. I would also buy stones the same way. I would buy a bag of stones, usually semi-precious and just plain stones like crystals, turquoise, some of those kind of things. But every now and then you would find a real diamond, emerald, ruby, alexandrite ! I first noticed the alexandrite because it changed color on me, had someone take it to a jewelry shop and the word came back that it was an alexandrite. In both cases, with the watches and the stones, whenever I found something in the lot that was really good or real I assumed that someone along the line had made a mistake and the really good things got in there by accident. Anyway, I have two man made alexandrite rings now and they just don't have the same luster and color that my original one did. I keep looking in pawn shops hoping someone is ignorant enough to not recognize what they have ! Jack Childers in OKC ==== BLACKSHEEP-CHAT Mailing List ==== Unsubscribe from the list: Mailto:Blacksheep-Chat-L-request@rootsweb.com?subject=unsubscribe&body=unsubscribe ============================== To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237 _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.