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WHAT IS A PRECIOUS STONE WORTH? 925
show that they can spend big sums to with the requisite proportion of copper
gratify personal likes—and what more sulphate, and subjecting the precipitate,
thoroughbred spender is there than the while moist, to hydraulic pressure.
man who pays a big price for the mined The opal cannot be imitated success­
article, when he could get an equally fully. The genuine opal consists of
good synthetic stone for much less ? So "colloid silica"—that is, silica in amor­
"up with the price on good rubies and phous state, combined with water—with
sapphires—they'll be glad of the chance a structure of thin and very, very slightly
to spend more!" reasons the producer separated layers, which break up the
and seller of gems—and he is entirely light and thus create the fiery effect
right.
characteristic of the gem. The man who
Artificial diamonds and emeralds can­ would make opals that will hold up at all
not yet be made in any size artificially. must duplicate this structure—and so far
The diamond is carbon, crystallized by no one has been able to do it. The best
great heat and pressure, and any arti­ anyone has done is to surface glass with
ficial process probably must depend upon a property of iridescence, and the re­
these two features. Moissan developed sulting fraud is easily detected even by
such a method by heating iron which was the uninitiated, because it has no depth.
saturated with carbon and plunging the All these imitations and synthetic
red hot mass into
H
water, whereupon
the heat and pressure
in the iron
crystallized bits of
carbon into genuine
diamonds. But
the largest of these
stones is barely
discernible by the
naked eye, and so
far no one has
been able to devise
a means of handling
larger masses
of carbon, principally because of carbon's
well-known tendency to combine with
oxygen at high temperatures—a difficulty
not encountered in the case of corundum
(aluminium oxide), which is the basic
material of sapphires and rubies.
Emeralds likewise cannot be synthesized
as yet. There is one trick about
emeralds, however, that is well worth
watching. That is the French emerald,
which consists of a thin slice of the
beryl (emerald is a type of beryl) overlaid
on a glass base. If cleverly
mounted, the joint cannot be detected,
and the resulting "jewel" is exceeclingly
hard to detect.
Turquoises may be made by precipitating
hydrated phosphate of aluminium
m
Genuine Diamonds Possess a Living Fire That the
Paste Gems Never Can Attain
stones must be
counted in as elements
in the price
of gems. So, take
it all in all, unless
you are familiar
with all these conditions,
you could
not do better than
pick an honest
jeweler, and pay
his price. After
all, when everything
is said and
done, the value of
gems does depend upon what people will
pay for them, so you needn't feel that
you are being an "easy mark" of any
sort. If it appeals to you, if any special
qualities it may have make you satisfied
with possessing it and reconciled to having
paid the price you did, you have
obtained full value for your money. The
shrewdest buyer on earth couldn't do
better; and if the price was greater than
that others would pay, you have the
greatest value of all—the satisfaction of
having spent your money without stint,
to get something you wanted. But never
make the absurd mistake of buying
merely as an investment; profitable resale
is next to an impossibility for the
individual.