A Question Of Origin: A Different View

(via Gemological Digest, Vol.3, No.1, 1990) Grahame Brown writes:

Your well documented arguments against using origin reports to support price premiums for selected colored stones, should stimulate gemologists to think this very real problem through, rather than dismissing your arguments as being commercially unrealistic, or worse still, acquiescing to the rather dubiously based status quo.

Personally, I fully support the general thrust of your arguments, and wish to raise several additional points for consideration.

1. Researchers, species collectors and investors, excepted, why do human beings purchase colored stones? Surely the major factor influencing the desirability and subsequent purchase of a colored stone must be those visual characteristics contributing to the particular gem’s beauty and rarity. It is a fact that geography has little proven influence over the appearance of a colored stone.

2. Why should the presence of any visually detectable inclusion (s) in a colored stone not logically degrade, rather than sometimes upgrade, the value of the stone? Clarity should be a significant determinant of value; the country of origin of the gemstone’s inclusion should not practically influence its global value.

3. If origin reports are of such significance to the value of colored stones, why are these not routinely prepared for all colored stones?

4. If the gemologist wishes, or is forced by perceived necessity, to issue an origin report for a particular colored stone, then what data does he or she have to support their assignment of origin to that colored stone? The factual answer to this question is……precious little. Certainly, several most useful photoatlases of gemstone inclusions have been published, but none of these present an exhaustive review of characteristic inclusions found in colored stones from all past or present mines. This comparative information is essential if the origin of a colored stone is to be determined with any degree of accuracy. Yes, systematic collections of colored stones do exist, e.g. the GIA’s reference collection, but this collection is not readily accessible to an antipodean gemologist, who may be attempting to determine the origin of a troublesome colored stone. Excellent though the GIA reference collection is….is still incomplete. Perhaps the most striking inadequacy of gemology’s knowledge of characteristic gemstone inclusions is the fact that less than 50 per cent (author’s estimate) of the world’s colored stone deposits have been described, in any way, in the gemological literature. Simply put, insufficient data exists to allow error-free origin reports to be issued by the majority of gemologists.

Origin reports for colored stones may be economic necessity for some gemologists, but to me (for the reasons expressed above) they mostly represent quasi-scientific gemological humbug.