Ruby on marble

Item Description

Everybody knows Ruby, but you'd be surprised how difficult it is to find a good matrix display specimens of the material from any world locality. This piece is a certainly a great example of a matrix display specimen, and it just so happens to come from one of the most historic Ruby localities from the ancient world. I would like to add that not only is the crystal on this specimen very fine, but it's also UN-REPAIRED, which makes it even more desirable, as many of them are often glued back on the matrix. The Rubies from Jagdalak are among some of the most well known and superbly crystallized examples of Ruby ever found. This specimen features a large, fairly sharp, well formed, lustrous, purplish-red color prismatic crystal with good internal translucency measuring 2.3 cm long sitting beautifully on a grey-white marble matrix. The crystal is essentially doubly-terminated, but one edge of the crystal had its growth interrupted under the marble. Many Ruby crystals you will see from around the world are often slightly translucent, or genuinely opaque, but THIS crystal has beautiful internal gemminess when backlit. The crystal is not damaged (it only has some intergrown marble), and if you look closely, you will see it's fully crystallized all around. A very fine Ruby specimen from a locality that is not producing nearly as many good pieces as it did 15 years ago. Valued at $1,800 in the inventory. For reference, if this piece were from Mogok, Myanmar, I can say with certainty that the value would be higher, though it's gemmy enough that it probably would never have survived the mines and would have been faceted into a gemstone. It's important to keep this in mind when one is searching for a display quality matrix Ruby specimen.