Madagascar Ruby (Mix)

Buying this parcel

Where it came from, what its weight band is for, and what to check before any money changes hands.

The deposit

Madagascar produces ruby from two geological settings that behave very differently in the hand. The Andilamena and Vatomandry areas yield metamorphic material of low iron content that can approach Burmese colour and fluorescence closely enough that origin determination is a laboratory question rather than an eye question. The island’s other deposits run more heavily included. What Madagascar is reliably good for is size: it produces large ruby crystals more often than East Africa does, which is why parcels in the double-digit carat range come out of there and only rarely out of Mozambique.

This parcel

Ten to twenty carats per stone puts every piece in this parcel at statement scale. A stone this size is a pendant centre, a cocktail ring, or a temple commission, and almost none of it will be set as a pair. Buyers work through a parcel like this expecting to take one or two stones and leave the rest, so it is priced and offered on that basis. Weight is doing more of the work here than it does lower down the scale, so judge these on how the colour holds through the depth of a large stone rather than on the face-up look alone.

Treatment

Madagascar’s reputation for treatment is worse than Mozambique’s, and deservedly so at the commercial end, where heavily fractured material is glass filled to make it saleable. That is exactly the material that reaches double-digit weights cheaply, so an untreated claim carries more weight here than at any other point in the catalogue. These stones are unheated and unfilled. A large ruby is also where a filling is easiest to see, because there is more stone for the flash effect to show through.

The report

No report is held for this 10 to 20 cts ruby parcel yet, and we would rather say that than name a laboratory that has not seen it. We will submit whatever you select to IGI or IIGJ before purchase on request.

Before you pay

• Hold a stone up and look through the side, not the table. Depth is where a large ruby hides a colour that is uneven.
• Look into any surface-reaching fracture for the blue and orange flash of glass, which is more visible at this size than at one carat.
• Weigh the stones you intend to take. In a parcel of this range, a single carat of difference is a real difference in cost.

Read next

Manikya, the ruby covers the material itself and what gets sold in its place. How to buy a coloured stone covers pricing, treatment and reports.

Written by Kamal Kishore Agarwal, founder and gemmologist, Gem-A qualified, buying in Johari Bazaar since 2008.