Gemstone Treatment Alert

[Jamey S.]

Well, I have now gotten the info from a few various sources and feel safe to release the information.

I would request a valid lab report, or get one if you already own, and have specific testing for Beryllium done on ANY nice blue sapphires, especially those sold as Ceylon or from Sri Lanka, if the sapphire shows any signs of heat treatment!

They have figured out a way to treat the overly dark blue sapphires from Nigeria and Australia using a type of Beryllium Treatment and make them become lighter and be an actual marketable and higher end sapphire. The ones I have seen were very nice top blue colors, not the super light blues although I would imagine they could do this from other stones as well. From what I gather the stones can NOT have any green in them, only the dark blue ones. So the Parti Sapphires from Aussie land would not work apparently, but the dark blue from there and Nigeria do. I am looking into those from other regions to find out, but so far it is just these two locales I am aware of they are using. The Sri Lanka buyers are buying them up as much as possible, treating them, and then selling them into the market as Ceylon or Sri Lanka blue sapphires and listing the treatment(s) as Heated or Heat Only.

So before buying one for any large amount of money or selling any you currently own as just Heated, you should probably get them tested by a Lab and make sure they test specifically for Beryllium. They have been producing top blue color sapphires for some time now using Beryllium, but doing so to dark dark blue ones making them nice and close to top color instead of more like midnight blue is new info to me.