FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Riccardo Modanesi]

Hi to everybody! Ok it's not the first time nor it will be the last time someone of us is cheated by a self-declared stone dealer. You should know I'm a gemologist and therefore I think we should take care of the difference between a synthesis, an imitation and an enhancement.
In 1994 at the Munich show I saw an Italian dealer selling spesartines from Val Codera, Lombardy, and I liked particularly a some 1.5 cm big red transparent crystal on a white pegmatite rock. The price that time was 30 DM, some 15 € nowadays Of course ita seemed to me a very good price for such a specimen! In the evening at the hotel I wanted to see what I purchased at the show; the transparent crystal was thoroughly full of fractures and the nice white pegmatite then turned into a bloody pink pegmatite! I understod I was cheated: the crystal was treated by a red oil in order to enhance the colour and to hide the fractures, and then it was glued again on its (maybe, non sure!) original rock.
I still have this crystal in my collection: I think a cheating is first of all a lesson for everybody who took it! And then a 30 DM cheating is not a tragedy!
Greetings from Italy by Riccardo.