People love to personalize things. It gives them more resonance, a personality of their own. But, what determines if a gemstone or precious gem deserves the status of having a name? The obvious answer is it is an outstanding specimen or owned by an outstanding specimen of humanity.
The biggest truth is named gemstones and precious gems, are desirable. They have provenance and are in a “perfect world,” the best of their kind. The last reason is the best reason for a gemstone being singled out. The gemstone is simply outstanding and has few if any rivals.
Here in these nest few blogs are the few, the proud, but not the many gemstones we have named, and why.
This 80 carat internally flawless green topaz was taken out of Russia by three men. They had to enter Russia, climb the Himalayan mountains in Siberia, the home of Russia’s most dreaded prison.
The Russian prison (Known as the Gulag), is a place that people go to disappear but often not before being raped, tortured and sentenced to a life of hideous food equitable to rotten garbage and a life or death filled with hard labor. human bodies are not meant to be fed garbage and to then perform hard labor.
The men who found the three pieces of green rough topaz not only performed the extraction of the gems from Siberia they broke into the Royal Mines of the Tsar of Russia now sealed off like a missile silo.
A tiny display of the royal gemstone collection given to Tiffany & Co. after the royal family were massacred, to auction off in NY. Some disappeared before the auction took place and it was rumored J.P. Morgan bought them, prior.
They braved the sub-zero weather and literally took a “long black train,” out of Russia to a spot where the gems could be properly examined. What they had happened upon were three large pieces of “rough gemstone,” each containing the rarest color of topaz, green.
Two pieces were quietly and efficiently sold off to the Royal Japanese Gem Company who procures pieces for the, Japanese Royal Family. But one large piece of the rough green rock was held until the earl 2000’s when it was sent to the Czech Republic to be cut into gemstone. But it was not cut into gemstones it was cut into a single gemstone that weighed 80 flawless carats and had the color of the finest green diamond.
It was a miraculous find and unexpected. In a deal made between our gem company and one of the original three, 1 dead, one’s location unknown amd we purchased the Ekaterina from the third man. At the time the green topaz was mentioned and included in almost all legitimate articles about topaz. But we quickly discovered that while mentioned so frequently in the articles, including GIA, not a single article included a photo of green topaz and after an exhausting search into GIA we found that not a single photo could be located on their site. Its rarity, is its rarity. A ghost gem. Odd for a gem currently listed all over eBay.
We purchased 10 stones off of eBay some where praziolite, some where glass, some where coated, but not a single gem was untreated, green topaz.
We knew we had something special and amazingly beautiful. We began calling her The Ekaterina Topaz and put a price on her we thought would be a barrier against the gem actually selling but sell it did. Lesson learned. Be careful what you ask for even if it seems impossible.
Meet the 80 carat, internally flawless, Siberian green topaz, from the royal mines, the Ekaterina.
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