This cuprian tourmaline is eye clean and bright, but does not have the "neon" look. It medium toned blue with a touch of gray, rather looks like Montana sapphire. It weighs 1.51 carats.
I did not buy the rough for this oval as cuprian. It was too early in the game. Later, I did not expect this somewhat different blue, with a touch of gray, to be cuprian because it does not have the “neon” look. It does have a nice medium toned sapphire look, rather like what I have seen from Montana. I discovered that this was cuprian with my spectrometer. It helped confirm that there are really two types of cuprian blues to greens, some that are neon bright and some that are not. I don’t know why, but I expect that it involves the amount of copper and other chromphores in the tourmaline.
This oval is eye clean and with fine crystal, which is exceptional for cuprian tourmaline from Mozambique. It also indicates that the rough was purchased early in the game, because clean rough became either too expensive or unavailable after the discovery of copper in tourmaline from Mozambique. It weighs1.51 carats.
Bruce
