Recent News in the Gemstone/Jewelry Trade

New Mineral Found - Pezzottaite

Last year, some of our associates in Madagascar showed us some rough material that they thought was beryl - a new form of beryl. The material was not clean enough for faceting gemstones; would be mostly cab material and cat's eyes. We have heard that clean material was available at a later date. We have also heard months ago, that the material was identified as having a different coloring agent than red beryl. The gemstones at that time were quite expensive. In emails with a well known individual from GIA, he mentioned that the raspberry colored material that showed up in 2003 was a new mineral which was named Pezzottaite. We have found a company that seems to be calling this new mineral Raspberyl and it has been called a number of different names.

In a telephone conversation on January 23, 2004, the owner of All That Glitters talked with an associate who had returned from his home/business in Madagascar. Most of the material is being cabbed. One stone has been sold to the Smithsonian Institute. One can expect 1-2ct clean stones to sell between $1600-4000 per carat currently. The largest known stone weighs about 6cts and if you want it, it will run $13,000 per carat. It is not known how this new mineral/gemstone will be received - prices could remain steady, increase if the item is well received - a decease in price could also occur. Eventhough this is a very rare new mineral, rarity can have it's downside. Items that cannot be introduced on a wider scale cannot become well known by the general public - for instance, Tanzanite, Tsavorite, etc. is readily available and has been marketed well. One needs a gemstone to have a number of characteristics to make a market and one of those is availability. This new gemstone/mineral might only be of interest to collectors, in which case, the collectors will determine the price over time. Sometimes, it is wise to buy early and at other times, it is wiser to wait - one only knows with time and in that case, it may be too late!

Updates since this original posting in late Jan 2004:

The largest known stone weighs about 6cts and if you want it, it will run $13,000 per carat.......
sorry, this has already been sold but was available when we first posted this page in late January 2004! If you had contact us shortly after this posting, you could have owned this piece!

GIA has recognized this new gem material as the fourth mineral of the Beryl Group.

To get to the locality that "produced" this material (we say produced because the material is not being found in quantity nor is the quality of the material very good), requires a 14 hour drive via jeep, where one encounters considerable delays due to vehicular breakdowns caused by road conditions and rough terrain. This 14 hours is under "ideal" conditions, as during the rainy season, one would not be able to make the journey.

Pezzottaite - pronounced, "pe-ZO-tite"

Pieces of gem quality rough are typically small (1-2grams); much of the material is of carving quality only; some of the material contains tubes which may produce cat's eye stones. One dealer has estimated that 10% of the rough will produce cat's eyes. Note that we have seen a decent amount of this material and the cabachons typically are quite included and thought it is claimed to be cat's eye material, one can not see a defined cat's eye but more a sheen. See the 0.73ct Cat's eye below, which is one of the nicest cat's eyes with good tranlucency that we have seen in this material.

0.73ct Cat's Eye Pezzottaite  This is one of the best examples of a Cat's Eye and Translucency that we have seen.   The person who sold the largest faceted Pezzottaite to date said this was a fine example.  Currently priced below  what one would expect - $975