in the Mogok area north of Mandalay in central Myanmar are ruby mines since prehistoric times. When digging for the red stones people found tools which could be dated back to the Bronze and Stone Age. The red stones which are found by alluvial mining (means they are washed out from the earth and gravel) have a wide spectrum of quality and color. Most are have a slight blue hue on top of the usual basic red and the size is around 3-4 millimeter, after about 6 millimeter it gets rather rare, the so called "pigeon's blood" color is considered the best.
are found including sapphires not only with blue color but also with rose and pink color. Pink sapphires are very pretty side stones with diamond jewelry. The gems have strong fluorescence under ultraviolet rays and fluorescence is very strong with synthetic rubies, this is one of the possibilities to find synthetic stones quickly when dealers try to sell them as natural gems.
end up in Thailand, either in Bangkok or Chanthaburi, south of Pattaya has no mines but is one of the biggest trading places for colored gems in Asia. The gem market is on at weekends, but activities to buy and sell are every day in the old town, there is a whole street with small shops and some restaurant like areas where the buyer and sellers can rent a table to sit down and negotiate. The town is very popular with Indian and Pakistani precious stones traders. Traded are mainly colored stones, no diamonds and jade.
Substantial gem mining
for the red stone is not only in Burma, Sri Lanka and Madagascar has also bigger deposits of good quality gem stones including sapphires. Mining for the red stone is also done in Tanzania but the gems have plenty of inclusions and almost no transparency because of this. They are interesting because of their intense color and usually cut as cabochon. The top important factors are size, color and clarity as with any other gemstone. Large sizes rubies are even more rare than similar sized diamonds with equal clarity.
A Star Rubies are something special,
usually are six rays stars, actually there are three but since they are bundled in the center they become 6, usually cut as cabochon to show the effect. When illuminated with a single light source the star is seen best the star can become a bit of a none star with other light sources and from a different angle as it is visible in the pictures. This effect is asterism which is caused when light is reflected from microscopic sized needles buried in the stone, interestingly even 12 ray star rubies have been found in Myanmar.
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allmyanmar.com
