NC farm produces
emerald shaped into massive gem By EMERY P. DALESIO,
Associated Press Writer Emery P. Dalesio, Associated Press Writer
– Mon Aug 30, 5:31 pm ET
RALEIGH, N.C. – An emerald so large it's being compared
with the crown jewels of Russian empress Catherine the Great
was pulled from a pit near corn rows at a North Carolina
farm.
The nearly 65-carat emerald its finders are marketing by
the name Carolina Emperor was pulled from a farm once so
well known among treasure hunters that the owners charged
$3 a day to shovel for small samples of the green stones.
After the gem was cut and re-cut, the finished product was
about one-fifth the weight of the original find, making
it slightly larger than a U.S. quarter and about as heavy
as a AA battery.
The emerald compares in size and quality to one surrounded
by diamonds in a brooch once owned by Catherine the Great,
who was empress in the 18th century, that Christie's auction
house in New York sold in April for $1.65 million, said
C.R. "Cap" Beesley, a New York gemologist who
examined the stone.
While big, uncut crystals and even notable gem-quality
emeralds have come from the community 50 miles northwest
of Charlotte called Hiddenite, there has never been one
so big it's worthy of an imperial treasury, Beesley said.
"It
is the largest cut emerald ever to be found in North America,"
Beesley said in a telephone interview from Myanmar, an Asian
country rich in precious gems.
The discovery is a rarity for emeralds found not in the
rich veins of South America and Asia but in North America,
said Robert Simon, owner of Windsor Jewelers in Winston-Salem.
"Most of the stones that have come out have not been
gem-quality that I would mount in jewelry," said Simon,
who was part owner of a 7.85-carat, dime-sized emerald found
in the same community in 1998 that has since been set in
jewelry and sold to a private owner.
Terry Ledford, 53, found the roughly 2-inch-square chunk
rimmed with spots of iron a year ago on a 200-acre farm
owned by business partner Renn Adams, 90, and his siblings.
The rural community of Hiddenite is named for a paler stone
that resembles emerald.
"It was so dark in color that holding it up to the
sun you couldn't even get the light to come through it,"
a quality that ensured an intense green hue once the stone
was cut with facets that allowed light into the gem's core,
Ledford said.
The North Carolina stone was cut to imitate the royal emerald,
Ledford said. A museum and some private collectors interested
in buying the emerald have been in contact, Ledford said.
Modeling an empress's emerald is likely to have less influence
on the North Carolina stone's sale price than its clarity,
color and cut, said Douglas Hucker, CEO of the American
Gem Trade Association, a Dallas, Texas-based trade association
for dealers in colored gems.
"A 65-carat cut emerald from North Carolina is a big,
big stone," he said. But "once an emerald is cut,
it's subject to the same type of market conditions that
any emerald would be."
Emeralds are part of North Carolina's mineral claim to
fame, though other places in the U.S. also are rich in gems.
Maine mines have yielded aquamarine and amethyst, Montana
bears sapphires, Idaho is known for star garnets, and Arkansas
has diamonds.
It's not fully known why small, subterranean cavities containing
emeralds formed in central North Carolina, said geologist
Michael Wise of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural
History, who has studied the underground world around Hiddenite
for years.
Emeralds are produced where a superheated fluid carrying
the element beryllium migrated through rocks that contain
chromium, Wise said.
"This doesn't happen frequently," Wise said.
"The conditions have to be just right to make an emerald.
... It happens to be the case at this particular place."
Adams said decades ago when his parents owned the farm,
they allowed anyone with a shovel to dig for emeralds on
the property for $3 a day. Virtually all of it was too full
of flaws to be cut into precious stones and was mostly sold
to mineral collectors, Adams said.
Ledford said they don't plan to quit after pocketing the
profits from their big find, Ledford said.
"We'll definitely keep on mining," he said. "It
would be good to know you don't have to go and could do
it for pleasure. You feel like you've got to find something
to survive but since we found this emerald, once we get
it sold, there will be less stress."