Fakebusters: Tourmaline

Well fakebusters, it is time for another round in the ring. The market is flooded with artificial tourmalines, specifically the bi- and tri- colour varieties. We need to take a look at them, as the fakes can get pretty pricey, and were never even tourmaline! 

So this one is garish, and fairly obviously not tourmaline, due to them getting too cocky and trying to cram too many colours onto one gem! It is likely just glass, especially given the way it has shattered on some parts of the engraving.

This one is slightly harder to spot, as there is natural tourmalines which approximate these colours.  Once again there is the shatter lines, which we would not normally expect from a tourmaline.  Also it is TOO CLEAR! This is important because:

This is a relatively high quality bi-colour tourmaline, and you can see that the colours are similar. However, there is a lot of clouding and frost to this one, which is natural for tourmalines.

While some do have greater clarity, like this watermelon tourmaline, they still have the banding present in nearly all tourmaline specimens.  With the multi-coloured, the most desirable attribute is the colours present, and the clarity tends to be secondary.

Lastly, if there is amazing clarity, you will still find that there is either banding or a gradient of colour, both of which are missing in the fakes.  The fakes usually transition from one colour to another seamlessly.