🌈 Tourmaline is a kind of borate-silicate minerals with very complex chemical composition, water and fluorine, and a variety of metals. It is a very large mineral family, and more than ten species have been found. One of the main characteristics is that it shows a variety of colors on the same crystal. The English name “Tourmaline ” is derived from the ancient Sinhalese word Turmali, meaning “mixed gemstone”, in which crystals are mixed by multiple colors. Known as the “rainbow falling to earth 🌈”
🔸Crystal system: Triangular crystal system
🔸Density: 3.06
🔸Hardness: 7.5
🔸Refractive index: 1.62-1.64
🔸Special optical effect: Cat’s eye effect
🔸Characteristic: Borosilicate crystal

✅ Color classification

➡Tourmaline can be divided into red tourmaline, green tourmaline, blue tourmaline, black tourmaline, purple tourmaline, colorless tourmaline, two-color tourmaline and so on.

🔵Blue tourmaline : Includes light blue, blue, dark blue, lake blue, blue green, gray blue and so on.The most valuable is the lake blue, and the most famous is the lake blue tourmaline known as “Paraiba”. Produced in Paraiba province, Brazil, this tourmaline is similar in color to the lake, with bright, deep and distant colors. “Paraiba” tourmaline is also characterized by a strong fire color.

🔴Red tourmaline:Includes many varieties, such as pink, red, purple, rose, red brown, crimson, peach, wine red, red brown and so on. The most valuable of these is the tourmaline known as “Rubellite “.Rubellite literally means “ruby-like”. The name comes from the fact that the rupee was often mistaken for a ruby in its early days.

⚪️Watermelon tourmaline: Refers to both red and green two colors of tourmaline, the color of watermelon tourmaline is natural, red and green stitching perfect and natural, so the value is relatively high.

🟡Yellow tourmaline : Relatively common, there are light yellow, orange, brown and other varieties.One of the most valuable varieties is the “canary” yellow tourmaline, also known as medium yellow, its color is pure, bright, with a little light green, and canary feathers similar.

⚫Black tourmaline:Contains a large amount of Ferrum，which makes the black tourmaline dark to pure black. Black tourmaline is rich in chemical elements, and has the effect of gathering energy, absorbing radiation, and removing body turbidness.

🌈Color-changing tourmaline:The tourmaline takes on different colors in different light, for example, red in visible light, but green in ultraviolet light.

👉Tourmaline also has many other colors, such as colorless, brown, purple, tan, etc.
Some tourmalines have inclusions arranged in parallel, so after processing, they will have cat’s eye effect and become cat’s eye.

🔔The best colors are rose, purple, green, pure blue and bright watermelon, followed by pink and yellow,colorless and black is very ordinary. In the same color according to the different degrees of color is divided into 4 grades: vivid,medium, light, dark.

✅Clarity
➡Clarity: The requirement of internal defects as little as possible, crystal and flawless tourmaline price is the highest, containing many cracks and gas liquid inclusions tourmaline is usually used as jade carving material. Internationally, the clarity of tourmaline is divided into 6 levels, which are are tiny noise (VVF), slightly noisy (VF), visibly noisy (VL), slightly linty (VS), visibly linty (S), and cloudy (C).

✅ Transparency
➡Transparency: Transparency refers to the degree of transparency of the tourmaline, the more glass-like the transparency the higher the value.The international grading of 4 grades: legible characters (SF), legible shape (SS), translucent (SL), opaque (NL).

✅ Cutting
➡Cutting: Cutting examining the tourmaline carvings, bead chain, the appearance of the grinding process level. Relative to the tourmaline ring, the main assessment of its surface of the cut, the cut should be regular, symmetrical proportion, good polishing.

✅Producing areas:

➡Tourmaline producing areas: The four largest tourmaline producing areas are Brazil, Kenya, Madagascar and the United States.

✅ Rarity
➡Rarity: Rarity refers to the composite index derived from the comprehensive consideration of the four basic properties of tourmaline: color, weight, transparency and volume, which directly affects the market value of a tourmaline.