Melee Parcel Contains Just One Natural Stone

RAPAPORT... The Gemological Institute of America (GIA) found just onenatural diamond in a melee parcel containing more than 1,000 undisclosedsynthetic stones, according to a recent lab note. The organization's New York center received 1,102 smalldiamonds weighing a combined 9.67 carats for its melee-analysis service.Initial screening referred 1,093 of them for further testing, while the GIAcould not assess the other nine because they did not meet the service'scriteria for examining stones. Spectroscopic tests confirmed 1,092 of the 1,093 diamondsto be synthetics created using the High Pressure-High Temperature (HPHT)technique. This case represents the largest percentage of undisclosed syntheticmelee the GIA has seen in a parcel, researchers Stephanie Persaud, Wuyi Wang,Paul Johnson and Ivana Petriska Balov wrote in the summer 2018 issue of Gems& Gemology, the institute's journal. "The increase in the amount of synthetic melee submitted- both disclosed and undisclosed - to GIA's laboratories for identification hasexponentially increased since GIA began offering its melee-analysis service in2016," the team wrote. More commonly, the GIA receives bags of melee containinga mixture of natural and lab-grown diamonds, or with just a few synthetics - a practiceknown in the trade as "salting," the researchers said. One notable characteristic of the latest melee batch wasthe absence of nickel, a catalyst that manufacturers often use in the HPHT process,the team wrote. Gemologists did not detect the element when they put thematerial through the spectroscopic examination. "The majority of the HPHT synthetic melee had nodetectable traces of [nickel], demonstrating the importance of advanced testingto identify these melees," the authors added.Image: Sood Oil (Judy) Chia and Towfiq Ahmed/GIA