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Show MAKING CF IMITATION GEMS Business Lends Itself to Fraud When the Dealer Is Not Over-Scrupulous. Over-Scrupulous. f tie first artificial rubies were made by fusing the dust of small and inferior in-ferior rubies, and the products were called reconstructed rubies. They brought from ?50 to $S0 a carat, and were soon driven from the market by the cheaper synthetic or scientific rubies. These are made by mixing and fusing certain chemicals which j are not costly, and the imitation gems are sold by legitimate dealers for a small part of the price of the old, reconstructed rubies. One fraud la in selling the synthetic rubies at high prices, calling them reconstructed, and representing them as made up of real, natural rubies. Another fraud la in selling artificial white sapphires as synthetic diamonds. dia-monds. The jewelers say that no synthetic syn-thetic diamonds have ever been made for the market. Diamond dust has been made at enormous cost in experiments, ex-periments, but no diamonds suitable, for ornaments have ever been made artificially. Tiie diamond dust made by a French chemist would cost vastly vast-ly more than similar dust from the diamond mines of South Africa. The dishonest dealer can get a much higher price for the synthetic' sapphire if he can persuade his customer cus-tomer that it is a diamond. Blue is the desirable solor for a sapphire, ancj, therefore artificial white sapphires-are sapphires-are not of much account when sold dimply for what they are. |