Description

Purchased from Aragona Designs in 2006, this rich yellow gold ring features a gorgeous heart-shaped watermelon tourmaline with great, astonishingly vivid coloration, set in a handmade bezel. You look at this weird, wonderful little miracle of nature, with its one-in-a-million shape and its amazingly bright colors, and all you can think is, "Mother Nature LOVES jewelry addicts. Also, delicious food."

Measuring 15.5 mm from the cleft of the heart to the tip, and 14.5 mm across the shoulders as set in the bezel, and 2.7 mm in thickness, the tourmaline is estimated to weigh approximately 5 carats. The shank is 14k gold, and the bezel is 22K.

This is a nice, heavy piece with a lot of heft to it – the gold value alone is significant (though hard to estimate precisely with the tourmaline set). The ring is in excellent, almost unworn condition – but there are a few natural indentations on the surface of the stone, where it looks like the lapidary opted to retain weight rather than think it out by that last half mm. The half-round shank is 3.5 mm wide, 2 mm thick, and fits a size 5.5 comfortably. Due to its construction, it’s hard to measure the size precisely – it reads as a 4.75 on my mandrel, but it fits my 5.5 finger quite comfortably. I do believe it could be sized within reason.

The only comps currently on the designer’s website run several thousand dollars – I’d like to sell this one reasonably quickly, so I’m asking $850, and willing to entertain all reasonable offers.