Great lot of Pakistani Diopside running from an almost Deep Peridotish Green to a Chrome and Hunter Green in color. We recommend cutting this under 4 Carats or so because of the depth of color and saturation. This is really lovely material and cuts some magnificent stones. Most of these stones will cut very slightly to slightly included at best; however, many inclusions mask up well and these stones cut with great face up appeal. I have seen people selling this material as Top Facet Grade, unfortunately this in reality is not Top Facet Grade as most pieces will not cut flawless stones. Top material is RARELY produced in Pakistan. We estimate that approximately 25%+ of this material is a mixture of low to high grade facet rough and the remainder has some excellent material for Cabbing and potentially additional Facet Rough.

These are nice large chunky pieces with the average weight being over 8 carats! In addition, I have run through the material and sawed or sanded out most of the junky material. A few of the close up shots above show the better material in the lot. I think the pictures are a bit more vibrant than the actual material; however, that is largely due to the sawing and sanding dulling the surface when looking at the material in-person.

1. There is a very limited amount of Diopside being produced in Pakistan. This is from a really old lot and production has really come to a stand still. The material is very close to Russian Chrome Diopside; however, it does not contain the Chromium for the most part and the color fluctuates a bit more than Russian. Some of the material also exhibits color banding or shifting.