Oregon Sunstone Buying Guide

General Advice

Multiple factors must be considered when pricing any gemstone, not the least of which are cut and overall beauty. This represents a real limitation to online pricing research. Unfortunately, most websites don't list cut quality as part of their grading criteria in their descriptions. The price guidelines outlined below are primarily based on pricing by reputable dealers who have physical points of retail. (Web-based pricing was only used in instances where there was not enough data available otherwise. eBay was used as a last resort).

Beware of buying Oregon sunstones online. This gemstone is notoriously hard to photograph because of its strong pleochroism (its display of two or three distinct colors when viewed from different angles). Dealers often price their inventory based on beauty. Of course, beauty can be quite subjective and emotional. In this digital age, it's also easy to manipulate photos. For these reasons, the price guidelines below represent the middle ground determined from both a physical and online sampling of at least three to six comparable pieces from reputable dealers.

Oregon Sunstone Buying: Seven Distinct Looks

Physical samples of gem-quality faceted Oregon sunstone were provided by B.S. Rocks and Gems.

Schiller

A "schiller stone" is...

Suzanne Charlebois

Suzanne Charlebois is a Registered Gemologist and partner at Prestige Evaluation, based in Ottawa Canada.

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