Gift cutoff limit is extremely low. It’s either his purchased, or donated/used from Smithsonian (which usually gets the valuable and interesting “gifts”). I got to see a couple crazy items in the Blue Room of the mineralogy/gem display.
I got to handle a 2600 carat cut blue topaz in there, and ~55 and 75 carat star ruby and sapphire. The Blue Room was at that time key/combo/biometric to enter (1980’s) and contained the stuff either to big, redundant or to valuable to put out on display (and the latter says a lot since the Hope is out on display).
Just WOW!
“2600 carat cut blue topaz”
Love blue topaz And loved your post.