Time:                   11:00AM to Noon, Saturday, June 20th, 2026

Venue:               Vienna Community Center:  120 Cherry St SE, Vienna, VA 22180

“EMERALD – THE ROYAL GEM”

HISTORY, ROYAL COLLECTIONS, IDENTIFICATION, SYNTHETIC VS NATURAL, AND PRICING

PRESENTED BY Boby Abu-Eid, Ph.D., GIA GG; VP DC-GIA

Dr. Eid will address a key topic on Emerald as a Royal Gemstone collected by Royal Families and discuss its natural mining sources focusing on Colombian source. He will discuss main properties and conventional identification aspects, and common treatments to enhance clarity.  Subsequently, he will discuss synthetic emeralds and procedures for distinguishing lab-made from natural emerald including estimates of values for authentic natural Emeralds and compare with more recent synthetic Emerald market values. Dr. Eid will present updated approaches for identification and distinguishing Emeralds and their origin in support of their appraisal and potential investment. Dr. Eid will show actual samples of different categories of Emeralds.

Boby Abu-Eid has been a member of DC -GIA for over 15 years, and Vice-President of DCGIA for the past five years. Dr. Eid holds Ph. D. from MIT in Nuclear & Geochemistry; he received his Graduate GIA certification in 2016, in Diamond & Diamond Grading, Colored Stones, and Pearls. He published numerous articles about spectra of minerals and gemstones and their phase transformations. He coordinated DCGIA seminars on how to distinguish natural diamonds from lab diamonds and other stimulants and demonstrated advanced techniques developed by GIA for such identification. He also conducted a DCGIA seminar on Pearl’s history and identification in support of appraisal.

Dr. Eid served the Federal Government for the past 34 years at the U.S Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) as Senior Level Service – SLS advisor and received many certifications and awards in the Nuclear Safety arenas. He retired from the NRC several months ago and is currently writing 3 books.

Dr. Eid has his own gemological lab with conventional GIA characterization tools as well as advanced emission and spectroscopic advanced instruments. He is a gemstones and special minerals collector focusing on museum quality stones such as amethyst geodes, tourmalines, aquamarines, kunzite, ruby, emerald, jade, agates, as well as pearls, meteorites and unique fossils.

Phone: 703-899-8819

Email: Ratebm939@gmail.com