Well that's now on the list for our next trip east. Drummond is where the tow truck driver was out of that hauled my dead truck to Missoula last year when it died at Bearmouth rest area. Good to know there are other areas to mine sapphires. 2 or ours got faceted and one came out at 2.4c. We have about 5 more to get faceted that should be about as big when done that we got by Helena.
Ooh, it sounds like you got some lovely ones! A really nice thing about Phillipsburg is the folks who own the candy store also own The Sapphire Gallery and they heat treat and cut stones in-house, I just had a bunch of them done there, it only takes 2 months, have about 20 more carats worth I am sending to them, including a very large dark blue and a purple, I LOVE mining sapphires:)
Definitely gonna have to take a trip to Helena too it sounds like, I want to hit them all lol
!PIZZA
!BBH
Spokane bar sapphire mine is pretty cool and we have been a couple times. The value of a faceted sapphire can make it SUPER worth the adventure. It took 3 months for ours to be done with their in house gem cutter. We will have to check out the Phillipsburg mine for sure.