Year of the Sapphire

Magnificent blue sapphire in custom ring

I've decided that this is the year of the sapphire, at least in my life, and I'm going to be focusing a lot more on sapphires.  Actually, I'm going to include rubies too because ruby and sapphire are both corundum so they're related by everything except color. 

I'm running a picture here that I also ran in my last blog article because I do want to talk a bit about this particular stone.   It wasn't huge (under a carat) but it was just a stunning stone.  All too often people are focused on how big gemstones are but I can assure you that there is an absolutely huge number of very, very ugly large sapphires out there. I personally love sapphires because of the range of colors they are available in, their durability and because of how stunning some of them can be if you're willing to look around for them a little bit.  The sapphire in this ring was one of a group I got in for a customer to look at to pick out a stone for an engagement ring.  Fortunately for me, he didn't pick the one in the picture. I immediately fell in love with the stone because of the fact that it was a little lighter than most of the commercially sold stones and because of that it had a wonderful sparkle to it.  Darker stones can have beautiful color but often they are so dark that you just don't get much sparkle in them (something that happens in most colored stones).  I told my dealers that I wanted to keep that stone as well as the one the customer bought and, sure enough, within a week or so one of my great customers came in and picked it out for a ring for herself.  It was fortunate that she has a fascination for high quality gems, has a great eye, and has bought a lot of great beauties from me over the years. 

This was a heated sapphire, which is a little uncommon for a sapphire in this tone (heating tends to darken stones) but as I have always said, you should buy a stone you love, not one that falls into some particular category.   If you want to read more about heat treatment in gemstones click on my blog directory link to your right and look for the section on gemstone treatments.  I will be getting back into the topic in future articles this year but for now you can get some answers to your questions about gemstone treatments there. 

In my next article I think I'll talk about all the wonderful colors that sapphires come in. 

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