SEDA OPALS

SAPPHIRE PINK

This is a natural pink sapphire stone mined in Sri Lanka. They are small bight stones suited as accent stones.

  Sapphire is one of the two gem varieties of the species corundum. Although blue is the best known hue, the gem occurs in virtually every spectral hue excepting red. Red corundum is a ruby. Sapphire may also be colorless, and it also occurs in the non-spectral shades, gray and black. Yellow and green sapphires have traces of iron that gives them their color. Pink sapphires have a trace of the element chromiumand the deeper the color pink the higher their monetary value as long as the color is going toward the red of rubies. Sapphires also occur in shades of orange and brown, and colorless sapphires are sometimes used as diamond substitutes in jewelry. Salmon-color padparadscha sapphires often fetch higher prices than many of even the finest blue sapphires.

Within the New England gemfield, sapphires typically occur in Quaternary and Tertiary alluvial deposits in both present day watercourses and fossil drainage systems. The sapphire-bearing gravel layer (or “wash”) varies in thickness and depth but may be up to a few metres thick in some palaeo-alluvial channel systems.  It is thought that most of the sapphire was derived from the weathering and erosion of volcanic ash deposits (volcaniclastic rocks) that were erupted onto the earth’s surface during early explosive phases of volcanic activity .  These deposits were then distributed and concentrated along drainage channels. These stones are mostly included as all Pinks are, to get one clean is a prize.