SEDA OPALS

SAPPHIRE PINK AND RUBY PARCEL

This is a natural sapphire and ruby parcel of stones mined in ’Barrington heights’ NSW Australia .Some of the darker stones are rubies.This mining venture was to market Australian rubies but turned out mainly pink sapphires so most of the stock is diamond cut-this supply is limited as once sold i dont think we can replace it.Pink sapphires and rubies are rare in Australia so this is your chance to buy a stone with some history. They are small bight stones suited as accent stones.I bought a large parcel of these stones from a miner who had then for years so they are old stock mined in 1980s. We did a random test with our gemologist and the stones tested from this parcel were found to be natural unheated.

Good luster

The weight is accurate but the size of the largest stone is approximate

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.