SEDA GEMS

  SAPPHIRE

This is a natural stone mined in Tanzania Africa. The colour change in this gem is very weak, but there is a slight change to a purple colour under incandescent light. 

Grading VVS

Weight 0.28 cts app

Size 3.80 x 3.40 x 2.20 mm app

While many sapphires may exhibit faint color changes upon exposure to incandescent or fluorescent lights occasional stones may display dramatic changes. Most color change sapphires belong to one of two groups depending on their color change; the green to red (alex type), and the blue to purple kind. Most alex type color change sapphires are from Songea, Tanzania while the blue-purple types occur in Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Burma, and other parts of East Africa and Tanzania.  In all color change stones, the strength of the change is probabably the most important factor affecting the value of the stones.

Some people prefer the green to red change while others prefer the blue to violet change. The blue to violet change is probably worth more but there are exceptions and a stone with a strong green to red change would also be quite valuable.

  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 chromium and 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.