Blue Spinel Vs Sapphire

Color is an important factor that defines spinel s price red spinel is rarer than other varieties and also more expensive.

Blue spinel vs sapphire.

Blue spinel hues range from violet blue through very slightly greenish blue. The bright reds and deep blues are spectacular specimens. Blue spinel is a rather special stone. Man made spinel is used extensively.

There are few gems that occur naturally in blue. Garnet pg 2 understanding garnets. Blue spinel is a gem made of a compund of iron and sapphire. Tourmalines pg 4 paraiba tourmalines.

Blue topaz is the result of irradiation treatment and tanzanite is often heated to enhance its blue color. Discovered accidentally when scientists were experimenting to try and produce a flame fusion blue synthetic sapphire spinel s great advantage is that it can be made to reproduce almost all colors except purple the blue synthetic spinel sapphire imitant is much more genuine looking than a synthetic blue spinels imitating synthetic sapphires. Spinel pg 3 synthetic spinel. Red and blue spinel.

This dissolved titanium pairs with iron to increase the amount of blue color in the stone. With modern gemological tools we can easily distinguish between blue spinel and blue sapphire. Its cheaper than sapphire and is very light. In fact spinel is in great demand among gemologists and gem connoisseurs.

It is easy to understand how early gem traders confused spinel with ruby and sapphire for over 1000 years. Blue spinel vs sapphire. Blue exemplars are the second rarest spinel gems. Nevertheless spinel s price even in those cases is still lower than the price of sapphire and ruby.

Sapphire ruby. Spinel has been making a name for itself over the last couple of decades and demand for fine stones well exceeds supply. Tourmaline pg 2 black orange blue green tourmalines. However hundreds of years ago when spinel was found together with sapphire and ruby it was impossible to tell them apart.

Spinel occurs in a wide variety of colors. This has to some degree closed the spinel vs. Other varieties are more common and less sought after. Sapphire ruby pg 2 ruby.

In the deeper blue colors there are only softer stones such as kyanite and iolite. Blue sapphire is the most famous. There is no telling how many spinels have actually been sold as sapphire.