How to choose a sapphire
How to choose a sapphire in the right way.
Or how to choose the "right" sapphire
The price of this stone is formed depending on several unchanging factors:
- Color
- Size, carat weight
- Refining
- Deposit
- Cleanness
- Cut
All sapphires in the world can be conditionally divided into budget and premium stones.
Sri Lankan sapphire is a premium segment and a common name.
Classic cornflowers are the business card of Sri Lanka.
Let's take a closer look at all the parameters:
- Color — The stones that we recommend here are blue, blue with a purple hue and pure blue sapphires. The basic rule that we follow is that the color should be saturated and bright. But you always need to take into account the fact that in these latitudes sapphire may look different from what it will look in Moscow, for example.
- Size is of great importance here. Small stones are not usually bought in Sri Lanka. We recommend buying stones starting from 2 carats. When a stone crosses the 5 carat mark, the price rises significantly.
- Refining - only heating is a traditional and acceptable method of refining for us! We do not consider any other
method. What is an unheated sapphire - the stone was mined and cut, and no other manipulation was performed on
it.
Heated stones are additionally exposed to temperature treatment. But, what is very important, the chemical composition of the sapphire does not change during this process. Heating only completes the work that nature has not completed. Not all stones are heat sensitive. If the chemical composition of the sapphire does not contain the necessary elements, heat treatment will not affect it in any way.
The appearance of stones with and without heating is sometimes almost identical, however, the price may differ even 2 times. Therefore, if you want to make yourself happy by buying a sapphire, but your budget is limited, we definitely recommend heated stones. - Deposit. There are mainly Sri Lankan stones, as well as stones from Madagascar (these are slightly cheaper than Sri Lankan ones but their properties and appearance are not worse than those of Sri Lankan stones) and stones from Burma are extremely rare. Most often we work with Sri Lankan stones, as they are provided to us by the owners of the deposits
- Cleanness - this property is far from being in the first place for sapphires. However, we recommend buying stones that are visually clean, without noticeable inclusions.
- Cut is an important parameter. The color of the stone depends exactly on it (no one canceled the optics). The stone must be proportional. What is especially important is that it is not too high - then you pay for it