STORY SIMON BRUCE-LOCKHART |IMAGES CHANEL, ZANCAN & SCAVIA Where colour is key. FROM time immemorial the allure of sapphires have made them the most popular of all coloured gemstones. Even today, sapphires remain America's no. 1 selling gem. Their beauty and mystique continues to enchant buyers from around the globe. While not as expensive as rubies, the prices for fine quality large sapphires can be higher than those of diamonds. The highest price ever attained for a sapphire is USD48,871/ct, paid for the 62.02ct Rockefeller Sapphire in 2001.
Understanding where the value lies in sapphires is essential to making a rewarding purchase. Not all sapphires are the same, and as with all other gemstones, quality always equals value. Consequently, there are numerous attributes to consider when selecting this most popular of gems.
Colour - The Most Important Factor Determining A Sapphire's Value Sapphires are identical in every attribute to ruby, except for one key component - their colour. Found in a kaleidoscopic assortment of colours, sapphires are broadly split into two groups based on these colours:
Sapphires - Blue sapphires only. Fancy Sapphires - Sapphires of all other colours.
The word sapphire, implies blue sapphires only. Sapphires of all other colours are assigned a colour prefix eg. pink sapphires, yellow sapphires, purple sapphires - collectively termed the 'Fancy Sapphires'.
Blue Sapphire This enduring and most popular colour hue of the sapphire family comes in a wide range of blues. With the exception of the rare and collectable padparadscha sapphires, blue sapphires are thought of as the most desirable and expensive of the entire sapphire family.
Graduating in colour from light pastel blues all the way through to the depths of midnight blue, the most beautiful blue sapphire colours and the highest values sit in the middle of the blue-colour range. While the pale blues and darker midnight blues offer the purchaser the best value, the rare and captivating cornflower blues offer the consumer unbeatable colour with a captivating beauty - but at a premium.
Padparadscha Sapphire Sapphires that combine the three colours of pink, purple and orange in one gem can resemble the famed and beautiful lotus flower known to the Ceylonese as 'padparadscha'. Padparadscha sapphires are so rare and beautiful that they are highly prized and valued by collectors and connoisseurs. Widely regarded as the most valuable of sapphires, prices can reach many thousands of dollars per carat.
Pink Sapphire After the seductive tones of padparadscha and blue sapphire, the next most highly valued member of the family is pink sapphire. Ambiguously sharing a colour border with ruby, many pink sapphires are close in colour to this pink-red/ruby colour boundary and are termed as 'hot pink', with prices being
quite high.
For those pink sapphires that remain firmly within the colour realms of pink, consumers are offered a colour range from good value pastel pink shades to the more expensive but vivacious colours that approach the hot pinks. Perennially the fancy sapphire favourite, pink sapphires are often used in tandem with blue sapphires to accent diamonds by lending bright, colourful but harmonious contrasts within a single piece of jewellery.
Yellow Sapphire Ranging from butter-like colours to canary yellows, yellow sapphires provide both beauty and value within the same gem. Often under-appreciated, yellow sapphires are frequently found in large crystal sizes and can be obtained for surprisingly low prices, arguably making them the best value of the entire
sapphire family.
Purple Sapphire At their best, purple sapphires display rich purple pink colours reminiscent of orchids. Prized by collectors, purple sapphires offer the consumer beauty at an excellent value when compared to blue, pink and padparadscha sapphires.
Green Sapphire Although displaying a range of green hues, from colours reminiscent of olives through to wine bottle-like greens, green sapphires are the least demanded of the sapphire family. As if to capitalise upon this under-appreciation, green sapphires are the bargain of the sapphire family.
Star Sapphire Star sapphires have long been coveted for their beautiful and mysterious optical effects. Glance at a star sapphire and you will see six or even twelve rayed stars gliding silently across the gemstone's surface. With their very bright and lustrous star formations, star sapphires have traditionally been the most popular of all star gemstones.
Carat weight greatly affects prices Large sapphires of high quality are rare and highly prized. Although not as valuable as large rubies, any high quality piece above 15cts is considered extremely rare. As the carat weight of a sapphire increases, so does its price per carat. Large sapphires are many times rarer than smaller sapphires, meaning carat prices increase disproportionately - a 5ct sapphire is worth many times more than five 1ct sapphires of a comparable quality.
Prices for sapphire increase in stair-like steps when in excess of certain significant carat weights. For example, a 2.02ct sapphire commands a higher per carat price than a 1.98ct sapphire, despite a negligible difference in actual size. Sapphire pricing, like that of nearly all other gems, suffers from a 'non-linear scale of increments'.
Freedom from inclusions Ideally, a sapphire should allow the free transmission of light throughout its body without hindrance. Quite literally, the ideal is 'crystal clear'. However, in reality the clarity found in sapphires tends to be less than that found in many other gemstones such as diamonds. Classed by the GIA as a Type II Coloured Gem, this habitual clarity moniker for sapphire means that in the marketplace these gemstones are usually included.
Shape and cut Faceted sapphires (those with flat polished faces) are found in a variety of shapes and styles. While ovals and cushion cuts are most commonly seen, other shapes such as emerald cuts and hearts are not uncommon. Slight premiums are levied on round cut sapphires due to the higher carat weight loss of expensive rough crystal during cutting. Conversely, discounts are often applied to the value of pear and marquise cuts.
A perfectly cut sapphire should exhibit good symmetry and polish conditions: facets should be aligned straight in relation to the gem's girdle and also to each other, and polish condition should be good, with no visible surface pits or polishing lines.
It could be argued that cabochons are the most common form of cut seen in sapphire. Often used to develop and display asterism in star sapphires, cabochon cuts are most regularly applied to sapphires whose clarity is not ideal for faceting. Well-cut, proportioned cabochons with good symmetry, which are semi-transparent with smooth uncracked domes, are the ideal.
Classical and modern sources The classical sources of quality sapphires throughout history have been the Mogok Stone Tract in Upper Burma and the gem fields of Sri Lanka. So synonymous are these locales with fine sapphires, that some people are prepared to pay a premium for Burmese and Ceylon sapphires, over sapphires from all other sources. Frequently noted for their cornflower blues, sapphires of a Burmese provenance are thought of as slightly more desirable than those from Ceylon.
History and pedigree aside, sapphires every bit as beautiful have been found widely, including Australia, Cambodia, Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania, Thailand and Vietnam.
The use of heat Most sapphires seen on the market today have been subjected to high temperatures in an age-old practice that is said to have originated in Sri Lanka some 2,000 years ago.
Sapphires are heated at high temperatures to improve their clarity and intensify their colours. Without this practice, we would see fewer sapphires on the market today, at far higher carat prices, due to restricted and narrowed supplies. Heating sapphires makes otherwise expensive gems more accessible and affordable.
The proportion of unheated sapphires on the market is small and is widely thought to be less than 1%. Although no more beautiful, their rarity makes them highly collectable and prices are set at a premium, sometimes fetching triple the price paid for an equivalent heated sapphire. When purchasing high quality sapphires, please be aware that unheated material is rare - as a result, always purchase from a reliable supplier who guarantees their gemstones, or have the seller's claim verified by a qualified expert. S
