Australian Opal Cutters and Australian Pearl Divers use pink sapphires in the beautiful bales that suspend beautiful noble opals and rare pearls to adorn the necks of beautiful women!
In the 1970’s Australia produced 75% of the world’s sapphires and these have mostly been marketed through Thailand as “ABA SAPPHIRES” our term for “Anything But Australian sapphires!”
Australians like to promote the underdog!
Australia which produces over thirty seven percent of all the types of all the different gemstones in the world, 100% of the boulder and black opal and up to 70% of the world’s sapphires is the ‘underdog’ of the gem world.
So we like to promote Australian gemstones!
To recover their reputation from the unsavory jewellery marketers who promote “ABA Gems” i.e. “Anything But Australian Gems” as if they were not coming from “The Lucky Country!”
These unsavory types of gem merchants and jewelers pretend our gems come from Thailand, Cambodia and Sri Lanka. Countries that stopped mining many of these gems decades ago!
Of course the properties of rubies and sapphires are indistinguishable: they both rate a 9.0 on the Mohs hardness scale, they both have a refractive index of 1.757 – 1.779, and they both have a specific gravity of 3.99 – 4.0.
The main difference between ruby and sapphire gemstones is color. Rubies are red and all other corundum color varieties are known as sapphires. Corundum sapphires come in a range of colors including blue, orange, pink, green and yellow, while rubies are always only red. Additionally, some white sapphires are so pale in appearance that they can easily be confused with diamonds at a glance.
- The red color of rubies occurs when a corundum mineral is colored by chromium impurities. Sapphire colors are the result of iron, titanium, and chromium impurities in corundum minerals.
The distinction between rubies and sapphire may blur between pink sapphires and light red rubies. There are no specific rules on what shade of red constitutes a ruby and what shade of pink constitutes a sapphire. Some unsavory jewelry markets seize on these blurry distinctions and sell pink corundum gemstones as ‘light rubies’ when they would be regarded as (less expensive) sapphires in most gemstone circles.
But at Australian Opal Cutters and Australian Pearl Divers we do not do that, we sell our “Australian Pinks” as Pink Sapphires and they are a hallmark to our top quality and fair pricing policies..
You will recognize our Australian Pinks in the stylish bales atop the stylish bezel settings holding only the best and finest opals and pearls in our pendant ranges.
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