Star Green Sapphires
When we think of sapphires our minds at once visualize the beautiful blue star sapphire or the breathtakingly beautiful Kashmir or cornflower blue sapphires that are known to one and all. Even if we cannot afford the likes of such valuable gems, we at least have seen them at museums, exhibitions and jewelry stores of the highest reputation. What most of us are not aware of is that blue is not the only color that sapphires are found in and that they are also available in a very exciting array of fancy shades such as purple, yellow or even green which does surprise many who never imagined that there ever was a stone called a star green sapphire.
These fancy colored sapphires as they are referred to can be found in any color of the rainbow and usually come from countries such as Australia, Madagascar and Thailand whereas the finest of green sapphires are found in Sri Lanka and is said to be extremely rare and in a color that is very uncommon. Other types of green sapphires do not have the same clarity as those found in Sri Lanka while most of them have overtones of blue-green while the yellow sapphires tend to have hues of chartreuse and olive green in them.
Being of a very rare kind, the better quality green sapphires are usually small in size and anything larger than 10 carats would be a rare find indeed. It is this very scarcity that makes this valuable green stone rather expensive and could demand a price of $1,000 a carat going up to $3,000 per carat, depending on the clarity, color, and carat weight and cut of the stone.
There’s another type of green sapphire which is nothing like the ones found in Sri Lanka and those are the Namibian green sapphires that are said to have been once worn by Egyptian royalty and considered to be an excellent investment in today’s gem market. The difference between the stones found in Sri Lanka and Namibia is that while the Sri Lankan gem is completely green in color, its Namibian counterpart looks more like a diamond with hints of green in it and is supposed to be one of the most highly sought after gemstones in the modern world. If you ask “why” the answer is that the Namibian green sapphire is not only rare due to there being no huge deposits of them anywhere, but also due to it having an almost unbelievable 500% return on its investment.
Since of recent however, it has become more and more difficult for the untrained eye to differentiate between the natural genuine stone and the heat treated ones that are flooding the market and being sold as the genuine thing to dupe the gullible customer. Most green stones fall into this category because although they are lovely to look at, green sapphires of value are hard to find which makes it easy for a fraudster to trick someone for easy gains. Therefore, if you ever feel the need to buy green sapphires, it should always be from a reputed jeweler known for his honesty and integrity so that you can be sure what you buy is the genuine kind and not a heat treated piece of fake stone.