Ruby -King Of The Gemstones? What makes Ruby a Great Gem?- Ruby buyers guide /Tips and Advice (2020)

[Music] hey everybody it's your average jeweler again and we're back talking about king of the gemstones no literally they're they call it king of the gemstones in sanskrit it actually translates to king of the gemstones we're gonna have to talk about it so for those of you that are new here welcome this is where we try and learn about gemstones and jewelry and some of the good questions that people ask but today we are literally talking about a gemstone that most people do know about and that is ruby even though most people know about it there are a lot of really interesting things about ruby that people don't know you hopefully know that ruby is red but outside of that there's a lot of interesting facts and i've spent some time trying to gather some things together some things of course from experience other things just by trying to look around and and see what else there is about ruby and there is a lot now if you haven't subscribed to the channel please subscribe below click the little notification bell so you actually see things and we are still planning on doing a lot of different videos moving forward i have some great ideas for the future so please subscribe so you actually see those when they do come out but today ruby now if you've watched some of my other videos hopefully you've seen and heard that ruby is actually the mineral corundum and what makes that interesting and unique is it is the same mineral as sapphire however ruby is specifically the red designation now how does it get the red well without any trace elements other things outside of its chemical structure which its chemical structure is an aluminum oxide but outside of that other elements can creep in there and they'll affect the color without those elements you have a clear gemstone when you add in things like chromium you end up with a red color now there are other elements that can affect this for instance like iron iron many times will get into things like ruby and you get your darker varieties of ruby when you add in iron but the bottom line is you add in a percent of chromium and you end up with a very pretty ruby now if there's less chromium you actually have what gets into pink sapphire now one of the biggest controversies in the the whole ruby conversation has to do with when is it a pink sapphire and when does it become a ruby because as soon as somebody can call it a ruby it's basically more valuable however when you're talking about color there's a level of subjectivity now sometimes you're looking at a hot pink stone and it's pretty obvious it's pink but there is a point when pink breaks into red and that's one of the most difficult things to decide now if you were in some of the countries where these stones come from they will many times be selling pink sapphires as ruby partly because that's the cultural norm and partly because they believe they can get more money by doing so but at the end of the day you need to see it for yourself see that it's red and make your own determination in the u.s we don't have as much of a problem but occasionally you do see what i would call a pink sapphire being sold as a ruby something to be aware of now one other difference that ruby has from sapphire is that they have different crystal habits and that means that when they grow they naturally grow into different shapes when you look at a sapphire you have what we often call a bipyramidal shape when you look at a ruby you usually have a much more tabular shape now this tabular habit doesn't affect a lot of things but what it does show itself in is the final product you'll notice that rubies have a tendency to be very shallow when they're cut and that is because of how they grow rubies grow in a tabular form so they end up being very shallow when they're finished the practical through of this is that they have what we call windowing meaning meaning you can almost see through them at times it doesn't affect every single ruby the same but it is something to watch out for because it affects how pretty it looks and therefore it affects the value but it's just an interesting thing to note because a lot of people will notice that and maybe not make the connection that it goes all the way back to the crystal structure so gemologists will often call ruby the rock star of the gem world so again king of the gems rockstar the gem world a lot of it has to do with people have loved red for ever and that's a big part however corundum as a mineral is of course very tough and very hard it has a hardness of about a nine i shouldn't say about it's actually the mineral they use to designate nine so it is supposed to be nine but there are variances that they need to account for but nine gives you a very hard gemstone that's very practical it's hard enough for most everyday wear type rings it's not going to be as hard or as tough as diamond however it's a very good stone when you're trying to look for something practical one more quick note it is the birthstone for july and so those of you that are trying to figure out birthstones you can slot in ruby into july another thing i wanted to talk about is just generally speaking to where it falls in the value spectrum as you might guess from some of my previous statements in this video it can carry one of the highest price price tags of any gemstone and per carat it often does have the highest price tag when you compare it to other gemstones so it's incredibly valuable but as i've talked about in my other videos you have to consider its characteristics specific to that stone because not every ruby is the most valuable but it can be and that's an important distinction something else that's really interesting about ruby is that it can be a fluorescent gemstone and while fluorescence is negatively looked at in the clear stone community like diamonds fluorescence in something like a ruby almost makes it look like it's a glowing red it's really fascinating not all rubies fluoresce that way i have heard people of saying that's how you can test rubies it's really not definitive but rubies can fluoresce and it can be beautiful it has to do again with the chromium but it also has to do with not having some of the other impurities and rubies can grow within different host rocks you have some rubies growing in marble which are usually the nicer more valuable ones and then you have your basalt rubies now the basalt rubies will often times inherently have more iron in them and make them a lot darker darker to the point where they're less attractive marble rubies usually have fewer impurities that end up going into the crystal so you end up with more of a just pure chromium and that oftentimes makes for the most beautiful stones now rubies are a significant gemstone there's no denying that going all the way back to being mentioned four times in the bible and being revered by many cultures all the way through into the middle ages having a very high price and being associated with some lore stories but there are some connections with ruby that again are correct but also may be misunderstood one of those has to do with the best rubies in the world coming from myanmar or what a lot of people still refer to as burma you may have heard a reference to burmese rubies or sometimes people even talk about pigeon blood rubies pigeon blood rubies refer to a very specific strong color of ruby like something like imperial jade it gets misused and abused constantly people thinking they have a more valuable ruby than they do and not using that word appropriately because it really should re refer to a very small percentage of the nicest rubies in the whole world but going back to that whole conversation of burmese rubies something that's often misunderstood is that while some of the nicest rubies throughout history have come from that region a lot of very inexpensive rubies have also come from that region because within that country of burma or what we now call myanmar you have different distinct minds and some of them like the mogak mind i'm sure i butchered that pronunciation you have a lot of marble bearing ruby and in the other you have more of that basalt based as we mentioned before so when someone says a burmese ruby just like when someone says ruby it is not inherently valuable or nice so again every gemstone should be looked at on its own merits but some of the nicest gemstones have come from that region other places where rubies have been found it's a long list but i'll name a few of the more popular and common ones you have thailand you have australia you have brazil you have cambodia as well as some other african countries tanzania for instance it's it's not a gemstone that has been relegated to a very small region like some however depending on that region depending on the host rock you will get varying qualities of the stone some of them may be requiring more treatment to make them attractive than others and that maybe brings me to my biggest point when watching out for value i mention it in all my videos treatments can and do dramatically affect the value of a gemstone now they can also affect how attractive it is but one of the biggest problems with treatments lies in their stability and while heat treatment is generally accepted throughout the industry not every treatment is heat treatment is accepted because it can be done naturally in the earth in fact most stones have already been heated in the earth in some way so having some kind of a controlled heat treatment where you end up with a stable stone is fine some of the less acceptable ones have to do with when you've introduced an entirely new element like diffusion treating where they are technically heating it up but they're heating it up to a point where another element is actually soaking into the gemstone this is a problem for a few reasons i'm sure you can imagine but it's not always stable and sometimes it's very close to the surface of the stone like in sapphires it's not very deep penetrating so as soon as the stone is polished down a bit you end up losing a lot of that color but maybe the most detrimental thing with rubies has to do with lead glass filling and a lot of people don't realize how widespread this is it's better than it used to be several years ago uh we're talking probably around 2010 maybe you were seeing a lot of a lot of lead glass rubies what does that mean it means they were taking very low quality ruby or sometimes even just corundum that had a little bit of red to it and they were putting lead glass into it which is a relatively easy treatment for them to do again they're heating it up to the point where the glass flows into the little fissures and cracks and it gives it the appearance of being a cleaner gemstone than it really is in these cases sometimes they're doing it with dyed glass or they're dyeing the stone in some way all of this goes back to they're taking a very inexpensive very common stone it's not nearly as rare and they're trying to make it pretty that's fine except when you get into all the problems with disclosing this and being able to identify it the internet has been plastered with light glass rubies a lot of jewelers are very cautious about who they buy rubies from if they sell them at all and many people will even demand a lab report if they're buying a decent ruby just to make sure that this is not a problem because it can be difficult to identify in some cases ones that are heavily treated we're talking like 70 of the stone is basically glass those are a little bit easier to look at under loop and and determine but some of them were maybe they've they've taken 20 to 30 percent of the stone where it's glass those can be difficult to see and those you will probably want a lab report if you're investing in a nicer stone rep reputable jewelers tend to watch out for who they get these from but i've spent a lot of time talking about it because it is a real issue and a lot of people think they end up with these really valuable rubies and they can't understand why they only had to pay five dollars for their ruby and someone paid 5000 for theirs there's always a reason i just wanted to emphasize that that has been a real problem and it's something that doesn't get talked about or identified nearly enough disclosure especially through a lot of online retailers if they're only selling online through certain websites you probably know what i'm talking about there's a good chance they're not disclosing everything and if it's a very inexpensive ruby that's probably a reason why so at the end of the day what things actually affect the value of a ruby maybe you're thinking about buying one maybe you're just curious maybe you already bought one and you're starting to question some things but you have treatments obviously that we just talked about you have the four c's just like you do in diamond how well it's cut we talked about windowing and even if you want something that has a little more brilliance the general cut of the stone is important obviously the carat weight the size of the stone that's going to make a big difference and then the clarity is also something clarity is not looked at the same as it is in diamonds but generally speaking the question you're asking are what are the eye visible inclusions and how easily can you see them that's really what you want to do maybe you want to look at it under a loop you could even look at it under a microscope but because it's not transparent you're not as concerned as you would be with something like a diamond but you do want to talk about clarity because heavy inclusions can affect the durability and then also heavy inclusions can be distracting and they can take away from the beauty or they can cause other coloring and so you have that and then just like diamonds color is important but in a very different way color is actually important because you want a nice saturation you want a nice color you want a nice hue but you don't want it too dark you don't want it too light and you do see things like zoning where you have a high saturation of color in one part and yet it's very light in another this is a little bit more common in sapphire than it is in ruby but it is something to watch out for if you're trying to find a nice stone again if all you're doing is price shopping find the cheapest stone but if you're concerned about some of these things you have to know what questions to ask and i do want to give you a couple other buying tips so first of all you've heard me say this a lot try and find a jeweler that you can trust jewelers have a lot of their reputation based off of trust and while maybe at times you can get a better deal online you don't always know what you're getting and you don't always know who you're dealing with and they're not as reliant on trust as someone who is standing in front of you yes you can rate things but even that becomes very sketchy at times amazon right now has had difficulty trying to control fake reviews so you can't totally rely on that as being your backdrop for trusting the review system but i would recommend finding a jeweler that you can trust also as i mentioned in this video don't confuse origin with quality that does happen some people don't care at all where it comes from they just want a pretty stone just because it comes from a certain place like burma does not mean that it's a better stone some people may want that provenance but don't confuse those things also make sure to ask about treatments unless otherwise stated you can assume that it's heat treated that's just how it is if it's not heat treated then it actually has a higher premium without heat treatment we just would not have hardly any pretty rubies lastly if you're concerned ask for a lab report try and get a stone that has a lab report particularly from a good reputable lab something like gia you've heard me mention ags is another one these are places that should put an unbiased statement as to whether this has been treated or how it's been treated and really that's one of the biggest things when it comes to determining value outside of that subjective color matter as always i hope you learned something i hope you'll share it with me below and i do again plan on putting out some new videos and i have what i think are some fun questions we're going to be answering in the future so again if you haven't subscribed please subscribe below hit the notification button and keep coming back so we can keep learning [Music] together

Channel: Your Average Jeweler

Views: 182,150

Keywords: Ruby, What is Ruby, Ruby Buyers guide, Ruby buying tips, Ruby facts, July Birthstone, what is the July Birthstone, What is king of the gemstones, what is the most valuable gemstone, most valuable gemstone, what is the most expensive gemstone, Ruby cost, what does Ruby cost, how much does ruby cost, how to buy ruby, identify ruby, how do you know if ruby is real, is ruby valuable, is ruby expensive, where is ruby from, red gemstone, Andrew Brunner, Your Average Jeweler

Id: 1xsfg2miLP8

Length: 18min 57sec (1137 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 28 2020