Is It a Ruby or a Pink Sapphire?
They’re two different things, right? Or are they? Rubies and sapphires are actually color variations of the same mineral, corundum. Corundum occurrs in a remarkably wide color spectrum including blues, pinks, reds, yellows, greens, blacks, whites, and every shade in between. Traditionally, the red variety has been called ruby while all of the others were termed sapphires.
The waters get muddied when one looks at ruby colors, because rubies are commonly seen as a stone with a wide range of hues from true red to wine to pink. The most hard-line interpretation tells us to call only true red corundum ruby, and all of the others pink sapphires. This is a little problematic however because most people outside of the jewelry field think of many shades of dark pink corundum as ruby, and would never think to ask for a “dark pink sapphire.”
Jewelry stores have been marketing light, sparkly pinks as pink sapphire, dark pink to red shades as ruby, and when you see a true red ruby for less than a small fortune, it is likely to be corundum grown in a lab, as the true red is a rare and expensive shade of corundum.
At the bottom of all of this confusion lies one reassuring fact: it’s all basically the same stone. Your main job is to pick the shade that makes you happy, and at the end of the day it really doesn’t matter if your jeweler called it a ruby or a pink sapphire.
Oh, and the ring in my post? I listed it for sale as a ruby…..but pink sapphire would be just as accurate, if not more so.
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