Heart Shaped Sapphire Pendant
Sapphire jewelery has been popular for centuries. While most people associate the sapphire with the color blue, they do come in a wide range of colors. From yellow to black, you can find sapphires in most any color.
How to Keep Your Sapphire Clean
Sapphires are the second hardest stone on earth, the hardest being diamonds. With the way this crystal is structured it’s very resistant to breaking as well. This makes the sapphire very easy to take care of unlike some other gemstones.
Cleaning a sapphire is fairly easy. You can just use soapy lukewarm water. I would shy away from abrasives or moisturizers. The sapphire itself will handle it without problem, but your ring or necklace might not be that resistant.
Be especially careful when you have an electroplated silver ring, as detergents can have a very poor reaction to them. It could make the ring, again not the stone, worthless.
You don’t have to worry too much if your sapphire is attached to a solid sterling silver or a minimum of 10k gold piece of jewelry though, as these precious metals can generally handle detergents with no problem.
Guide on Buying Sapphires
Most important for the price of a sapphire is its colour, a more intense blue always means a higher value. It is very much similar to emerald jewelry.
Clarity is important as well, you should not be able to see any inclusions (small irregularities or bubbles) in a high quality sapphire. If you can see some flaws like this, and the seller claims it is a high quality stone, you should leave immediately!
Every lower quality sapphires are often heat-treated to improve their color. Oftentimes you will find these on lower priced mens earings. The price between an unheated or heated lower quality stone is almost the same, however when you start dealing with higher quality sapphires, unheated gemstones will fetch a higher price. Sometimes up to two times higher.
There are more treatments for sapphires though these are frowned upon and are not commonly used. These include oiling to fill up cracks and dyeing to deepen its color. To make sure you are not buying such stones you should only deal with reputable gem sellers and jewellers.
For more information on buying gems I advise looking at my guide to buying gems online.
If you’re interested in other gemstones or gemstone jewelry please take a look at this site with everything about gemstones.
at Amazon and other net shops for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars depending on the carat weight, clarity, and cut.
