Sri Lankan Sapphire (Mix)

Buying this parcel

Where it came from, what its weight band is for, and what to check before any money changes hands.

The deposit

Sri Lanka produces a wider range of sapphire colours than any other single source: blue, yellow, pink, peach, violet, green and colourless all come out of the same gem gravels, and padparadscha, the pink-orange that commands the highest premium of any fancy sapphire, is traditionally a Ceylon stone. A mixed parcel from one island therefore holds genuine colour variety while still sharing a common origin, a common metamorphic chemistry and a common cutting standard, which a parcel assembled from several countries would not.

This parcel

Three to nine carats spans the whole useful range for a set piece, from a stone that works as one of a pair up to something that can stand alone as a centre. This is the parcel to work through when the colour matters more than the exact weight, or when you are looking for a fancy colour and are willing to see what the production actually holds rather than specifying it in advance. Because the colours vary, so does the price per carat across the parcel, and the two are not correlated with weight in the way they would be in a single-colour lot.

Treatment

Unheated and untreated, and stated for the whole parcel rather than for the stones at the top of it. In mixed-colour goods that is the disclosure most often fudged, because the colours that most reward heating, the pale blues and the pale yellows, are the ones most likely to be quietly swapped into a lot. Diffusion is the separate concern, and orange and pink-orange material is where it turns up most often in Sri Lankan goods, since padparadscha prices make it worth doing.

The report

No report is held for this 3 to 9 cts sapphire parcel yet, and we would rather say that than name a laboratory that has not seen it. We will submit whatever you select to IGI or IIGJ before purchase on request.

Before you pay

• Confirm the treatment statement covers every stone in the parcel, not the sample you were handed.
• Sort by colour before you sort by size. Weight is easy to match later and colour is not.
• For any orange or pink-orange stone, ask for diffusion to be ruled out specifically before you price it as padparadscha.

Read next

Neelam, the blue sapphire covers the material itself and what gets sold in its place. How to buy a coloured stone covers pricing, treatment and reports.

Written by Kamal Kishore Agarwal, founder and gemmologist, Gem-A qualified, buying in Johari Bazaar since 2008.