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The origin of the name 'spinel' is uncertain. Spinel can be found in many colors such as red, pink, blue, green, orange? fine red and blue spinels are considered among the most valuable gemstones. It is a relatively unknown stone to the general public, and this is a pity as this is one of the most beautiful gemstones available. The point is that spinel?s rarity hasn?t motivated any major company to promote it because if the demand were to rise, the supply would not be plentiful enough to keep up with it.
Therefore, spinel remains mostly a stone for the connoisseur, for those who love it for its combination of excellent durability, fine pure red color and high brilliancy. Spinel is the near perfect wedding of ruby and diamond qualities! Spinel is so close to ruby that for years it was mistaken as ruby and its common misnomer was 'Balas
Ruby'. Actually, the 2 most famous rubies: The 'Black Prince Ruby', the 'Timur Ruby',
both from the British Crown Jewels, are actually red spinels! The finest quality red spinel comes from Mogok in Burma (Myanmar) with a deep red color that matches the color of most rubies. Another source of Burmese top quality spinel has been discovered in Nanyazeik (or "Namya" in the Kachin people's language).
These rare but exceptional spinels can reach a hot pink color as saturated and fluorescent as candy. Spinels are also found in Vietnam, Sri Lanka or Russia but without reaching the Burmese color qualities. Spinel (MgAl2O4) belongs to the cubic system. It is found as a metamorphic mineral as marble, and also as a primary mineral in basic rocks, because in such magmas, the absence of alkalis prevents the formation of feldspars and any aluminum oxide present will form corundum or combine with magnesia to form spinel. This explains why spinel and ruby are often found together.
In terms of quality, top stones combine eye-clean clarity with an intense color, without any secondary brown tones. But such stones are damn rare. One reason is that, unlike ruby, there are no known treatments to improve spinel color or clarity, so the stones in the market are usually just polished and cut! You can just dream to get the small quantity of fine gems that the mines produce. Regarding current prices in the market, spinel is very under valued compared to ruby, an equivalent fine quality is around 10% of the price of ruby, but top spinels may be 100 times more rare! Fine spinels are real investment stones. |
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