Ruby vs Spinel - Your expert opinions please

[Miki Moto]

It is a spessartite garnet from PrimagemsUSA. The green stone is a Merelani Mint, cut by Gene Flanigan. It looks washed out in this photo, it is more vibrant in person.

That's a really pretty stone! I like orange stones and have a red/orange fire opal. Your spessartite is very orangey which I like. Yours is prettier than the ones I see on PrimagemsUSA which look more orange/brown to me. You got a great stone!

 

[Arkteia]

Like LisaRN, I have a a Burmese red spinel. (In fact, I have two of them.) This is the more recent and the larger of my two and the only one I had sent to a lab. It is a truly perfect stone. At least for me. It is exactly the red I wanted, after many years of looking.

(The first one I bought, of just over 1 carat, was also perfect. Richard Hughes looked at it himself. But it was too delicate inside; perfect spinels can be delicate to their crystal structure, and I opted to return it to the vendor in an excess of caution that it might one day crack. The replacement stone I got was not as pure a red! It was pinker. But the story of that stone is irrelevant to this stone.)









Deb/AGBF

So beautiful!

 

[Arkteia]

Spinel. Hands down. Not only is it cheaper than ruby, a good spinel glows so...

I once saw a spinel, about 11ct. Burmese, probably. I of course had no money for it, but the incredible beauty of the stone...it was so...oh.

 

[leukolenos]

Like LisaRN, I have a a Burmese red spinel. (In fact, I have two of them.) This is the more recent and the larger of my two and the only one I had sent to a lab. It is a truly perfect stone. At least for me. It is exactly the red I wanted, after many years of looking.

(The first one I bought, of just over 1 carat, was also perfect. Richard Hughes looked at it himself. But it was too delicate inside; perfect spinels can be delicate to their crystal structure, and I opted to return it to the vendor in an excess of caution that it might one day crack. The replacement stone I got was not as pure a red! It was pinker. But the story of that stone is irrelevant to this stone.)









Deb/AGBF

Could this be more perfect? I think not...

 

[Arkteia]

This is my red red Mahenge spinel that I bought from PrimagemsUSA about 5 years ago. It was set for a while, but now it is living in my gembox. I recently asked Jaimeen what it would cost today and he said he'd probably sell it to a repeat customer (like me) for approx $5000 a ct and it's 3ct. and just over 8mm. He said it would be much more full retail. It's as pure a red as I've seen in a Mahenge spinel and not easy to come by in this size. AJS have a couple and they want ~$30,000ea for them. Please pardon the crappy cell photo, but I wanted you to see that Mahenge's do come in red red - they just aren't easy to find. This one also happens to be precision cut. It used to be in the setting that is in my avatar, but the sapphire needed a setting where it sat up above the diamonds so light can shine through it so I swapped out the spinel but haven't found that perfect setting for the spinel yet.

Beautiful stones, colorluvr. The spessartite is something.

 

[Arkteia]

Here is an out-of-focus photo. I took the spinel out for resizing. It positively glows! Sorry - old table in a service back room.