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Beyond the World of Sapphires
We are about to take into the wonderful world of other fun and exciting colored gemstones that we offer. If you are a Choice Gems Co follower, you already know that sapphires are our ultimate favorite, and we source our sapphires directly from the mines. Nevertheless, we have an extended reach to other colored gems that we would love to show you as well. This blog is all about the other rare treasures of the earth that we offer!
Tourmalines are a family of colored gemstones popular for having the most variety of colors in the world. It is usually strongly pleochroic – meaning you can observe two distinct colors in different axes of the gem. Here are some tourmalines we offer.
Blue tourmaline: We are always on the hunt for “electric” blue or blue-green colors that may or may not contain copper. This is also known as Paraiba tourmaline (if sourced from Brazil) or Paraiba-type tourmaline (if sourced outside Brazil). The copper-bearing blue tourmaline is one of the rarest gemstones in the world. They were first discovered in Brazil, and later found in Mozambique and Nigeria.
Bicolor tourmaline: This tourmaline has two distinct colors on one axis. Usually they are cut in emerald shape to showcase the two colors. The bicolor red and green or pink and green are the most popular and are referred to as watermelon tourmaline.
Rubellite: This is a reddish-purple or reddish-pink tourmaline. We get these from the famous Oyo mines in Nigeria. The rarest form of rubellite tourmaline is a pure red tourmaline.
Other colors: We have other colors such as pink, brown, yellow, orange, colorless, etc.
Aquamarine belongs to a family of gemstones known as beryl. They are mostly blue or blue-green in color. Our favorite and rarest colored aquamarine is Santa Maria aquamarine. This is also referred to as double-blue aquamarine because of the intensity of the blue color. Santa Maria aquamarine is found mostly in brazil. Outside Brazil it is found in Africa, and is referred to as Santa Maria Africana. Aquamarine made the news in 2018 when Prince Harry gifted Princess Diana’s aquamarine ring to Meghan Markle on Royal wedding day. We have the same design of this sapphire on our website!
A fine ruby is one of the rarest gemstones. It belongs to the corundum family of gemstones. Think about ruby as a red or reddish-pink or reddish-purple sapphire. Ruby and sapphires have the same properties because they are both corundum, however, the difference is in the trace elements. Ruby is largely colored by chromium. They are found mainly in Burma, Mozambique, Sri Lanka and Kenya. Ruby has long been known for royalty. We continue to sourced an array of impressive rubies.
Zircon is a natural gemstone that belongs to the gem family known as nesosilicate. It has an impressive sparkle due to its high refractive index, and sometimes it could be confused with a diamond. We have also found that many people confuse cubic zirconia with zircons. These are entirely two different stones. A cubic zirconia is synthetic while a zircon, as we stated earlier is natural. We source our zircons from Bauchi, Nigeria.
Garnets are a complex set of gemstones with several varieties and colors. We sell tsavorites (chrome green), spessartite (“fanta” colored and reddish-orange), almandine, pyropes, rhodolite amongst others. Our garnets are mostly sourced from Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania.
