Corundum var. Sapphire

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Sapphire is variety of Corundum - aluminium oxide - whose hardness is just one below Diamond on the Moh's scale. Most Corundum is used to make abrasive powder, known as Emery, but when it is colourful and gemmy it becomes much more valuable. Sapphire is normally thought of as the blue and Ruby the red variety of Corundum, but weirdly, the pink variety is also given the name Sapphire. The overwhelming majority of the world's best gem Sapphire comes from Sri Lanka and in particular the area around Ratnapura in Sabaragamuwa Province. This is also true of Sapphire crystals, where lozenge-shaped, tapering bipyramidal hexagonal crystals are found loose in the gem-bearing gravels. Usually, the bigger colourful gem-quality crystals are cut into gemstones, meaning that excellent examples of colourful, large crystals are rare. This superb crystal not only has a wonderful all-round shape to it, but has a lovely pale pink colour and reaches 2.4 cm in length. It has some really great translucent and transparent sections and was probably only saved from the gem cutters because of the few areas of internal inclusions. A really lovely natural pink Sapphire crystal. It comes with its own acryllic base/stand for display.