Though both rubies and garnets are beautiful red stones, you really don’t want to confuse the two. Specifically, you don’t want to pay for a ruby and wear a garnet. At a brief glance, they look very similar. However, rubies are considered one of the most valuable gemstones whereas garnets are, well, not. Rubies are harder, a much more brilliant red, and much more expensive.
Consider these tips when examining your red gemstones:
1. Color
Examine the color closely. If the stone has hints of orange or other earthy tones — other than red — it’s likely a garnet. Rubies are considered best with a vivid redness, but sometimes they have purplish or bluish secondary hues.
2. Light
Another way to determine if your stone is a ruby or a garnet is to examine the spectrum. To do this, hold your stone up to a bright light source and move it around until the stone creates a rainbow. Now, look at the rainbow, or spectrum, and if there are yellow and green bands, then your stone is likely not a ruby. Due to nature of rubies, they absorb greens and yellow in the color spectrum, so they would not appear in this test. Garnets, however, reflect small bands of yellow and green.
3. The Jeweler
Finally, if you are still unsure if your stone is a ruby or garnet, take it to your jeweler to be expertly examined.
Check out our authenticated rubies and garnets at TrueFacet.
Lovely pix,will love to know more.
I’ve been looking for Ruby’s Sapphire anything else that I can find to sell to make a little bit of money but it’s hard to get help to see what I have already I have a really clear little Stone looks like glass I’m thinking that is Crystal the main question is how do I sell I’m up here in Ellijay Georgia looking in the streams I hope I make some sense
I am from Pakistan and here we have really good stuff of stone. I am owning a ruby silver ring and want to sell. All specifications explained on the net suguest that this is a realittle ruby. I would like to sell two of them one is smaller and the one which is in the ring is bigger
I bought me a rock tumbler seems to be working have had some beautiful stones but I don’t know what they are and if I can sell them if you can give me a little bit of input how how to start with my collection would be greatly appreciated