Sapphires and Rubies Are the SAME Gemstone!

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hi, I'm Chris Ralph, the professional prospector, and today we're going to talk about rubies and sapphires. Hey, I'm here at a sapphire mine in Montana.

[00:00:12]You see some of the equipment behind me.

[00:00:14]I've been here for a few days. We've been mining some nice sapphires. I got a friend of mine that owns this property.

[00:00:21]And anyway, uh sapphires are and rubies are a really interesting thing. They're both actually the same mineral. It's a mineral called corandum. And the only difference between a ruby and a sapphire is just the minor elements that color them because pure corandum is colorless. Has no color at all. But if you add a little bit of chromium, then you get a red ruby. If you add a little bit of iron, you might get a yellow sapphire. If you add some titanium and some iron, then you'll get the familiar blue that most sapphires, most people think of when they think of sapphires.

[00:01:06]Well, have you ever wondered what a raw, uncut natural sapphire or ruby looks like? Well, today we're going to take a look at that and I'm going to show you a bunch of examples of raw natural sapphires and rubies just as they come from the ground in a place like this mine here at Mount in Montana. Now, we're going to take a close look at, like I say, both rubies and sapphires and how they're mined and the kind of places that they come from and what they look like. So, you'll know what a raw sapphire or ruby looks like if you should ever come across one in the field. Here's a different view of the pit. Again, you can see the the gravels, the heavier gravels that are down at the bottom. And actually just below the gravel, so I don't know if you can see it from this camera view. I can sort of see it from standing here. Uh down where the water is that there's actually some a bedrock area. So basically the gold and sapphire bearing gravel sits on bedrock or near bedrock. And then you see above the overburden that uh doesn't really carry much of any value as far as gold or sapphires. It's all in this lower lower coarser gravel is where the values are. And this is the pit that they've been mining from to mine the sapphires and gold. Now, most people when they think of rubies and sapphires, they think of nice red stones like this for ruby and of course nice, beautiful blue stones like this for sapphire. These are really attractive stones. And this is the standard type of stuff that you might see. Here's another beautiful blue sapphire.

[00:03:00]But sapphires and rubies are actually the same stone. It's the same mineral.

[00:03:07]It's um an aluminum oxide is really what it is. It's a combination of aluminum and oxygen that come together to form this gemstone. And the way that gemologists and uh minologists and other scientists have always looked at this is that ruby is the red version of this mineral called corandum.

[00:03:31]And all other colors including blue are sapphire. So even though most people think of sapphires as blue, well sapphires also come in yellow.

[00:03:46]And they can come in orangey colors as well. All of these are considered sapphires.

[00:03:54]And in fact, sapphires, like I say, are every color of the rainbow except red, cuz red, of course, is ruby.

[00:04:05]And here's an example of just an a rainbow array of different colored sapphires.

[00:04:11]Now, because corandum is one mineral, both ruby and sapphire have the same crystal pattern.

[00:04:20]And that's shown here. You can see a kind of a black really low quality sapphire on the right, a ruby, and then a blue sapphire.

[00:04:33]This just shows that it has the same sort of crystal pattern that we saw both of them for corandum because they're both corandum whether they be blue or any other color or red. It's all corandum but red is called a ruby and all other colors called sapphire. So here is a kind of a gray blue colored stone. You'll note if you count carefully around that it has six sides and then this particular piece has a flat on the top and bottom. That's one of the standard forms for corandum crystals. Here is a ruby with that same six-sided with two flat terminations at at each end of the crystal. And it's very common for corundum whether it be ruby or sapphire to grow in this form.

[00:05:24]But rough crystals also form a thing where they're six-sided, but instead of making a flat termination on either end of the crystal, they come to a point.

[00:05:36]Here's some pointed sapphire crystals.

[00:05:38]These are from Salon or or Sri Lanka as it's known now.

[00:05:44]And of course, here's some more blue sapphire crystals which show this kind of tapering pointed type of termination.

[00:05:53]Now, here's a ruby crystal with a cut gem. And you can see the beautiful red color and the six-sided. And this one is a little bit of a termination, uh, a tapering termination, although it doesn't come to a point like some of the others. Now, in order to be cutable as a gemstone, whether it be a ruby or a sapphire, it has to be clear enough to cut a gem out of. And you can see this sapphire crystal is very clear and would of course make an excellent gemstone if it were cut into a gem, a faceted gem shape.

[00:06:33]Now, here's some ruby crystals. Now, these are not gem quality. They're excellent specimens, but they show how the ruby crystal, at least in this environment, grew in a white limestone.

[00:06:46]So, it makes a striking specimen where you have the beautiful red of the ruby against the white of the limestone.

[00:06:53]Here's another specimen of that same type with the beautiful red ruby against the white of the limestone.

[00:07:02]And yet another beautiful red ruby against the white of the limestone. Um, this one has a little bit more defined crystal shape where you can actually see faces as opposed to this one which is kind of just a glob and the the crystal faces aren't very obvious.

[00:07:22]This would have a higher specimen value.

[00:07:24]And it's not just rubies, of course, that come in their native matrix. Here is a beautiful deep blue sapphire. This is actually from Montana from the Yogo Gulch area. And it's a beautiful blue Yogo sapphire in the original lampire dyke that these gems occur in.

[00:07:47]Now, not all crystals have a great crystal shape. In fact, as I kind of showed with some of the examples we've already gone through, a lot of sapphires are just kind of rounded pebbles. Some of these, if you stare closely enough at the crystal and you roll it around in your hand, you can see the sixsided shape that that the standard sapphire and ruby crystal will take. But, uh, in a lot of these, it's really hard to see just because it's kind of a little rounded pebble, even though these make perfectly good gemstones if they're clear enough.

[00:08:27]Now, rubies and sapphires are mined usually by smaller scale methods. This is an operation in Montana where they're mining gravel like I showed you in the beginning of the video and trucking it to a plant to be processed, but it's a fairly smallcale operation. It's not a big operation where there are dozens of employees. This is just one or two guys um running an operation on a very small scale. Here is a very similar scale as uh being executed in Madagascar and maybe no maybe this is Mosmbique.

[00:09:10]I'm sorry. I think this is Mosmbique.

[00:09:12]And you can see the same kind of scale of trucks and excavators mining. Of course, in in this example, they're mining rubies instead of sapphires from the last example in Montana, but still about the same small scale of operation.

[00:09:28]Now, that actually is pretty decent sized in the world of rubies and sapphires. Uh there's a whole lot of places in the world where they're mined just by individual guys in third world countries digging small pits and holes and digging out the surface and mining the rubies and sapphires. Again, this is uh an operation in Mosmbique uh where they mine rubies that look like this. And you can see the beautiful color. Here's another example of rubies from that country. only these are much higher grade. If you look at these closely, you can see that the crystals are quite transparent and virtually all of these would cut an excellent gemstone and they're big enough to cut a nice nice gemstone.

[00:10:20]But as I'm trying to say, a lot of these places the stones are mined um in in very haphazard ways by smallcale mining.

[00:10:30]And you can see these are just people with baskets and ladders and they dig and haul the gravel away to be processed. Here is an operation, a similar smallcale operation in Thailand where they're mining sapphires.

[00:10:47]Another similar smallcale operation with individual miners in Madagascar.

[00:10:55]This I think is a smallcale operation where they're processing the material in uh Sri Lanka and another very smallcale operation. You can see individual people digging in a pit and handing uh baskets one to another. If you look closely at the baskets, uh, the one that has full of gravel is actually flying through the air. That the guy down on the lower level has tossed the basket up to the guy with the red hat and he's dropping another basket down to the guy at the lower level that they can fill the basket up. Now um some places in Sri Lanka they mine in open pits like this but they also mine in very dangerous underground operations where they dig shafts down to the gemstone bearing layers in the gravel and uh will risk their lives to go down in these shafts and dig the gravel out because there's so much water here. You see the green um pipe that comes up out of the hole?

[00:11:57]that's to pump the water that naturally collects down there so that the miners can actually work instead of having to swim to work. Um, so this is this is a pretty dangerous environment, but that's what it takes to bring you the sapphires and gemstones that you're used to.

[00:12:16]Now, in Sri Lanka, they will process it.

[00:12:18]I showed you a little bit earlier a uh an operation where they're using a slle box and sprayed water and washing the gravel through a slle and capturing the gemstones that way. But they also do it in the more traditional way like this with basically shaker screens in a stream. It's very primitive, but uh most of the gemstones of this type, the rubies and sapphires are mined in what would totally be called a third world country with people who don't have a lot of resources and assets to be mining gemstones and processing them. When they find something, it's very valuable to them and very precious and it's how they make their money and how they survive. So, it's very important to them. So this is the traditional way. Now this is an example I mentioned uh mining in Montana. Montana actually produces quite a few different uh quite a large amount of sapphires in different colors. And this is a more modern jig and uh and centrifugal bowlbased plant that operates in the state of Montana and would have a much higher recovery than the hand sorting and sifting methods that are used in third world countries.

[00:13:42]But either way, they produce handfuls of gems. This is a handful of stones from Sri Lanka. this is what what the product of all that operation is and you know it's highly valued and it's very important to the country as far as an export and in fact sapphires are valued around the world they're considered very precious and and whether you're in Montana or Sri Lanka or Africa or some other place um there's always this opportunity and the sapphires find a ready market. And of course, if you find a large transparent piece like this, um, a stone like this could make an individual minor rich for years in some of these third world countries.

[00:14:32]Now, here's a handful of sapphires from Montana again, but you'll notice if you look closely at them that a lot of them are pale colored. And even the ones that aren't quite so pale or just kind of a light blue, not the attractive beautiful deep saturated blue color that you're used to in sapphires that you might see in the jewelry store.

[00:14:57]In fact, here's another set of Rock Creek sapphires that uh have been sorted out for their color. And you can see these are all kind of a pale blue violet kind of color. And what happens is is these stones get heat treated. They're actually heated to a very bright red heat in an oxidizing environment in which the uh the blues that are present or even potentially present are developed to their best level.

[00:15:31]And here's an example of this stones after they're heat treated will turn into these stones. And you can see here we have something much closer to the beautiful blue color that you're used to in the sapphires that you might see in a jewelry store. Now, this heat treatment process to bring about the better blue color is a permanent type of of thing.

[00:15:56]It can only be changed by heating the stone back up to a bright red heat. And uh at normal print temperatures that that uh any gemstone that's in use by people might be exposed to the color is permanent and will not change or vary.

[00:16:14]But it's a very intense process to change these stones. These are actually um a set of stones in all in the same tray. These are the same stones in each of the picture. The first set on the left, the leftmost set of stones is the stones as they were mined and recovered out of the ground. The middle set is the same stones, but they have gone through the first step in the process of being enhanced to a beautiful blue color. And then you see on the far right is the final result, the full blue and the blue colors that you're very used to seeing in a jewelry store. And this is what they do with a lot of sapphires from Montana. And so these sapphires become very valuable once they've been heat treated.

[00:17:08]Now, another characteristic of sapphires, and this is a Montana sapphire, and it has been heat treated, but this is, believe it or not, the same stone. It's two pictures of the same stone. And you would say, well, that can't be. They're totally different colors. Well, one of the characteristics of sapphire is a character, and not all sapphires show this. only some do but uh some sapphires show this characteristic of being different colored when viewed at different angles through the crystal.

[00:17:42]So if you look in one direction through the crystal and you get one color and you reorient the crystal and look through another direction, you might get a completely different color as in the case of this stone. This is actually a very nice Montana stone. It's over 30 carats. Uh, and I'm sure was cut into a very beautiful gemstone. But, um, you can see this, uh, it's called pleism where they have, uh, different colors.

[00:18:10]Um, it really can make a huge difference in the color of the stone. And it makes a big difference for the gem cutter because what face you show up for for the you know how it would be cut and displayed in a gemstone will make a difference as to the color that the stone is. So if you orient the stone one way you may get a deep blue. If you oriented the stone and cut it a different way you may get more of a teal green. Here's some more of the beautiful Montana sapphires after they've been heat treated. And you can see they're heat treated to a really beautiful color. Now, there are several places in Montana that produce sapphires. One of the best known is a place called Rock Creek, and it's an area. There's actually a number of smaller mines in the Rock Creek area. It's near the town of Philipsburg in Montana. And you can see the array of colors that this produces. And actually most of the uh Montana sapphire mining districts do produce stones that are in the same kind of light color range, light blue, light green. Um this the just in the same broad color range.

[00:19:26]This is a set of beautiful sapphires collected from Elorado Bar along the Missouri River east of Helena.

[00:19:35]And uh these stones are are very attractive, but again in the same range of colors, most of them being on the light side.

[00:19:43]Uh here's a closeup of some other stones also from Elorado Bar at on along the Missouri River, the upper Missouri River uh to the east of Helena.

[00:19:56]And you can see these stones are just the same uh array of of beautiful colors, but uh again, most of them on the pale side. Now you notice some bright red stones on the upper part of this picture and toward the the right hand side. Uh those are not actually rubies. Those are garnets. In this these mines at Elorado uh Elorado Bar and along the Missouri River, they produce not only sapphires, but they produce a few garnets as well.

[00:20:26]Here's uh another yet another area in Montana called Dry Cottonwood Creek that also produces stones of a similar nature.

[00:20:37]Now, there is one uh district in Montana that produces a totally different color range and this is the Yogo Gulch Sapphire. This is a different mining district, a little bit further away from some of the others. And you can see these are a beautiful blue color that have no need of heat treatment whatsoever. They're just very attractive as they come out of the ground. The only problem with the Yogo Gulch sapphires is that they tend to be small. They uh a stone of more than a carrot is not terribly common. And uh even a few carats is very rare. So um a stone that would cut cut a final a gem finally of of a couple of carrots is is quite unusual from yoga gulch. But you can see the color of these stones is is very saturated and really beautiful. Here's another really beautiful picture of these gemstones. And you can see that the color of them is just perfect. It basically is just what you want in terms of a blue sapphire. Not too dark for the most of part and not too light for the most part. Most of them are really just nice blue color. There's one kind of in the front there that gives an example that some of them have a little bit of a purple tinge to them, but uh for the most part they're just right. The sapphires occur in an ignous dyke, a lampier. And here's a picture of the host rock and one of the Yogo sapphires.

[00:22:14]And this rock is hard. Now, there has been mining in recent decades of the dyke that has these. And when the mining was on, there's a good supply, but it's hard to mine this rock. And the easy stuff was gotten, you know, 100red years ago and more. And so that it's just not very profitable to do this. And there's been a couple of attempts, but at the moment, as I record this, the mine is shut down and it's not about to open in the immediate future. Like I say, the cost is high, the stones are small, they're the right color, and they're beautiful, but it's hard to make a go of it with labor in the United States. Now we showed that many of these third world countries um you know the the sapphire mining and ruby mining in those countries is an important uh part of the economy and many of these countries have made rules to try and limit the amount of rough gemstones that they export. And um what they do is actually have a cutting industry where the gemstones are cut uh by local cutters. And sometimes the work that they do is really quite good. Other times the local cutters their work is really not that good and the stones need to be recut by better operators uh once they're exported.

[00:23:42]So, I hope you've enjoyed this presentation about uh the many different colors of sapphire and and ruby and how the gem is mined. And um I hope that it uh was educational and that you'll recognize now what these stones look like in the rough when you might see them in the field.

[00:24:04]Now, I'm glad you enjoyed that presentation on natural raw ruby and sapphire crystals and how the gemstones are formed and what they look like and and how they're mined and that sort of thing. I'm glad you that you got a chance to see that. Now, if you want to become a better prospector overall so that you can find your own gold and gemstones and the like, well, I wrote a book about it.

[00:24:32]It's called Fist Full of Gold. And the book is written to help you find Fistful of Gold. So, come along with me. I'm going to tell you a little bit more about my book right now.

[00:24:44]This is my book, Fistful of Gold. And like I say, it's an encyclopedia of prospecting. And you know, if you want to go out and find your own nuggets, you want to go find your own gold, you want to be successful, well, it's about what you know. The guys who are finding gold, they have a knowledge. It's a skill. You know, I sometimes compare it to like being an electrician. Just buying a voltmeter at Home Depot doesn't make you a journeyman electrician. And having a loose box or a metal detector or gold pan doesn't make you a successful prospector. It's about what you know, right? And that's why I wrote this book.

[00:25:24]Like I say, it's an encyclopedia. It has stuff that really is um for beginners.

[00:25:30]It has stuff that's for mid-level guys that have learned the basics and want to learn more. And it has even some more advanced things for guys that have some experience but want to learn even more.

[00:25:42]And I've actually run into people in the field where they tell me something I say, "Well, that's a pretty advanced concept. Where'd you learn that?" And then they said, "I read your book." So, you know, it has a real high rating on Amazon and it's available either from Amazon or from High Plains. Now, High Plains Prospectors, uh, they're an outfit that's a mail order prospecting equipment dealer. They have everything you can imagine from, you know, a simple gold pan to basic metal detectors all the way to high-end metal detectors and other stuff. Uh, if you need it for the prospecting games, High Planes has it.

[00:26:19]And uh they you can get a discount code with them. You know, if you order something from them, use the discount code Chris Ralph. It's C H R I A S R L PH in all caps. No space in between Chris and Ralph. And you can get a discount off of what you're buying from them. And then they have my book. You can get my book from them. Uh and so they're really great guys and I've dealt with them for a while and I'm happy to recommend them cuz like I say, they're good dudes. So, if you want to learn more about prospecting, consider my book, Fisful of Gold. And be sure to take a look at my uh YouTube episodes.

[00:26:56]I've got lots of videos and lots of information on YouTube. And you know, I oftenimes get people say, "Hey, Chris, why don't you make a video on XYZ?"

[00:27:06]Right? And it's like 90% of the time it's like, "I already have a video on XYZ. Take a look." And so if you're interested, look at my back catalog of videos cuz there's a lot of good information there.