Hi!
There is this 925 Sterling silver bracelet with Sapphires on Etsy. The seller describes it as a “Natural Sapphire Bracelet”, but I have my doubts. There are so many fakes nowadays. The price is really tempting. They have 50% discount now. So, I hope you can dispel my doubts asap. Thank you!
Oh, and the link: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/757350051/925-silver-bracelet-natural-sapphire
Dear Enigma,
It really depends on what you mean by “natural sapphires”. These are not man-made or synthetic sapphires. So, in that sense, you could say they are natural.
However, they are treated. And by treated, I don’t mean heated sapphires which is an industry-accepted treatment method. Most of the sapphires on the market are heated.
These sapphires here, instead, are what is called cobalt-lead glass-filled sapphires. They are also called lead and cobalt glass filled sapphires, cobalt-doped glass-filled sapphires, or cobalt-doped composite sapphires. In essence, these are composite sapphires.
A very low-quality starting material is used – opaque, industrial-grade stones. It is then mixed with powders that contain lead and cobalt. This mixture is heated fusing the powders into a cobalt-lead glass that penetrates the fractures and cavities in the stone. Lead-cobalt glass can account for most of the stone’s weight.
Basically, the technology is pretty much the same as that used for the lead glass-filled rubies. The main difference is that for the cobalt-doped composite sapphires, as the name suggests, cobalt is used.
These composite sapphires have the same durability problems as lead glass-filled rubies do. And yes, they are almost worthless (just like lead glass-filled rubies).
£137.79 (ca. $179) is definitely not a good price for this bracelet. You can easily buy alike bracelets at a price around $40 – $60 on eBay (note: at auction, not “buy it now” format). So, this price here is 3 to 4 times higher than what would be reasonable for a composite sapphire bracelet.
You can read more about composite rubies (in order to better understand issues related to composite sapphires) here: