Here are the finest unheated rubies under one carat, small but outstanding, all with full lab reports like the 'big fellows'.
Once upon a time, colored gems under one carat, even rubies, were considered small fry, mass market, used mostly in calibrated form... but how things have changed!
As small vivid colored diamonds have long cost fortunes (at least the untreated natural ones), so have smaller rubies, alexandrite, blue sapphires, pads and many others gained enough value that the colored gemstone trade has started to abbreviate ‘zero point XY carat’ to ‘XY points’.
A ‘33 points ruby’ is a ‘0.33 carat ruby’ is a ‘third of a carat’. But is it big enough? That, as usual, depends, mostly on the face dimensions. In richly colored varieties, such as ruby or emerald, ‘flat’ gems may easily pass without deplorable windows, but in bright colored types, such as baby pink sapphires or imperial topaz, we need a closed center to show-off all blink without fish-eye-effect. On the other hand, a top brilliancy small face weighs in with high visibility and may overcome low carat weight with sheer fire.
In sub-one-carat gems, the ‘Specific Gravity’ (SG) or density of a gem plays a more important role in so far as we want to squeeze as much visibility out of the limited points we have. Beryls, feldspars (kunzite, hiddenite), opals and sunstones do well here. Unfortunately, in a typical universe twist, these varieties are rarely measured in points since they are naturally found in bigger sizes. So, we end up looking for heavy weights that make a splash even under 100 points. Fine rubies are definitely amongst them. Owning an untreated clean Mogok ruby is an honor in any size.
A final word about testing: Small gems are mostly sold without lab report, the argument being that 33 points do not ‘pay for’ a full lab report. That is only true if you don’t want to pay for it. Many labs have scaled pricelist, with small gems costing less that big ones. Since one must assume the work of testing remains independent of the gem’s size such pricing does not make much sense, but is reality. Obviously, we believe that every unheated ruby deserves to be ID-ed as such. This philosophy meets its lower limit only when size becomes a physical border to testing but thus far we have never encounter a gem that was too small to be tested.
