Love the absolutely beautiful pieces in the thread and the gorgeous colours!
Sharing some photos of my engagement ring - I chose a pad sapphire after learning about them on this forum! It brings me joy when I look at it everyday with the shifts in colours in different lighting
Here's a small alluvial pebble (about 7 mm at it's longest dimension) that came in a 24.85 ct lot of 'spinels' from Madagascar:
For some reason the camera has made it appear a lot more pink than in person. It is actually a lovely colour halfway between orange and pink.
These stones were sold as spinels but this stone and other coloured ones all show clear pleochroism when rotated in front of the LCD screen, which rules spinel out. There's also a lovely blue stone that shows colour zoning from deep blue to yellowish, as well as signs of a silky sheen under one of the surfaces. Not only that but around half of them are colourless, so I think it's a sapphire lot. I'm willing to bet they are from the alluvial deposit at Ilakaka.