The Ruby & Sapphire Buying Guide: How to Spot Value & Ripoffs

Rating:
Summary: Excellent beginner guide to sapphires and rubies
Review: Excellent explaination of what constitues value in these stones. Very nice explainations of cut and inclusions. Good discriptions of means for evaluating natural from synthetic stones. A couple more chapters on the more technical aspects of gem formation/classification might have been nice, but this is likely beyond the intended target audience. There is an excellent bibliography. This book alone will vastly improve ones confidence when shopping for these stones. The only real flaw is the scant number of color pictures. Color pictures are present, but more, especially for illustration of flaws and color quality would have been helpful. All in all this text easily rates a VVS2