Ruby and Sapphire Investment Value: Why a Lab Report Matters More Than Carat Size
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5 min read
A 25.59-carat ruby sold for $30.3 million in Geneva in May 2015. That is about $1.18 million for every carat. Sotheby's had guessed it would sell for $12 to $18 million, so the final price was well above even the top of that range (Pricescope, May 2015).
In the same year, Indonesian batu akik stones were crashing, with one widely reported stone losing 98% of its price. Both are "gemstones". So why did one hit a world record while the other fell apart?
The short answer: they are two different markets. This post explains the difference, and what it means for ruby and sapphire investment value if you ever hold one.
Batu akik had no standard way to grade a stone. Buyers could not tell a rare stone from an ordinary one. When the trend faded, prices had nothing to hold them up. We covered the full story in our post on the batu akik boom and bust.
Fine ruby, sapphire and emerald work differently. They are known as colored gemstones, meaning precious stones that get their value from color, not from being clear like a diamond. Each valuable stone is usually tested by a gem laboratory, a company that studies the stone and writes a report on it. The report says what the stone is, where it came from and whether it was treated.
That report is what lets a stranger in another country trust the stone and pay for it. Batu akik never had that.
A lab report is like a medical test result for a gem. For ruby and sapphire, buyers look at three things:
Big auction houses rely on named labs for this. The Regent Kashmir sapphire, sold in 2025, was described as an unheated, royal blue stone from Kashmir, and press coverage cited a report from the Swiss Gemmological Institute (SSEF) on its color and clarity (The Jewellery Editor).
Here are the two most famous records. They show what a top stone with top paperwork can reach, not what a normal stone sells for.
| Stone | Sale | Weight | Price | Per carat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sunrise Ruby (Burma, unheated) | Sotheby's Geneva, 12 May 2015 | 25.59 ct | $30.3 million | about $1.18 million |
| Regent Kashmir sapphire (unheated) | Christie's Hong Kong, 27 May 2025 | 35.09 ct | $9.5 million | $271,515 |
Sources: Pricescope for the ruby, Rapaport for the sapphire.
The sapphire's per-carat figure was the record at the time of that 2025 sale. Records get broken, so check the latest before you quote it.
The Regent Kashmir had also sold in 2015 for $7.4 million, or $209,689 per carat. Ten years later it sold again for more. That is one stone, one name and one paper trail across a decade. Batu akik buyers had none of that.
The two stones above share a pattern. The ruby came from Burma (now Myanmar) and the sapphire from Kashmir. In the trade, those places carry names that collectors recognize, and a lab can state the origin in a report.
Dealers say the same stone with a weaker report can sell for much less. We could not find a neutral, published dataset for how big that gap is, so we are not putting a percentage on it. What we can say is that auction houses lean on origin reports for their top lots, and that is a sign the market values them.
No. Records like these are the top of the market. Most gemstones are nowhere near them.
Here is what still holds you back, even with a lab report:
Our guide to collectibles and liquidity risk explains why the price you can see is often not the price you can get on a fast sale.
Keep the lab report with the stone. It is part of what makes the stone sellable.
Then record it honestly. In NetWort's Holdings page, a gemstone goes under Luxury Goods. The Standard type defaults to -15% a year and the Collectible type defaults to +5% a year. Neither default is built for a specific stone, so replace it with a value you researched, such as a recent auction or dealer quote for a similar certified stone.
Open Holdings and add your stone with a realistic value, not the price on the receipt.