The heist

I bought these stones (the ruby (probably man made at the price I paid for it) and the two round sapphires in Cambodia when I was there years ago.  The other sapphire came from India at great expense from a proper jeweller in Jaipur and, the one behind which you can't see too well is a garnet and I forget where I got that one from. 

So sapphires and rubies are both varieties of the mineral corundum and have the same chemical composition and structure.  To be a ruby, it has to contain sufficient chromium for it to be distinctly red or purplish red.   Garnet on the other hand is of a silicate group.  Ruby is the birth stone for July, Sapphire is for September and Garnet is for January.  I feel I have lucked out having Topaz as my birthstone but there you are.  One day I will get around to having some jewellery made with those stones.

So I let the tinies go to town with this and spent way too long playing with generative AI in PS for the background and in the end gave up and went with an earlier one I had found.