Which color of Sapphire gem is the most valuable?

You will often hear that the rarest and most expensive sapphire is the pink-orange padparadscha from Sri Lanka. But while the padparadscha is extremely rare, the finest blue sapphires are the ones that receive the top prices at auction.

The record price for a sapphire was set in April 2007 at Christie's in New York, when an unnamed 22.66 carat blue Kashmir sapphire sold for $3,064,000; about $135,216 per carat. It broke the record previously held by the Rockefeller Sapphire, a 62 carat blue Burmese stone.

Of course many of the most valuable sapphires in the world have never been offered at auction and are unlikely to ever be seen in an auction catalogue. One of the most famous is the St. Edward's Sapphire, a blue faceted cushion set in the Maltese Cross atop the Imperial State Crown of the United Kingdom. Its exact weight is unknown but stories of its history date back to 1042 AD. The British crown also features a 104 carat sapphire known as the Stuart Sapphire; it is mounted on the band at the rear of the crown.