For those that are good at art, we took a little road trip last summer, stopped at a Montana Sapphire mine, I figured I could get to sit with my sixteen year old and BS for a change (he's always on the move) anyway we tried it, it was kind of fun, and after going through around nine buckets of gravel we ended up with around 175 carats of nice Montana Sapphires, the largest is a little over two carats, to make a long story short, there is a place right next to the mine that will fire and cut the gems, or if you have time you can talk with a local jeweler and get the name of a chinese outfit - apparently the put more facets for cheaper, if you tell them to cut the stones on even increments of two mm you can buy rings to mount them in your self, a sapphire around two carat can go for up to a couple thousand. Who knows you might find that ten carat stone. Another iteresting thing is the used rings being sold, google Sapphires, 30000$ rings (even couple stars selling) for 2500$ might be some money there somewhere. It would be good for the arts and crafts type person who has the time, you can buy raw stones too pretty cheap. Just an idea.