Sorry for the huge prior photo "Attack of the Saphiret Beads". I hope this one comes out smaller. These beads are the early ones and are generally darker brown with the blue highlights most evident when you hold the beads up to the light. There are also 40's/50's round saphiret beads that are generally lighter in color- Hobe used them in their necklace designs and fairly often can be found for sale online.

The cut saphiret beads in the ebay listing mentioned at the start of this thread were spectacular.