You weren't kidding! It looked like you can buy 1kg of uncut rubies for ~$35 and 100 smaller cut rubies for ~$5

Real rubies I awesome. I picked up 50 of them that are 1cm in size to replace the plastic ones that come in my board games. The weight of them in my hand is unexpected. The upside had to be when I brought them to work and got to pore a pile of real rubies into someones hands. Only "downside" is that even though they are really hard, they can scratch each other. But eh they are cheap enough that I just tossed them in a velvet bag and in the board game box.