You can, but they aren't as cheap as I had been hoping. If I recall correctly from when I searched a few years ago, they are about 30-50% the price of mined diamonds. Much cheaper overall, but not at commodity levels yet. I had been hoping that they would be cheap enough to buy a few hundred, then hand them out as party favors to weird people out. At some point, I hope they get there.
Rubies, on the other hand, are ridiculously cheap. If I feel like picking up another hobby, learning to cut gemstones from bulk corundum could be rather fun.
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.
Curious, where are you buying real rubies from at that quantity. A quick google search returned about 10 different places, but they look more like the jewelry quality level.
I bought the ones that are round cut so yeah they are the jewelry quality ones you probably saw. I might end up turning a few into a set of earnings or a necklace or something. It was tempting to get a rod of raw ruby and smash it or something, but it is also just cool to show off a pile of rubies cut and ready to put into jewelry that I am just using as tokens in a mining board game. :D
Rubies, on the other hand, are ridiculously cheap. If I feel like picking up another hobby, learning to cut gemstones from bulk corundum could be rather fun.