Yeah it's possible Gypsy, though it is due to exactly the the same reason that pink sapphire and ruby flouresce, it's the chromium content.
Pink/red spinel is actually a lot rarer than pink sapphire and rubies, though for some reason was never as expensive, though I think that is changing these days. Spinel comes in all the same colours as corundum/sapphire and is nearly impossible to tell the difference just by looking at it, a gemologist would need to test it with a polariscope.
I've got heaps of black spinel and hardly any of it is magnetic, mainly only the browny and metallic looking spinel pieces I have are, which are in the ferroan spinel types.
So most likely silvers stone is a pink sapph, it's the wrong colour to be ruby.