The Real Rarity of Gemstones

So at the end of my last posting I mentioned that you could forgo diamonds and get some of those purple sapphires I love so much....but maybe not. People tend to forget that the product that I deal with (truly fine quality gem materials) is actually in relatively short supply. A number of jobs I've taken on recently have shown just how short the supply really is. The piece pictured here is a new pendant that I just finished up. The center stone is a black (well more grey than black) South Sea mobe pearl. A few years ago I got my hands on a small (very small) collection of a few of these round beauties. Since then I haven't been able to get a single one of any quality.

Two years ago I took an order in for a pair of carved spectrolite faces (like this one) that I so like to work with. The stones had to match a pendant that my customer had bought from me. I kept ordering stones and the carver kept sending me labradorite (which is a lighter color material usually with speckles in it), which of course didn't match. I've been after my supplier to keep at him about getting the right material and, while I kept getting nice faces none were what I needed. Then earlier this year another customer of mine came to me and wanted me to get a matched pair of faces similar to these but with the faces facing each other. So I placed the order for those as well as the smaller ones I was looking for. When they came in finally guess what? They were also labradorite. Pretty but no comparison. So after many discussions with my supplier she finally found out from the carver that he had, in fact, run out of spectrolite material entirely and was running out of carvable labradorite as well. The only other material my supplier has been seeing (uncarved spectrolite) has nothing near the colors or intensity that all of my older cut faces had.

I also recently took in an engagement ring order from a very nice couple who spent a few hours with me. They picked out a design (this one) but they saw a very nice lighter toned blue/purple color shift sapphire that I had from my regular sapphire supplier but it was round and the design takes an oval stone. So I first went to my primary suppliers but no ovals were to be had in this color range. I expanded my search. I went to a number of other suppliers I have used in the past and eventually a few new ones as well. The first thing I realized when I started seeing the stones they sent me was that the stones I now sell are even better than I realized. Most of the ones sent to me were dark, poorly cut, windowed, included and all over the place in color. When I finally got the other suppliers all focused on the actual color I wanted, no one (so far, although I have more stones coming in this week) could actually produce a single stone that was an exact match to the one in my case. I have one or two that are close. I have one or two that are actually pretty. But it surely isn't like when I want a blue sapphire where I can get a bunch in whatever size or shape I want almost immediately.

So what's my point you might be asking. Well I have a couple. The first is that while there is a plethora of junk out there, the existence of high quality stones is in fact fairly rare, especially when dealing with things that are out of the ordinary. The second is that we are, in fact, running out of material at a fairly rapid pace. Fine quality gem material is a rarity, not a commonplace thing. With the booming Asian markets absorbing huge amounts of the remaining high quality materials, Americans being ever more concerned about the price of things (and hence gem dealers offering the better goods to Asia first), and the depletion of many of the world's most prolific mines we are going to see less and less high grade, fine gem material. I wouldn't ever consider the purchasing of gems to be an investment but if you want your grandchildren to be able to own some of this better material it might be a good time to invest in a few pieces to pass down.

The pendant is 18k and 22k yellow gold with chrome tourmalines, a pink sapphire and a diamond and is currently available.

De Beers

Because I am located in a somewhat intelligent part of the country (you know, MIT, Harvard and a plethora of other universities are located here) I have, over the years, had to listen to a lot of (mis)information about diamonds over the years. The biggest complaint I have had to deal with is that diamonds are not really worth what they cost. And the reasoning behind this is that one company, DeBeers, controlled the market entirely through the stockpiling of diamonds over the years and that the price was completely controlled and not based on a fair market system. Well since 2001 DeBeers has steadily divested itself of this role, through a systematic, planned and controlled reduction in the amount of the market they controlled and a complete elimination of the stockpiles they held, those held ostensibly in an attempt to support the market (from the complainers standpoint). It currently controls approximately only 30% of the total production of diamonds worldwide. And yet, except for a slight dip in prices in 2009 due to the worldwide economic crisis, the price of diamonds have continued to rise, especially for higher quality goods. So the question comes to mind, why, if the price was not real, are they still going up in value?

Did you know that almost 1 ton of rock must be mined in order to produce 1 ct. (1/5 of a gram) of diamonds? Then the production has to be hand sorted (there are no computers that can do this) to the different quality levels. After this the material has to be sold to cutting centers (most now located either in the countries where the mining is taking place or countries such as India which are only recently stepping up from third world countries) and hand cut (often, although the Israelis have pioneered a large amount of computerized cutting), then sold to wholesalers who must then move the material to manufacturers or retailers. Let's also not forget that HIGH quality stones (like I sell, only top color D-E-F color and top clarity VS clarity or better) are actually in short supply (or being bought rampantly by the exploding Asian countries).

So the next time you're thinking of complaining that diamond prices aren't justified, think about what goes into getting those sparkly little things onto your fingers. Of course you could always opt out of diamonds and get some of those amazing purple sapphires I love to sell which will always be less expensive than diamonds.

I know, I know, I keep telling you I'm going to write a blog on opals and then nothing shows up. But let me explain my problem. Every time that I get started on the entry about opals I go back to reading this great opal book that I own. Then I get so engrossed in reading it that I never get back to writing. If I can actually finish it one of these days I'll actually write something about opals. Really. I promise.

But in the meanwhile, since I have been so bad about keeping up with my opal blog writing I thought I would show you guys one of my latest projects. Back in March of this year I got an envelope in the mail one day with a couple of blurry pictures of a ring, a check for $700, and a short note from someone I had never met before. She said that she had seen some of my work on a customer of mine (one of my oldest ones actually---not her age---but how long she's been a customer) and she just knew that I could recreate the ring her grandmother had worn for years, passed down to her and that she had subsequently lost/had stolen.

Now I love to get money I'm not expecting. But this person had never met me or been in my store, I could barely tell what the ring she wanted duplicated actually looked like from the picture (as you can see here), and she had no idea how much I might actually charge for the finished job. So I emailed her and told her that I would not cash her check unless she actually came in and talked to me personally. So she did. We had a long discussion about what the ring had actually looked like and I agreed to take 0n the job (and subsequently cashed the check!).

It took me awhile to decide how to approach this job but the idea of building a ring in a cone shape with a plethora of leaves by hand was a little daunting so I decided to use the CadCam approach, allowing a computer to at least get the first part done. As it happens there was a fair amount of handwork involved afterwards anyway so there is still quite a bit of me in the ring. The pictures here are of the finished ring and the original photo I had to work from, and yes it was no better than what you can actually see here in this copy of the picture.

While I can't tell you that this particular design is actually my style of ring, it's always nice to be able to help a customer maintain their connection with their past through their jewels. And as I will always do, I made it up the way that, if it had been my design, I would want it made so that it would last for years.

I haven't forgotten about my blog

At the request of a customer I am trying to get together a blog on opals but it's an extensive subject (and I have had to read up on them again) so it's taking a while. I should have something posted in about a week. Meanwhile here's one of the pictures I found of a beautiful opal! Just to whet your appetite a little. Oh and for anyone who likes moonstones I recently bought a magnificent triple strand of beautiful moonstone beads that are up for sale and worth seeing in any event.

Opals

In my last posting I told you about some boulder opals I had just gotten in and that I was pretty excited about having some new material to make earrings with. I also told you a few postings ago that if you wanted my new designs, you really had to get in here quickly. This week I put out three new pairs of opal earrings. The ones at the top of the page are boulder opal and rubies in 18k and 22k gold. And I'm sorry but you can't have them because I put them out on Wednesday and they sold on Friday.

The pair below this paragraph have the really spicy pair of boulder opals I was talking about in the last post and my assistant Katy got a really pretty amazing picture showing some of the astounding color flash in the stones. This pair will not last long either.

And I also just put out the pair pictured below this paragraph as well this week. This is one of my comet series of earrings (although I have customers who say they are my bug earrings). These stones were not boulder opal splits, but a larger stone that I had cut in half (and that retained its color properly).

The following is a blog post I started quite awhile ago on opals. It talks a bit about opals in general and white opals specifically. I'll get something up soon that discusses black opals.

If you asked me what my favorite colored stone was I would have a really hard time choosing between sapphires and opals. Admittedly they are completely different types of stones but they both move me in a myriad of ways. And opals, without a doubt, have a slight edge simply because they aren't just ONE color but they are MANY colors. Some of them have ALL the colors. I mean, what more can you ask for in a gem material? Well okay, they could be a whole lot more durable and they could hold up better over time, but still they are just so fascinating. And they have so many colors!!!

Well actually the nice opals have so many colors. For many of you opal means those ugly white stones that have some specks of greens, blues or reds in them. But that just means you haven't seen any of my boulder opals or the astronomically priced black opals that show up occasionally. So what the heck are opals anyway you might ask? And I'm glad you asked because I intend to tell you what they are. They are beautiful!!! Ooops sorry I was actually going to get scientific here.

Opal is an amorphous, hydrous form of silica. Basically what that means is that it has some water in it. The amount of water, and the crystallization of it, will effect the opal in a variety of ways. It is believed that the play of color comes about because of the diffraction of light and slight variations of refractive index from a large amount of spherical, regularly arranged particles of silica and from the voids between. Okay enough science. It's great to know this but it doesn't amount to a hill of beans when you want to own an opal!

There are actually a variety of types of opal that are available. The ones most people may be familiar with are white opal, boulder opal, black opal, crystal opal and fire opal. All of these are broken up into even more varieties but it isn't really that important for a non gemologist to know.

White opals, the most common of the opal family, are opals that have a white (sometimes described as milky) body color with flashes of color scattered throughout. There is a huge amount of this material available but much of it is either so milky that there isn't much play of color or there just isn't much color in it to begin with. This is not to say that there isn't some beautiful white opal out there. I have owned, at various times, many fine pieces with strong color flashes throughout the stones, but generally speaking because the background is white the colors simply don't show up that well. Often if you coated the back with black ink (or set them with black behind them) you could see a lot more colors. If this is being done to the opal, however, it must absolutely be disclosed to the customer as it is a misrepresentation of the goods if it isn't revealed. I never did this with stones that I sold, unless it was going into a custom piece for someone and they specifically requested it, but it was always pretty amazing how much of a difference you would see in the play of color when it was done.