Let’s face it. The world economy is totally topsy turvy these days. Gold has become so expensive that making platinum jewelry is a bargain. Tariffs on gems are 10% from now on despite the pause on higher amounts. Also the standard of living in our supplying countries is rising, bringing further price increases on gems, gem cutting, and jewelry manufacturing labor to consumers. This begs the question: is it still possible to make affordable jewelry?

I think the answer is (a qualified) yes, and the secret lies in what we have been doing all along: working with small gems. But there’s more to the story. What follows are tips on how you can save.

 Use Platinum. I know, it sounds crazy but right now platinum is cheaper than gold because it is not an industrially used metal. Platinum is a metal of choice for setters because it is pliable enough to set the soft gems I so commonly work with.

If you do prefer a yellow or pink color, I would opt for 18K yellow gold because it is truly superior in color to the 14K version, and I would choose 18K rose gold for the same reason. 18K rose is very soft looking.

I do not recommend using silver, however. It tarnishes, even platinum silver and argentium silver do to a degree, and it is very difficult to get the tarnish to stay off. Also, regular and argentium silver are soft. This means the prongs can easily pull open, or an entire ring gets bent, and the stones fall out. We usually make silver jewelry only upon request these days (exceptions apply).

Use smaller gems and make a cluster design. You can even do a cluster ring or pendant without a center or with just a very small center. Here are some examples of new rings and pendants we are making that work for marquis and pear shapes, but could be adapted for other shapes as well.

      Use less pricey center gems and let the side stones be the center of attention. You can do this two ways: use a lighter colored or less vibrant center so that the side stones draw the eye. For example, lighter blue sapphires are considerably cheaper than the vibrant royal blue ones. Same with emeralds. The lighter gems, often sold under “green beryl” go for significantly less money than the saturated gems. Light green beryl also tends to be extraordinarily beautiful, and pairs well with paraiba for example. Or you can use gems that are generally less expensive but still pack a punch in terms of color. Two examples of gems I happen to love that are vibrant are blue zircon and amethyst. You can also work around a gemstone slice, a cabochon, a rose cut or a large entirely less precious gem like fossilized wood, gem silica, or boulder opal. A setting for these gems might sound expensive but need not be because you can make a very thin metal frame in CAD, or in some cases, you can even drill the gems.

      Go eternity. You can do so much with an eternity ring design, with the added benefit of being able to slide it right next to a wedding or other plain band. Or wear several together. Since manufacturing in the US can be expensive, I further suggest doing a partial or half eternity band to save on setting labor. Half eternity bands can also be sized, whereas most full eternity bands cannot (because cutting out or soldering added metal is impossible once the stones are set). Eternity styles can be bezeled or prong or pave set, they can alternate shapes, colors, and sizes. You can do an ombre too.   

      Accent Studs - Single Studs. Instead of making a pair of large stud earrings, make a 3mm pair, or go single, or both. Most people nowadays have a second and third earring hole that would be great for a single fancy accent stud or just a dainty single 3mm post. We are going to make more single and small studs available for precisely that reason!

      Make a stacking ring. Stacking rings can have a single stone or several, they can be eternity style, and you can, just as with an eternity piece, vary the shape not only of the stones, but the ring design itself. A good example is a crown or V design, either with a center stone or eternity style. Stacking rings can be so much fun as you get to mix and match quite a multitude of options. You can work around a wedding band and an engagement ring even!

Finally, I’d like to add that while we did have to raise our prices on gold and manufacturing – we had absolutely no choice either – we have not raised prices on any of our gems. Nor do we plan to. I very much hope to keep it that way but I do want to add that this is not a promise. So go get 'em while you can!

We've got some exciting new rings, pendants and earrings coming to the shop for spring:) New gems and designs are on the way and you'll get a preview of what's new in the shop and what we have still to come. 

Cecile Raley Designs had a fairly busy holiday season and, if you notice our total listing numbers, they have gone down a bit during the last couple of months.

Time, therefore, to refresh and restock. And for that, I will need your input. For this year’s Tucson, we are prepared to spend a little bit more as we have sold down on all of the Denver purchases from September 2024, and I have been emptying the safe since I broke my ankle last spring. Let me take you through the various categories I intend to refresh and invite your comments.

Sapphire: My focus will be on interesting cuts – kites, hexagons, fat ovals like 3x2 and 4x3, rounds above 4mm, and as much in the purple and magenta range as I can find. So in terms of colors, I am hoping for saturated pinks, purples and blues, but lavenders and lilacs we love also. Which cuts interest you most?

Note that pink sapphire in sizes other than melee are usually heated, and there has been increased retail interest in these colors. Correspondingly, vendors have raised prices to curb buying and meet demand. But I have had more requests for these so I will do my best. Hot pink and purple were my best sellers last year.

A color I am confused about buying is teal. The market seems to demand teals and there are a lot of sales, but I hardly sell teals at all. So is there any interest in teal colors, such as greenish, or warmer greens, yellows?

Finally, we have run out of many small sizes, is there any interest in anything particular? 4x2 marquis, 4x3 ovals, 5x3 pears, small hexagons or kites, etc etc. I am wondering how much people still want to buy any of the specialty cuts in any of these.

Ruby: If the Canada Ruby company is back in business, I will be going there for stock. In my view, this is a small investment opportunity as many buyers don’t want to buy rubies from conflicted areas such as Myanmar. I also always look for saturated unheated and heated rubies, but the prices for these have gone up significantly. Under 2mm, I can source most rubies, but, for instance, finding even matching sets of marquis, small ovals, or pears is more difficult. Most rubies I can get my hands on sell quickly but I will do my best.

Paraiba: I have sold down quite a bit on stock. I have hoarded some single one carat pieces that are between 10 and 15K and I have more green paraibas, but what I am really looking for would be some pieces that are below one carat but above a half carat. That is what I am getting the highest demand for, and that category is the most difficult to fill. Ideally I would find round gems but as the rough material is long and narrow, cutting the rough into round shapes is very pricey. And since it is the cost of the rough that dictates the cost of the faceted piece, it often turns out that the final price of a round gem is more than what most clients like to pay.

On the more positive front, I think I can supply more melees in blue to green, round and other shapes, without raising prices this year. I have been working with a new supplier for a year and a half now, they are directly in Brazil and they have offered a consistent supply.

Other Tourmaline: I am always on the lookout for vibrant pinks and blue greens, or icy tones. While the neon pinks do not sell very well, I personally think they are a wonderful alternative to the more expensive pinks like neon sapphires in the same saturation, and despite their rarity, the pinks have not gone up in price as much as sapphires have.

Benitoite: I have my usual meeting with the Benitoite folks before the AGTA and GJX begin the first week of February. But note that I still have small ovals and rounds available. I will therefore be buying less. I am going to ask for small specialty cuts for the most part, as well as rounds above 3mm if possible.

Cobalt Spinel: Again, I would need your advice on this. I have not sold much cobalt spinel in the last few years. Prices have actually been stable for about 2 years, although supplies are down to what people have hoarded. There’s been nothing fresh coming from Vietnam and insofar as anything hits the market, it is old stock. The new blue Mahenge pocket appears to be done or more would have hit the market. I still have blue spinel from Sri Lanka, cobalt spinel from Vietnam, and cobalt spinel from Mahenge, mostly in smaller sets but also a few pieces in the .2 carat range that aren’t round. Again, the rough doesn’t really favor round shapes and the lack of supply doesn’t allow for matched sets. One has to work with a mixed shape and size set and design from there.

Here are some of the cobalt spinels currently in the store and click here to see them all. 

Burmese Red Spinel, Mahenge Spinel: I always, always, always look for neon color spinels in reds or pinks, but prices are pretty close to exorbitant at this point, even for melee. Both Burma and Mahenge spinel demand have outpaced supply. In 2020 you could still get them at reasonable prices but even the larger gem dealers that used to stock them, such as Yavorski and Nomads, are very sold down. I look at their stock at every show, hoping there’s some magic they are pulling out of their drawers still, but there’s just nothing left. The best material at this point is mildly included. And even those are expensive, and even those are hard to get in the very neon colors. But if I find the material, I usually buy it!

What I can still get is Mahenge spinel melee 2mm and under. I know one supplier that has parcels still. But Jedi pinks or reds from Myanmar I can’t restock. My vendor for those from the last 5 years has quadrupled in price and their stock is down 80% nevertheless.

Pink and Lavender Spinel: I do continue to buy those but prices of lavenders have gone up as well, as purples and lavenders have been very popular colors. The more reasonable colors, at this point, are the peachy tones, as compared to sapphires in the same saturation.

Zircon: I am less interested in the earth tone zircon or the yellows, even though I think they are super pretty. But whenever I can find truly saturated blues, especially in nice cuts, I will source them.

Demantoid Garnet: Of course I will be replacing the melee I sold as well as add a few other sizes. There are only rounds in small stones, but there are three shades. I call them “olive,” “apple,” and “emerald.” That’s probably self explanatory; olive is the cheapest by less than half and the least popular even though it is not any more common than the more desirable apple and emerald green. Emerald is the most expensive. I tend to pick a large, a medium and a small size in melee. If anything particular is of interest, please let me know.

Purple Garnet: In light of the most recent purple craze, I feel I should stock up on more purple garnet again. That, at least, has not gone up in price as much in the last few years.

What I probably won’t buy are peach toned sapphires as they are mostly not pretty in the lower price range. I feel the same way about alexandrite but I do have access to melee if you are prepared to pay a few thousand per carat (…!). Kornerupine is basically wiped off the planet, except for some overpriced single medium sized specimens (between half and one carat).

In terms of shapes I will work hard to get 5-6mm rounds as that was my most popular size in the last several months. I had made a point to stock anything pretty in that size and shape, and it all sold. I will look for 4mm pairs as well as 7mm rounds. Past that I cannot source anything sufficiently interesting in an affordable price range – that’s my humble opinion anyway.

I will stock up on hexagons and kites as well as Asscher if I can find it, but I would prefer not to buy too much of these specialty shapes as they might go out of style. I'd be interested in your input into this and your preferred gemstone shapes in particular.

Last but not least, I have pre ordered hauyne, and if anyone else would like some in sizes that aren't listed right now, you need to let us know asap. The vendor for these will be at the GJX show and he is setting aside what I would like to have so it doesn't get bought right away: 1.5mm, 1.8mm, 2mm, 2.5mm, 3mm) but the amounts will be very limited due to my funds. Remember if you tell me to buy things I have to use money, lol, and if it isn't your money then it is mine. Once that runs out then there won't be anything for you to see... 

Looking forward to your comments. Please email us at cecileraleydesigns@gmail.com

A few years ago I treated myself to a two carat Merelani mint garnet, a gorgeous pear shaped gemstone that is now in one of my most often worn rings. The gem is vibrant and colorful enough to qualify as a tsavorite but I paid mint garnet pricing because the vendor had decided that to him, it was too light for a tsav. Or perhaps it’s being a mint garnet was ‘decided’ when it was bagged up at the factory where it was cut from a large parcel of mixed quality and color grossular, and it was priced according to color intensity.

This is the kind of story everyone wishes to tell. That they got a gemstone for less money because it was a borderline case that was well priced for what it was.

Gemstone colors don’t come with obvious borders. There’s nothing inherent in a gem being a pink sapphire or a ruby. Even the distinction is a historical accident, as these names came up before we knew anything about the chemical composition of gems (or anything else for that matter). That is in fact the reason why people thought that spinel and ruby were the same gem.

Color plays a role in the pricing of all gemstones of course. A more intense color is usually preferred in most gems. But how much it affects price can seem very subjective at times. Take cobalt spinel for example. The name 'cobalt spinel' was originally reserved for just a small subset of blue spinel from Luc Yen, Vietnam, where the vibrant blue color first occurred. The most neon colored cobalts in fact are still from Luc Yen, with Mahenge spinel a very close second – and second only because the Mahenge find has not yielded as many neon specimens as Luc Yen has.

On my 2023 trip to Sri Lanka, I was offered some Sri Lankan “cobalt” spinels – or what were purported to be cobalt spinels. While there may have been some cobalt content, the color contained so much secondary grey that the neon effect was entirely lost. And so was the price! Lost in hopes and dreams of riches by the vendors. Well, I overstate. But the price was significantly higher than sapphire in the same color – by a factor of four, if I remember correctly. Definitely far cheaper than the real deal but also far too expensive for the color. And while I agree that gemstone pricing is an art form, that should not mean it is an invention of the vendor.

Funnily enough, both GIA and AGL have certified gems for me as cobalt spinel that are less exciting than I’d like them to be given the price I paid for them. So my opinion on the border between cobalt spinel and plain old blue spinel may not be in accordance with the trade, but to me, color is simply the most important characteristic of a gemstone. Clarity is second, cut matters a lot too but remember that, in principle, a poor cut can be fixed. But you can’t fix bad color.

A simple rule to follow is that borderline pricing more often means that the color interpretation leans toward the more valuable appellation of the gemstone in question. So when it comes to the neon color Burmese pinkish red spinels, you will find that the doubtful cases are more often tagged “Jedi” than not. So the borderline Jedi are more likely to be overpriced than underpriced.

But the fact that borderline cases are sometimes classified as the ‘lesser’ of the two colors is where the opportunity lives for a nice and juicy purchase. I love love love playing with borderline cases. It’s tricky and I have definitely sunk some not insignificant cash into the idea. If you search all the blue and cobalt spinel that I have in my shop you will find where my own weaknesses lie. And you will also find that I avail myself of the term “Cobalt Spinel” more liberally. But before you judge too harshly, I also have lab reports that say cobalt spinel on some spinel that’s not blue enough if I were the sole judge of it.

And, to be honest, if I wasn’t trying to run a business, I would not even worry about these ‘naming contests.’ Most of these names are made up by the likes of us, and then the names just stick. “Mint garnet” is a perfect example. That was invented as a name for light colored tsavorite when I appeared on the scene. Other similar names are “lotus garnet” and “sunset tourmaline”. They just sound cool. For those last two, there are no criteria at all, it’s just a fad name. And gem laboratories do not use the term “mint garnet” on their reports.

2024 has been a tumultuous year, not just for me but for everyone else too. It’s nearly 80 degrees here in North Jersey on November 6^th, despite the fact that it is now getting dark at 4:50! (This is actually really weird). I don’t know what the future will bring now that the U.S. elections are over but if you came to read this blog to be distracted, then join me in focusing on pretty things instead.

While prices are just going up with no end in sight, we have sales coming up to bring them back down😊 Our Holiday Sale Extravaganza starts on November 21^st with 30% off select items until the 24th. On the 24^th the entire shop goes on sale until December 8th with 20% off everything (custom orders excluded, as always).

We continue to make new earrings, pendants and rings for the season but they are expensive to make and so we don’t have as much as we wish we did. That said, we are always happy to take suggestions for pieces as this helps us cater to our audience better. For instance, should we make more platinum jewelry because it is more reasonable to make, or should we make more 18kt yellow gold because it is popular?

If you’re on a tighter budget, we have a huge variety of smaller melees gems, as well as some larger single stones, and we also offer gift certificates. We are going to have some giveaways coming up on Black Friday and in December, so stay tuned on social media…

Our calendar has just come out as well and will be included with purchases until we run out. If you have any interest in a free calendar, just let us know and we will send you one.

Upon request, we are happy to include gift wrap with any of our sales. Normally we include free cleaning cloths with new jewelry purchases.

Last but not least, we do have some jewelry cleaners for sale.

And on a housekeeping note, I will be away for part of the holidays so after Christmas it will be a bit quieter for a few days in our shop. Shipments will go out as needed however and then we will start getting ready for big sales again during Tucson time!

In the meantime, stay warm. Or stay cool...

While CRD is not particularly known for selling birthstone jewelry, most of our curated gems do fall into a birthstone category. One great exception however is the month of November. The official birthstone color is yellow or orangy yellow and not many gemstones have that color. The online lists include mostly citrine and brown topaz, both of which are available in abundance, so we do not bother with them in our shop. Also, while imperial and orange topaz are not always treated, citrine is usually just heated amethyst.

Another reason we do not carry many November birthstones is that yellow is just not a popular color. Most yellow gems we purchase sit in our shop for months, unless they are unusually vibrant or a cooler tone of yellow, like lemon yellow with a wee bit of green.

So let’s give yellow a little bit of a boost and tell you both what options you have in yellow gems, and how to work with yellow in a color layout.

Yellow Gemstone Options

Yellow Sapphire: This would be a very popular option, but pure yellows are fairly rare in sapphire. Unheated gems usually have a hue of vanilla or another warm tone mixed in, or alternatively, you see multi colored sapphires from Montana with hints of teal and green. The bright yellows are usually heat treated, and with very saturated orangy tones you need to ask about beryllium heat because that is extremely common. I have seen unheated yellows in very bright colors from Kenya but they are rare.

Yellow Tourmaline: Tourmaline rarely comes in pure yellows but there is an older find of canary yellow from Zambia that produced great rich yellow colors. Sadly, that find appears to be exhausted as I have not seen any fresh material on the market. Most other tourmaline tend towards orange (like the now popular sunset tourmaline), or towards olive green.

Yellow Garnet: The only yellow garnet I know of is Mali garnet, and most of the Mali garnet finds are older. One of my vendors tells me he has not seen any new material for about five years now, and that coincides with my experience as well. Mali garnet is not treated.

Chrysoberyl: Mostly known for its cat’s eye variety, faceted yellow chrysoberyl is one of my favorites among colored gemstone yellows. Mostly from Sri Lanka and Madagascar, chrysoberyl often has a light lemony appearance, with lime tones being very rare and more highly prized. Chrysoberyl is not treated either.

Yellow Diamond: definitely the highlight of all the yellow gems because of its brilliance, it is important to know that yellow diamonds can be natural or irradiated (and short of a lab test, there’s no easy way to make the distinction). I obviously prefer the natural yellows. If you look at the color terms that GIA uses for yellow diamonds, you can see that the natural colors of yellow range from a greenish yellow to a faint light, to a (very rare) lime tone, bright warm canary yellows and then into warmer browns and oranges. I think that they make a beautiful fall mix when used all together in 18 kt yellow gold. Especially the light yellow and golden tones look quite well together.

Other Yellow Gems: here’s a short list of other yellow gems that can be found in limited quantity; and their treatments:

Sanidine (Untreated) – mostly vanilla color
Danburite (Untreated) – colorless, vanilla, and warm strong yellow as well as cat’s eye
Zircon (Heated) – often a brownish yellow, some unheated orange, the bright yellows are usually heated

Yellow Gemstone Designs

If you do not like the warm fall color palette, then you need to mix yellows with cooler tones. Below are some options that I particularly like with yellow. On occasion you can mix just two colors, but I generally recommend three colors of which two are related (i.e. yellow plus pink/purple or yellow plus orange/pink.

Pink Sapphire or Spinel, Garnet or pink Tourmaline

Purple Sapphire (or purple and pink), or lavender Spinel

Blue Sapphire or Zircon (dark blue sapphire, or dark and light blue like sapphire and blue zircon)

Teal and green Sapphire (like Montana Sapphire), or teal blue

Orange and Pink (orange Diamond, orange Sapphire, Mandarin Garnet)

Orange, pink and purple (sapphire together with the above, or even Amethyst)

Red (Spinel, Ruby, Mexican Fire Opal)

Paraiba tourmaline – this gem goes with almost everything!

 Most of these color combinations are somewhat contrastive, but you can also go tone in tone with an ombre type design. Here are some options for Ombres

Yellow to orange to brown

Yellow to orange and red

Yellow to green to blue or just to green

Do you have other suggestions for yellow gems, or color combos you like with yellow? Let us know.

Cecile Raley Designs has been on Etsy since 2009. I didn’t even know what Etsy was back then, but someone in my craft group suggested that I start a shop on their site, and so I did. It took a good year and over 70 listings before the shop started really thriving. Since then, though, it hasn’t stopped. In the last several years, however, we have been asking ourselves if our continued success is really due to Etsy, or if it is just that our own brand is growing. Many of our new buyers come through other social media, and despite us not having products for sale anywhere else, about 50% of our revenue is generated by direct sales.

If you have bought and sold on Etsy for as long as I have, then you will have noticed how much has changed over the years. Sellers still join Etsy daily, but many of them no longer sell handmade goods in the sense that Etsy originally intended. More and more jewelry sellers on Etsy are not the makers of the jewelry. They are resellers, or they mass produce in their own small factory overseas. And while I have been told that Etsy works hard to keep these sellers off its site, this proves almost impossible in real life. An international seller doesn’t have a US tax ID and can just re-open a shop under another name every day. Additionally, sellers of supplies such as findings, chains, as well as loose gemstones do not have to produce the goods they sell. As a result, Etsy is overflowing with international sellers offering their products at a cheaper price than their US counterparts are able to.

And while Etsy’s official story is that they want sellers to be the designers of the product (as we are, for instance); and advertises its handmade goods even on television these days, there are reasons to think that Etsy’s policies actually discourage such sellers from offering their products on Etsy.

There are subtle ways in which Etsy is pushing for fast and easy order fulfilment that undermine its official meta-brand, or brand of brand’s mentality.

1. Etsy pushes for free shipping of all goods above $35, thus forcing sellers of bulky or fragile items such as pieces of metal work, or larger pottery, to overprice their items to include shipping. As a result, they filter out of searches for cheaper products (everything under $50, let’s say). On Amazon, you pay an extra fee for ‘free’ (or lower cost) delivery, but it is an annual fee for Prime, whereas on Etsy the seller has to figure out how to add shipping costs and remain competitive with hand made products.
   
   
2. Etsy rewards shops for on-time shipping with a seller badge. And while this may look great, on the back end the shortcomings of this policy are obvious. We can only change the shipping date once – up to three weeks. So, if a buyer wants us to hold shipment because they are on vacation, they are international and still shopping, or they are holding gems for a custom order, we cannot mark the product as shipped or shipped on time. In short, the extra service to clients can actually make us look bad because we may have to forfeit our seller’s badge.
   
   
3. Etsy doesn’t allow products to be shipped later than 6 weeks after purchase. In other words, the longest shipping profile I can add to an item is 6 weeks. For us, this is largely enough time, because we can then push shipping out 3 more weeks by changing the shipping date. However, we do not like to put a 6-week shipping profile on our gems because if they are not turned into a custom order, they can ship right away. And once they are bought, all we can do is push the shipping date 3 weeks out. So we look as though we do not ship on time. Sellers of products that take more than 6 weeks to make (i.e. furniture, and most jewelry) can expect to be penalized by appearing lower in the search or not getting an ‘on time shipping’ badge, thus making them look as if they are late with shipping.
   
   

Now, you might ask yourself why Etsy is doing this, when it is obvious that handmade products can easily take longer to make and can be expensive to ship (also because many Etsy products can be quite expensive).

In my view, the reason is that they are emulating Amazon in the hope of increasing revenue by offering some of the same services. But when it comes to the prestige that should be added to buying a hand-made or personalized product, this is a mistake. It makes Etsy look cheap.

Amazon is a fulfilment center, and it aims to do just that: Amazon makes it fast and easy for the buyer to receive and return the product. Shipping is fast, overnight in most cases (at least here in NJ), because Amazon relies heavily on fulfilment centers that stock the goods, that pack at night and deliver to targeted areas using its own vehicles and drivers. You can track the product to your doorstep, you have direct and easy access to the shipping department if something goes wrong with shipping, but you have no contact with the seller as the latter is out of the game once he or she has delivered their product to the fulfilment center.

Most Etsy sellers neither sell the quantity of products needed to make use of a fulfilment center, nor do many Etsy sellers want their handmade or fragile products stored in warehouses (opals and pearls, for example, can easily break if stored in unheated locations). Lastly, a more upscale Etsy seller also relies on packaging as part of their brand, so the plastic bags and cardboard boxes that Amazon uses don’t help sell the product.

It is just a fact that a handmade product cannot be shipped quickly, unless it is pre-made, for example. At CRD we stock ready-made jewelry, as well as make custom pieces. Anything ready made that needs no customization, as well as any supplies, can ship quickly, though not always on the same day, certainly not for a delivery early next morning!!!

Everything on Amazon signals speed and simplicity. For example, there is no convo system. Getting in touch with a seller on Amazon is not easy to do. Amazon handles all returns, refunds and exchanges. In Etsy this is done by the seller.

The convo system on Etsy is one of the primary drivers for the sale because it encourages open communication between buyers and sellers. Etsy promotes more individualization and distinction of sellers than Amazon, but this in turn undermines its ability to control the speed of delivery by Etsy sellers: the speed of manufacture, shipping, but also the speed of communication. Etsy now penalizes buyers for not responding to a convo within 24 hours, but as you can imagine, this is not easy for small shops as it means we must have coverage for every weekend. When I travel, my office is in my phone, and that is as convenient as it is annoying.

So what distinguishes Etsy from Amazon? Etsy, in my view, is a Metabrand. It represents makers, designers, inventors.

Unfortunately, however, Etsy isn’t prioritizing handmade because it doesn’t want to make allowances for what handmade means – handmade means difference and personalized and customized.

Amazon, by contrast, does not represent any brand or type of brand. It is a well-honed delivery machine that requires a large infrastructure and a coordinated delivery system. And for any product that’s mass produced rather than personalized or customized, it offers great advantages. They just don’t make any sense if the priority is craftsmanship or artisanship.  

Etsy's popularity grew exponentially over the 2020 lockdowns, as we all loved buying pretty, unique products while we were stuck at home with nothing else to spend our money on! Thankfully, that period of time didn't last and Etsy is struggling to hold onto its place in the market. It can't maintain full control of every product made by every seller and still advertise itself as a facilitator of handmade goods. Both buyers and sellers are suffering for it. 

While sparsely attended by a semi attentive “just looking” crowd (probably due to a new venue and location), for me, the Denver show was a hit. There was so much time to shop in peace, unlike in Tucson where you need to constantly worry that what you are looking at will be bought by the next buyer five minutes later. I’m not the only person who has a good eye for gems – certainly not in Tucson. And the best stuff might be one out of 500 boxes. It takes time to find and then you don’t want it to go to the next person.

I went to the Denver Gem and Mineral Show only briefly, but I did wander around a bit and collected impressions. I also bought a few more opals from my friend Adam of A&S Opals. This time I went for smaller and more calibrated pieces.

Most of my time was spent in Westminster at the Hard Rock Summit, and only in one quarter of it: the section with gems and jewelry. There were only about 20 booths, and most of the vendors had little business, but the selection was good, particularly Dudley Blauwet’s booth, where I bought probably 80% of my new goodies.

One of the trends I noticed was an increased amount of specialty cuts: hexagons and kites in particular. Since I know how to set these, I always enjoy getting more of these shapes. The Art Deco jewelry I like and that I partially emulate works a lot with these types of shapes, though they are more expressed in the overall layout and design than the gems themselves. The latter are mostly round diamonds actually, with a few French cuts or tapered baguettes mixed in.

There were a lot of unusual cuts at the Denver show, continuing a trend that started about 18 months ago. It takes a minimum of 6 months to cut a production, and then there might be additional sorting and packaging, and repricing of course (also sets, pairs and individual gems cost more than parcels). So when a trend starts, it can be a year before the appearance of these materials peaks. I think that peak is now, and I think in a couple of years the market will be saturated with these shapes.

Luckily there are other shapes to work with that are also cool, just less trendy. I have gotten into designing a lot with marquis, and with fat ovals like 4x3mm, or more long ovals like 3x2mm (which are almost impossible to find). I also brought back more Asscher cuts.

One of my favorites from the show was a set of seven vibrant 2.5mm ruby hexagons from Mozambique, no heat. But because they were unheated, almost neon, and because of the wasteful cut, I would have had to charge $3000/ct for them and that struck me as too steep for just the look. The rubies remained unbought as far as I know, so let me know if you have steep funds and a million-dollar taste. But not every price is justified. If you think about cobalt spinel for a moment, you will realize that sometimes too much is just too much. I saw a little bit of Mahenge cobalt at the show, and again, after the math, it was going to be $6000-$8000 a carat in my shop, and at those prices the sales are very, very slow (as you can tell because most of my cobalt spinel is still listed).

On the bright side, I was able to obtain a larger lot of Benitoite from my vendor, due to the fact that fewer people came to Denver this year than in previous years. The production is always small and it depends on how many people come to buy it, plus the production size varies. I even got a few additional suites with an orange piece, and one single orange piece that I thought would sell in a day but it is still in the shop. You never know with this stuff…

I was also surprised by a few small lots of hauyne, this time from Afghanistan, and not as clean as the material from Germany. I bought a couple of boxes, the material is not expensive, but opaque and possibly more brittle in setting than even the cleaner specimens.

My largest purchases were most likely spinel (I haven’t counted my boxes but in total there are over 80). Dudley continues to process some of his older lots, which means better pricing for me. There was not as much vibrant material, but I scored some smaller Mahenge Spinel, Mozambique opalescent pinks as well as silver and grey, and a few pieces of Vietnamese spinel also.

In addition to hexagons, kites and marquis cuts, I focused on getting rounds in 4mm, 5mm and 6mm so that my clients have more available center stones for my designs. I have sapphires and spinels coming up in rounds. I also have more teal and yellow colors ready to list, to fill out that spectrum of the color wheel, which I tend very much to ignore (because I prefer the turquoise spectrum as you know). And I did my best to obtain at least a few of the vibrant colors the shop is known for (although a couple of them have already sold).

Last but not least, there will be a few surprise gems for you, or rather, gems I am particularly proud of having snatched. The Clinohumite is already listed, there is also some phenakite, and other gems whose names are more familiar. An outstanding sapphire kite, an opalescent cushion, and a couple of softer gems you will see after setting (rhodochrosite, Mexican fire opal), in the hopes that they make it through the process…

I realize that not everything I talked about is presented here in pictures. I don’t want to let all the cats out of the bag. Just a few of them. But you are welcome to inquire.

Purple is definitely the gemstone color of the year! Although it’s not just one color… I’ve received requests for specific hues in the purple family: lavender, lilac, magenta, periwinkle, deep purple, blue-purple, fuchsia. We are inventing new names for our listings at this point to distinguish the shades. How come there are so many types of purple, sometimes in just one gem, i.e. sapphire or spinel?

The purple spectrum in gemstones is very wide because there are so many trace elements that make up its color: iron, titanium, vanadium and chromium all contribute to the purple spectrum in both sapphires and spinels. On the other hand, red in corundum (sapphire, ruby) is only caused by chromium.

When people ask for a specific shade of purple to be matched, it is a near impossibility to find the right shade. Matching a gem to a photo already creates a problem as a photo of a gem never really looks like the gem it represents. Just recently I sent photos of a box with about 10 different shades of dark blueish purple sapphire to a client in Australia to pick which shade matched the earring she lost. I sent the photo under daylight and LED light so she could see how the light was affecting the color as well. I never heard back. Too many shades of purple is what I surmised and expected. The nuances of even the dark blue-purple spectrum are too varied to make sense of it when matching a photo to the remaining half of a lost earring.

Another relevant point is that matching gems from two different locations rarely succeeds because the trace elements in the locations will differ. For example, Madagascar purples are more often softer and more medium purple to reddish purple, whereas Sri Lankan purples tend to be darker and more blueish on average. So while there is overlap with some of the shades, it may not be enough overlap for the gems to really match if seen side by side.

By difference in location I don’t mean just different countries, by the way. To see geological variation, you only need a few meters of space, not a few thousand miles. When you are exploring a pocket of gems in one area in a tunnel, you will already find some color variation.

Also, if the gems are mined by washing a layer of sediment from an old river bed either on the surface or a few meters underneath, you can expect to find even more color variation. Why? Because the runoff from mountainsides and hills that has collected in the riverbed could be from far away and will be all mixed together.

I recently received a request for a specific light blueish purple set of 3 matched round sapphires, 4mm-6mm. From the photo I was assuming that the tone the client was after was Sri Lankan and roughly matched a shade that I have seen at shows until maybe 2020 or 2021. I asked about origin of the gem in the photo she sent me, so I could determine whom to call to get the color. I also asked about treatment and when the photo was taken. This information turned out to be unavailable, and since that hue was most likely a few years old I couldn’t track it down. I face a similar problem when matching greens in tourmalines (not pure chrome colored green, but all the other greens colored by mixes of iron, vanadium, copper). Blues in sapphires or blues in spinels are much easier.

I am also regularly asked for sapphire melee (say 1mm-2mm) that’s deep purple. This means I have to find vendors who still carry older Sri Lankan material as the Madagascar sapphire rough is not saturated enough to cut melee that small that’s still purple – it turns into a faint lavender color. Pinks are much easier to find in that size, even saturated pinks (i.e. Burma ruby, Mozambique pink sapphire), but along the more mid purple to blue purple range the saturated tone is almost non-existent.

So as a buyer, if you have a very specific color shade request, what do you need to do in order to get it filled? Here are a few pointers.

1. Origin affects color hues, so try to find out where the gem you are matching is from.
2. Treatment affects color. You need to know if the color is a treated color or occurs naturally, and what treatment brought it about (if any). For example, bright orange or reddish orange tones in sapphire are achieved by diffusion with beryllium. If you want the beryllium color/shade, you have to let your vendor know that that’s the color you are after, because it doesn’t naturally occur so you’d immediately be told that it can’t be found. So don’t point to a beryllium orange and say you want a natural stone. We are gem sellers, not genies. Miracles happen elsewhere.
3. Photos are inaccurate, so don’t expect a photo of a gem to match to an actual gem when you see the gem and the photo side by side. If you have to send a photo instead of providing a description – yes we gem sellers often go by description, not photo – then add the description to it or give us an actual link to a gem you are matching so we can do some research to find out more about it. It can also matter at which color temperature the photo was taken. Color temperature is affected by the latitude of the place where the photo was taken, the time of day and the equipment used. Cameras often have blue tints, which is fixed by adjusting the white balance, but not everyone does that. And of course, you do not know if someone did or not.
4. The hues in gem finds change over time. Therefore, we need to know when the shade you are matching was most commonly seen (online, at shows, or on location). As I go to trade shows at least 3x a year, I can see the shades drift over time. Having a reference point about when that shade occurred or seemed to be circulating in the market helps me figure out who might still have it. No vendor carries everything, and many gem dealers have connections to some locations and not others. I’m not going to ask a Madagascan sapphire dealer for periwinkle for instance, as that would make no sense. The trace element composition in Madagascar tends towards more reddish tones of purple, not towards blues.

And finally, if you do have an actual gem you want to match, then using it as a color comparison is ideal, so bring it to the viewing or the show, or even send it to the vendor you are working with to find a match or something similar.

Happy color matching!

In the spring of 2022, everyone wanted to buy emerald cut teal sapphire. This year it is blueish purple and lavender round sapphire, and my favorite - Vietnamese lavender spinel. But the story is the same: a particular gemstone, color or cut goes viral and within 6-8 weeks, the market is wiped clean and what’s left has risen significantly in price. Why does it happen so quickly?

It is hard to convince buyers of this, and I really don’t know why! With a few exceptions – such as amethyst – natural earth mined colored gemstones are rare. Really, they are! Purple sapphire – the latest fad – for instance, is much rarer than blue sapphire. Judging by what I see at gem shows the ratio is perhaps as much as 10:1. I can’t give you exact production, but I do speak from experience. I’ve been to hundreds of gem shows at this point and all I have to do is look at the offerings and speak to the vendors to know what is going on in their market segment.

I’ve watched white sapphires starting out cheap as chips in around 2012, as well as the beryllium sapphire from Songea (4mm and below trading at $1 a carat). Now both are nearly non-existent – even beryllium sapphires are hard to buy. Mahenge spinel started at $40 a carat for 4mm pieces back in 2012, and they cost about $100-150 for 1-1.5 carats. Now you cannot get them in the market at all except for what vendors have left over in their older stock.

Teal blue tourmaline from Brazil, dark purple sapphire from Sri Lanka, lavender and neon pink spinel from Vietnam, neon blue tourmaline from Namibia. All have come and gone since I started my business. There was a ton, then it went mainstream, then it went poof. At one point, we were selling Mahenge and Burma spinel beads for around $10/inch - anyone who bought it at that price is laughing now as there is none to be found anywhere! 

Once upon a time, the jewelry market was dominated by white diamonds. They are still in abundance, supply is still controlled and they are overpriced, but even now when you go to standard jewelry stores, 90% of what you see is white diamond jewelry.

Then the internet came along and the niche market I was in – untreated colored gems – gained public interest. According to an online article from CNBC (https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/14/gemstone-engagement-rings.html), the colored gemstone market share in engagement rings has gone up from 5% to 15% in the last decade. Sapphire is one of the leaders in this market (also London Blue Topaz but let’s forget about that, it is NOT a rare stone). Natural (heat or no heat) ruby is being cited as difficult to come by, and part – but only part - of the issue is geopolitical conflict in the regions (i.e. Burmese ruby, but also any goods from Afghanistan and Russia, to name two additional examples). In 2023 alone, sapphire wholesale prices rose by 12% - meaning they rose faster than the S&P 500 Stock rates.

Other articles on gemstone market research predict a growth rate of 6% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) in the next decade https://www.credenceresearch.com/report/gemstones-market; most of this growth rate will take place in the United States. Synthetic gems will be the market leader, but in my opinion that is largely due to a more or less unlimited supply line in synthetics, whereas the growth rate of natural gemstones will be more limited due to supply and corresponding price rises. The rising prices may push the smaller collectors out of the market (though I hope that doesn’t happen of course).

While it is always difficult for an end consumer to directly benefit from the added value of the gems they own, the continuing digitization of colored gemstone market allows both buyers and sellers from all over the world to connect with each other, and it allows for more retail buyers to sell and trade their goods on platforms such as Loupe Troop, among others. Auction houses such as Christie’s report that jewelry items often fetch higher than asking prices, some ending up in bidding wars just like real estate. Investors are looking for places to put their money, and some of them have a lot of it.

That said, a retail buyer still has to hold on to their goods for a longer period of time for them to accrue in value, and of course the authenticity and rarity of the gemstones they sell has to be verified. Not all retail buyers do the same research deep dives that we gem dealers have to engage in to vet our merchandise; and the lack of buyer protection or the knowledge of how to buy goods from overseas has caused many retail buyers to sink considerable sums of money. But that is to be expected with any commodity and any stock as well. Smart buying is difficult! You don’t need insider information to make good choices, but you do need to have good research skills and most of all, you need to work with people you can trust.

It is important to note that the largest growth segment of the market is expected to be in certified gems. Overall, consumers prefer natural stones to synthetics, so among the higher valued certified gems we should see more of a price increase. In synthetics, where the cost is actually dropping so rapidly that gemstone dealers do not keep them in stock but buy them only on request.

Regarding certification for gems, a word of caution is in order. A ‘certificate of authenticity’, as it is often called, is not what the trade means by certified gemstones. We are only talking about authentication by an independent laboratory such as GIA or GRS, where for each gemstone, the main value determinants are listed – not the price or value itself, but the character traits of the particular gem that determines the price. The prices themselves are subject to fluctuation, and for the most part, this fluctuation has an upward trend.

A proper certificate primarily means that the gem is properly identified (i.e. as an emerald, and not as a lab created or synthetic emerald). But where treatment is available that affects value, such as heat in sapphires, this needs to be stated as well. For example, as there is no known treatment for garnets, they do not require that a certificate includes determination of treatment. The same goes for alexandrite, but in the latter case, synthetics need to be excluded because these have been common in the alexandrite market for some time. Origin matters at times but not all the time. For instance, it is not particularly important if a blue or purple sapphire is Madagascan or Sri Lankan, but if the claim is that the sapphire is Burmese, then an origin report is needed to verify this. With emeralds, this is important also, as Colombian emeralds are still considered the desirable and thus the most expensive. In the case of emeralds, treatment identification is paramount also.

When experienced US retailers source gemstones, this vetting process is incorporated in the purchase. Most of us work only with reliable companies. I have a small handful of providers in Hong Kong as well as in Bangkok for instance, and I don’t buy from anyone else overseas unless I can get the company verified through one of the dealers I know. And for more expensive gems, i.e. my larger emeralds and paraibas, I also buy only subject to cert. This means that I agree to the sale assuming that the lab we choose verifies the data that justifies the price. I will not buy an emerald that is stated to have minor treatment or less unless there’s a report that says so. In particular, it has to be a report I can use in the US, so all my Colombian purchases, even though initially certified in Colombia, then require a second certificate from, say GIA. Obviously with small gems, i.e. less than half a carat, I will forego this rather expensive process but a below half carat emerald is not something most buyers will regard as an investment in the first place. I am of course liable one way or the other if my claims are false but it is understood by both buyer and seller that verifying the data may be more costly than buying the gem itself, so it isn’t worth doing. I then have to rely on my sources being trustworthy – and I do.

Personally, I expect to see an increasingly sharp divide between luxury and mass market gems and jewelry. Synthetics will dominate the mass market simply because that is the only way to get something like mass market going in the first place. Other cheap gems (red garnet, amethyst, London blue topaz) will be next in line as a growing market segment. When I first started my jewelry, I was approached by stores to replicate my pieces for a mass market but I always had to decline. It was never possible, and it's even less possible now. And I actually prefer this because I know which homes my pricier pieces go to.

Sapphires, emeralds, rubies, but also tourmalines and spinel will have a cheaper segment for overseas goods that will not increase in value – here, I’m talking about more treated goods such as heavily filled emeralds, or less desirable colors like olive green tourmaline -  and a more expensive segment with certified gems that will see an increase in value in the coming years.

Let me end with a final word on my opening example. Spinel – one of my absolute favorite gemstones and one that I personally collect – has seen the sharpest rises in value (sharper than Paraiba tourmaline in my view). This is because while it has been distinguished from sapphire for several decades now, it only became publicly recognized when Mahenge spinel hit the market. It became a birthstone just a couple of years ago.

At the beginning of its popularity, there was sufficient supply of spinel to satisfy the small market segment of interested parties, but that has since changed. Neon colors such as Burmese red Jedi, Mahenge neon pinks and Vietnamese (and a few Mahenge) cobalt blues have captivated audiences all over the internet and now that the secret is out, the market is wiped clean. Spinel was never as ubiquitous as sapphire in the first place, and some of the production countries of the finest specimens such as Mogok and Vietnam are seeing little to no mining and trade, whereas the finds in Mahenge, Tanzania are at present exhausted. The sediment layer that contained them has been cleared and there’s nothing below. A new pocket has to be found and in the last decade, nothing has surfaced (yes, people are looking, of course they are). Adding lavender to the list of popular colors doesn’t help matters – pure lavender spinels without any secondary grey were always extremely rare, but the prices did not reflect this until this past year.

There are still some great buys to be found. Take a look at these beauties!