Late January is approaching fast, and so is my Tucson trip. I cannot wait to go as this
month its both bitter cold and snowy here in New Jersey. But I need sunshine,
warmth and bling!

That said, I expect Tucson to be a little bit different this year. And I am not the only one.
The biggest issue, of course, is the consequences of the new tariffs. Traditionally,
vendors from abroad would bring their goods to the shows, sell their wares, collect the
funds and return to their homes with the unsold goods. This year, that cannot happen.
We are only exempt from tariffs on shipments from the E.U. as we do not have the
required trade agreements with places like Thailand, India and Sri Lanka. While gemstones
are an exemption to the tariffs because they cannot be produced or mined in the US
(except minimally), for the exemption to take effect we need trade agreements, and right
now only the E.U. has those in place. The U.S. does not.

Therefore, as Hemi Englisher from GemCal explains, “all goods from Thailand are
under TIB, temporary import bond. We will not be able to sell at the show. If a customer
wants to buy, we will need to ship from Thailand once we are back. Tariffs have to be
paid by the customer in the USA.” Hemi is bringing fewer goods as a result, and
expecting fewer sales. Here’s a link to a blog about Hemi’s zircon inventory. Most of my
specialty cut zircon comes from him. 

“Cash and carry,” in other words, is not going to be part of this year’s Tucson. With
tariffs and shipping, therefore, we will see a 15-20% increase on acquisition costs.
According to Eshvar Kotahwala from Kotahwala gems, as well as Dudley Blauwet from
Dudley Blauwet gems, vendor attendance at the International GJX show (across the
street from the Tucson Convention Center that houses the AGTA), will be lower. Less
foot traffic is expected as well. Here’s a very informative article from GemGuide about
Tucson 2026. As the article points out, many vendors imported gems just prior to the tariffs last year, opening offices in the US or just finding a reliable partner with whom to stock gems.

Many larger vendors keep at least a small presence in the US, as small as one person
or household, where inventory can be kept safely in between shows. However, many
gemstones travel around the world a couple of times before finding a permanent home in a piece of jewelry sold to a retail client. For that reason, the industry now has to consider
tariff “markups” to cover the costs of international shipping and imports. Shipping costs,
incidentally, are up significantly also, as is insurance for the shipping around of high end
goods. We just fielded a call for a 3 carat blue sapphire to a client in the US, and shipping between the vendor and myself (only within the U.S.!), even with large shipping
discounts from Malca Amit, came to $215 for five stones. And – possibly due to
economic uncertainty – the clients jumped ship despite previous assurances of being a
serious buyer (and wanting to decide between two of the gems that were exactly what
they had asked for). So CRD got saddled with the shipping bill without a sale from which
to deduct these costs. Incidents like these, in times like this, raise prices for everyone
else. It is the vendors who eat the damage when buyers don’t provide all the facts. This
will be the case with all international sales as well, making it difficult to have goods
shipped for inspection or with a satisfactory return policy as tariffs can possibly apply
each time the goods are shipped.

On the upside, large international buyers like Dudley Blauwet report being able to push
down prices to compensate for the tariffs. Smaller vendors cannot acquire enough
goods to offset the 10%. I am told to expect a large selection of sapphires from Sri
Lanka at his booth. Dudley has also acquired parcels throughout the last 40 years,
and he is savvy enough to always hold back inventory to be dug out a couple of
decades later when demand for it rises.

Jaimeen Shah from Prima Gems reports to GemGuide that he had a good year with
quality goods, in particular, cuprian tourmaline and spessartite garnet (Paraiba and
Mandarin garnet, in retail language). And a small business like ours has similar positive
news. We didn’t sell that much jewelry because of gold prices, but we did
well with our finer quality goods. We generated more revenue selling Paraibas,
sapphires, no oil emeralds and spinel in the higher price category than expected. This
wasn’t our best year by far, but our prices on those finer goods, especially our older
stock, were not raised very much because we are fully online. (It is usually awkward to
raise retail prices online, especially if there’s not a pressing need as there is with the
runaway inflation on gold).

Nir Zaccharia from Zak Gems has announced some new goods, in particular, green Mali
garnets – I am very interested in seeing those at the Pueblo show. He will also bring
zircon, and of course spinel, which is his specialty.

My Brazilian vendor will be there as well so I can source more Paraiba melees,
specifically in all the sizes that have sold out. If there are any requests for more of
those, please let us know. My 1.5mm stock is almost entirely gone. I can take both pre-
orders and simple inventory requests as I want to buy Paraibas anyway but need to
know what sizes or shapes or hues clients are most interested in working with.
Our shop is pretty well stocked right now so I really do need customer suggestions with
regard to what I should be buying. I am hoping for more small emeralds again. Greens
always sell well – especially blue green gems such as various tourmaline as well as
emeralds. Tsavorites and mint garnets do not sell quite as well but they do sell over time. I am hoping my Russian sellers will attend as I am looking for more small
demantoid garnets as well.

Here is my exact schedule for those of you who tend to stay in close phone contact with
me during the show: Thursday I leave for Tucson. Friday to Sunday I will be at the
Pueblo and 22nd Street show where I will be seeing my Zambian emerald vendor, Zak
gems and many others including Nomads gems (they sell at the Pueblo show before
they move over to GJX, so in order to get their “deals” you need to go early). Monday
through Saturday I will be rushing back and forth between GJX (for Paraiba and spinel,
as well as all the ruby and sapphire melee I buy), and the AGTA where I mainly see
Dudley and Jaimeen and Eshvar. Sunday is the last day of the shows but I will be
heading home on that day. Staying in Tuscon is expensive during the shows, as you can
imagine.

If you would like me to field a call for you, please contact me (cecileraleydesigns@gmail.com). I may have some terms
and conditions because time and money are always tight in that week (I cannot just use
my money to buy for you because my money will not stretch to cover everything of
interest). You may have to be prepared to Zelle or PayPal me in a hurry but if any good
deals are to be had, that is always the best way! I am always happy to be your personal
shopper but I cannot be your bank (I wish!).

In the meantime, enjoy shopping our pre-Tucson sale. We are trying to make room
(decrease stock size and increase wallet size)!

Let’s put this title into perspective first. Gold has gone up 60% in 2025, which is likely to be the largest price increase on record (starting in 1973, so that’s not covering the Great Depression!). Here’s where you can look at the historical as well as the daily gold price: https://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html 

You’ll see there that in 2015, Gold was hovering around $1000 per ounce, now it’s above $4000. Until 2020, gold prices were fairly stable. CRD first started increasing its prices in 2022, but we quickly realized that we did not calculate sufficiently and then the market ran away from us. Now our quotes are only good for a couple of weeks and are subject to change if a custom order is not initiated at the time of the quote (I order the gold as soon as I receive the down payment).

One can see the changes reverberating throughout the diamond district. Most of my contractors (i.e. setter, polisher, jeweler) have less work. In my case it is marginally less because I use the top people and they are always busy. But manufacture has definitely slowed down, and it has tightened its turnaround time so that nobody gets caught buying high and selling low. The gem trade has been correspondingly sluggish, but prices are not coming down in either gold or gems. However, the largest price increases for gems occurred around 2021-23 and have now abated – at least that is what I have experienced with regard to my purchasing habits.

But ok, enough said about the downside. Where is the upside? It is here: most of the gold on the market these days is recycled so it is simply cheaper for the industry to buy back gold than to mine it; if you go through the right channels, you can also sell gold and make a nice profit.

I don’t mean gold coin or bullion. It is too soon to sell that, as most major investment banks are predicting further increases in gold. Therefore, if you have gold for investment purposes, then I would hold on to it.

I am talking about different gold. The gold in your jewelry box! Broken chains, single earrings, busted rings, stuff from grandma from the 60s (don’t sell anything from 1940 or earlier). Stuff you bought and didn’t like. If there’s enough gold on the piece, then anything that you bought before 2020 has the potential to fetch more now than what you paid for it.

How do you get the most money for gold?

First rule: forget the gems. If you have hung around our shop long enough, you know that most commercial jewelry uses gems that have almost no value. Even those slightly greyish opaque diamonds set in cheap halos (often called “salt” in the industry) have no value. Nobody busts those out. But: if you have reason to believe that the gem or gems in your jewelry are valuable, then have a jeweler remove them. When you sell gold, almost nobody gives you anything for a gem. Even a diamond will fetch at best half of the current wholesale price. Better to reuse it in another piece of jewelry.

Second rule: Forget selling gold to pawn brokers or jewelers. Pawn brokers give you 50 cents to the dollar. Jewelers might give you more, or if they know you, they may give you much more, but don’t expect it to be more than maybe 80-90%.

How do you then get closer to 95% or more? You need to ship your gold to a refinery. I use a company in NY called “Manhattan Gold”. They also accept retail sales.

Online gold buyers usually offer the highest percentage below the daily spot price that you can get, even if you are me. I usually get around 98% with Manhattan gold. I sell back broken castings, the occasional piece I no longer use, I sell gold for clients, and occasionally I melt down something personal I no longer wear. I have profited from my original purchase every time. Understandably I buy cheaper than you but at the increase of 2020-2025 anyone can make money. I sell client gold usually as a form of payment for a new custom order, and I give back 100% of what I receive. I’m not interested in being a pawn shop!

In order to sell gold, it would be nice to have an exact scale. A postal or a good cooking scale is ok, as long as you can read grams on it so you don’t need to convert. Something like this on Amazon is also worth it. I’m not claiming that this particular product is ok, I don’t own it and my scales cost more. I use GemOro. You can find them on Amazon but also on other websites in case you try to avoid monopolies (I have given up but I applaud the effort).

So if you can weigh your gold and discern the karat number, you can use an online gold calculator to figure out the value. Then you can use a calculator offered by a gold dealer to compare prices to the daily spot and to other gold buyers.

Some online gold sellers offer a very fast turnaround, and you may also find gold buyers in your local town. If so just ask outright what the return is, then you’ll know if it’s worth it. You will get cash or a check on the spot, so you can use it to buy this year’s Christmas presents!!!

How does bartering to secure the price of a gem on location translate to a fixed price at your local store (or on a website!)? Gem pricing depends on two very different systems - how are they linked together in the modern world? 

A couple of months ago I asked one of my gem sellers if I could "memo" (i.e. the jewelry trade practice of borrowing) his 1.07ct Benitoite that he had just acquired, and list it in my shop for sale. “No,” he said, firmly. “Because it will accrue value faster than inflation, so it’s better for me not to sell it right now.” Better than an 8% annual inflation? Yes, better than that. And he’s right (too bad for me but a smart move).

In Tucson 2022, the first Tucson with a sizable show of international vendors, I spent just about every penny I had in the bank. And then I did something crazy: I put many of those gems in a box, for later, even though I was flat broke! I also locked in several payment plans for merchandise so I could avoid paying more for the same stuff a few months later. To do this, I used up the “street cred” I had built up with them over the last decade or so. I’ve had to pay some purchases off very slowly, but my vendors know that in the end, I am reliable, and if they needed a little extra cash or I needed to stretch things, we could up or down the payments as needed. The basis of such deals is a lot of trust, but that goes both ways as I also trust my suppliers to be honest about their goods and current pricing. 

In the past few years, I've had several clients tell me that they'd rather save up and wait to buy a larger Paraiba (or other gem, but mainly Paraiba) at a higher price, but that strategy has backfired; unless they save very quickly, inflation will outpace them. As a gem seller it's tough to tell people "please buy now and find a way to finance on your own, it is better for you" and not sound like I'm giving a sales pitch. But I will say that the last few years have borne out my predictions.

It’s been a tough 2022 sales wise but I am happy with what I own and not worried that I will get stuck with my gems. The Paraibas have already accrued over 20% since I bought them in February, and while the trend may level off, I am certain they will never go down. Other gems, like my powder blue cobalt spinels (and a few deeper ones I have), will accrue more slowly, but they have already exceeded blue sapphires of the same color in value. My 2.2ct blue Burma sapphire has already doubled in price since I got it in 2020. My emeralds are up 30% since the same time.

I did sell all my Benitoites, unfortunately. Should have saved those too, lol. Instead, I took one of my red spinels off of the website because I realized that it had been there since 2019 and the price was now too low. While I am happy to pass good purchases on at a discount, there is such a thing as feeling that the value of an item has not been fully appreciated. So now I get to enjoy the spinel myself until I feel it may be time to put it back out there. In the meantime, this is a good opportunity to get it certified – not something that’s needed for most spinels because they have no known treatment, but I do recognize that many novice buyers feel reassured by this (whereas any buyer should certify origin and treatment of any sapphire of value). My two rubies on Etsy, meanwhile, are quite reasonably priced at this point but I’m leaving them up for sale as my heart beats faster for spinel than ruby. And I am, after all, a gem seller, not a gem hoarder! :)

(Entertaining side note: Pantone just named “Viva Magenta” – 18-1750 – to be the color of the year 2023, and of course the AGTA followed suit, wanting to market gems of that color to promote sales of Magenta colored gems. But what gems are those??? Magenta colored Mahenges are completely wiped off the market, Magenta Burma spinel practically sold out, and ruby doesn’t have that color, it’s more red. That leaves a few not easy to come by Magenta red tourmaline as the only option. Am I wrong about that? Do you think that pink sapphires or some rubies are 18-1750 or rather a different tone? Let me know, I am drawing a blank, and I love that color.).

But I digress. Let me pass on another anecdote. One of my old friends in the trade, Jaimeen Shah from Prima Gems, once said to me that you can measure the health of a gem business by how long it can hold on to merchandise. If a seller needs to flip gems for immediate cash, then the business is in bad shape. If he or she can afford to hang on to their stock for over a year and be blasé about making the sale, then they are doing very well. A healthy business might keep stuff in the safe for decades. They might even put higher price tags on their gems and then just shrug their shoulders if you ask for “their best price,” telling you that they don’t care if you can’t buy it at the full asking price. They figure that sooner or later, it will sell, and they are right. (Asking for the best price is a practice that many of us find rude – a healthy business is not desperate to make a buck).

If you enjoy buying gems but also enjoy selling and trading, don’t fret if things aren’t moving right now. And don’t get desperate. Give it time. While there are gems that really never have much value – iolite and apatite come to mind – the sheer rising of labor costs over the last half decade have even made those more expensive than they used to be. You may remember for example that back in 2010, you could buy cheap citrine and amethyst for $1/ct wholesale, and those days are long gone despite the fact that the vast availability of both gems has not changed one bit.

Remember that as the public gets educated, colored gems will become more and more of an alternative to diamonds. This is a good thing for you if you already own some colored gems because while white diamond supply (for jewelry) is virtually endless, this is not the case for most colored stones. Not just for the short lists of examples you find online, but really it’s true for most of them, even the non-spectacular. The exception I want to hedge over is quartz, and if you throw in bead quality gems the situation might be different. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds, any spinel, any zircon, any apatite, peridot and iolite even, are rarer than diamonds. They are just not all super pretty or sparkly or super hard and durable. They are also not carefully controlled and cultivated.

Already one can see the influence of clever marketing strategies affecting colored stone pricing on the commercial market. Padparadscha sapphire and aquamarine come to mind, and blue sapphire, as we find European royalty and international movie stars flaunting their colored stone engagement and anniversary rings. Before 2014, lighter to even medium colored aquamarine traded at $5-15 a carat. Now they are at $35, and larger specimens are $100/ct and up in the trade. In Madagascar, prices of aquamarine went up by a factor of five in the last six years.

It should be noted that aquamarine, especially fine goods, were fairly underpriced given their availability, at least in my view. Maybe that’s because the lower quality goods are very light colored and sort of, well, boring looking. Prices of color change garnet have gone up similarly – and those don’t look boring to me at all. I don’t mean the ones that just lightly shift “hues” like from pinkish to purplish, but the ones that shift from teal blue-green or grey blue-green to purple, or a strong pink to a strong purple. Lindi (Tanzania) appears to be mined out, and Bekili (Madagascar) is right now difficult to come by and difficult to export.

The upshot: if you own some finer quality gems, reasonably well cut, low on inclusions, pretty, and let’s just say to be on the safe side, not quartz, then I think you can expect a continuing increase in value. Granted it is harder to resell for a retail buyer, but whatever you paid whenever you paid it, expect it to be at a higher price now. And this is NOT the case for your engagement white diamond which loses 10-20% of its value as soon as you leave the store with it (one last note on that: untreated colored diamonds, especially pinks, reds, peach, blue, natural grey, purple, green, have skyrocketed in the last 20 years. Pink diamonds have doubled in just the last two years, one of my vendors told me. So those are not to be compared to white, which are up right now because of supply chain issues but will come back down when that is resolved. Remember that Russia is a huge supplier of white diamonds and right now we are not buying anything from Russia.

I’ll end this blog with a quote from an overseas vendor that was part of a conversation literally today, when I told him that this year has been slow (something everyone in the trade is saying): “Good stones in the safe are not going anywhere… nor is their value.”

During the height of the pandemic, a young woman started purchasing gems from me in the hopes of making a business out of it by setting gems into pre-purchased settings (and later, to develop her own line). I tried helping her by sharing some gemstone parcels at cost with her, and giving her advice on purchasing, mainly by trying to steer her away from Instagram purchases from overseas sellers without a clear return policy. At one point she asked me: where do I find out what a gemstone should cost when I do my pricing? Where do I get my price lists so I can come up with a retail price for my customers? 

This is probably a reasonable question when you are doing carpentry with goods purchased from Home Depot. You can look up the cost of wood and screws everywhere and add up your materials to determine your selling price (adding labor, of course). But the gem trade doesn’t work that way, and pricing a gem correctly is very difficult. Firstly, gemstone prices are well protected trade secrets. And markup depends on labor, even if the labor “merely” consists of spending the time making pairs or sets out of parcels, grading melees by size and color, or grading gems by quality. Pricing also depends on how you purchase your goods: are you buying larger parcels of gemstone rough, faceted parcels, or single stones? It depends on where you buy them, i.e., on location, in Bangkok, Tucson. And it depends on how much you can spend. Obviously, the more buying power you have, the lower the price is going to be. Your spending can be over time or all at once, but the cheapest prices come to those who buy on a consistent basis and pay up front. 

It doesn’t have to matter, by the way, if you are buying retail or wholesale, meaning if you have a tax ID or not. First of all, anyone can get a tax ID for anything, it doesn’t mean you actually run a business. Secondly, nobody in Tanzania, for instance, would even know the difference or care. Pricing simply depends on whether the relationship is a one off or ongoing, and on how much you are buying. And if you are buying a large investment piece from a US seller, you are likely to get a much lower markup than if you buy something small.

So, for a retail buyer, is there any way to know what the current value of a gemstone is? Yes. Valuing gems is the job of an appraisal laboratory, like the Gemological Appraisal Laboratory, who provide appraisals for insurance purposes. I’ve seen them go through the process many times. 

Examples of various gem certifications:

First of all, you need the weight and measurements of the gem, which means in most cases that if the gem is in a setting, it has to be taken out. Otherwise one has to guess the weight, and if a gem is in the vicinity of a carat break (say between .95 cts and 1.05 cts), then it can make a huge difference in price. Second, if the gem can be treated then this will affect pricing. Garnet (except some demantoid) and spinel do not have any known treatment, which means one can skip the step of finding out. Whether a stone is lab grown, as can be the case with alexandrite for instance, should be ruled out. For the most part, only a lab can do that. Evidence of heat treatment can usually be seen under a scope, but other treatments can be more complicated to determine, so all that has to be factored in. Not all appraisal labs can determine origin because they do not have a larger comparison database or the equipment for scanning. And large labs like GIA who can determine origin do not provide appraisal value.

Assuming you have all of the correct information about your gem, where does the gemologist get his or her pricing?

This may come as a surprise to you but there are price lists to work with that get published in trade magazines. They are not cheap to come by and not publically accessible, but more importantly, they are not easy to use and provide insufficient information for a lay person. The market constantly changes, and these lists get updated only every three months or less. Additionally, you would have to know how to grade the gem. Each category, i.e. “blue sapphire” will have subcategories not only by weight but also by quality, i.e. commercial quality, or fine quality, and several grades in between. There’s a degree of subjectivity here as well, as you might expect, and only experience with what you are looking at will tell you how to grade the gem. Finally, no two gem types are alike. Emerald is graded differently than Tanzanite in terms of clarity, so a fine quality tanzanite has to be loupe clean, an emerald doesn’t have to be. A fine quality blue sapphire might have to have a certain hue of blue, a fine quality heated tanzanite will in any case be blue and quality will depend just on the saturation, or at best, how much secondary purple there is. Unheated Tanzanite (except perhaps for pink) usually has a lower value, even if the collector’s market extracts a higher price!

The following emeralds are both available in the shop -- their prices are a reflection of their specific clarity, cutting, enhancement and size:

As you can probably imagine, not all gems are listed in these price lists either. Rare gems like grandidierite, hauyne, afghanite, taffeite, benitoite and many others, have no lists at all. Nor do all shades of sapphire or all shades of spinel. “I have no idea, you probably know better than I do” is an answer I have received frequently from GAL when bringing back goods from Madagascar.

What then? Then we do what you might do. Look online. Are there other vendors who sell that gem, and for how much, what is the quality? We prefer to look at largish companies that have been in the business for a few years, not pricing on  Etsy or eBay as it’s harder to determine the quality, and even harder to know if the available data on treatment and origin is correct (even if someone isn’t trying to cheat, they might still make mistakes!). If an internet search turns up nothing, then the appraisal can be left blank, and a vendor like me might try to determine availability in the market to make a prediction about the price. That is, do a standard markup based on cost and overhead (i.e. the cost of your trip), and see what happens. Gemstone evaluation is extremely difficult, even those of us with extensive experience know only a few stones. I am good with spinel, much less so with ruby for instance. I can ballpark it but for a real opinion I have to consult someone else. Paraiba I know very well, alexandrite not nearly as much. 

 

To illustrate the difficulties of gemstone pricing, I’ll end this blog with another anecdote: In 2019 I bought some larger (half carat plus) Benitoite at a then very high price in Tucson. Initially I thought I might have overpaid but I couldn’t find any that size anywhere so I just bought them anyway. I put a lower than my standard markup on them and put them on Etsy. 

A few weeks later, I received an email from the AGTA, cc’ing me on an exchange with a prospective client who had asked the AGTA about one of my Benitoite. The client wanted to know if I was (a) a member in good standing, (b) trustworthy and (c) if my Benitoite was fair market or overpriced. The AGTA representative who cc’d me in his answer wrote something positive about (a) and (b) and then stated that because Benitoite was so rare, the price simply depended on what a seller wanted to demand and if a buyer was willing to pay for it. In short, there was no real reference point. 

This is similar to what happens at an auction. You have a basic idea of what a gemstone or jewelry piece might fetch because of basic costs, but final sale prices can be lower and they can be higher. The selling price, in turn, will be used to help determine the value of similar future pieces.

Did my prospective client buy the Benitoite? Yes, he did. Presumably, my price was acceptable in the end, but I assume what convinced him was the fact that he was able to trust in the purchasing process itself. Prices can be a bit too high and a bit too low for the market in a particular moment, especially when there are market fluctuations due to other problems, i.e. a government crisis, fuel problems, local shutdowns etc., but if the gem is worth it and was bought reputably (and a US auction house would be included here), then that is one’s best bet of having hit it right in terms of the price.

If you’ve been buying gems in the last few months, you will have noticed that gemstone prices have been sharply on the rise. Obviously, this is a general trend as supply chain issues, wars, border closures and internal political problems have disrupted the entire world, not just the world of gems.

The Paraibas shown below were worth only 1/3 of their current value when they sold in 2016:

Paraiba cabochon, 2.05 carats, sold in 2016 for $1537

Paraiba Cabochon, 1.51 carats, sold in 2016 for $2718

Paraiba Cabochon, .68 carats, sold in 2016 for $679

Paraiba Cabochon, 2.75 carats, sold in 2016 for $2200

However, in the gem trade in particular, there is more pressure for material than there has been in several decades, and not just the past couple of years since Covid.  Back in the 1980s and early 90s, there was a bit of a boom with amethyst, citrine, red garnet and topaz among others, but it’s been fairly even-steven until more recently.

When I started selling loose gems around 2009, very few buyers were asking for unheated sapphires or unoiled emeralds, and nobody asked for cobalt and jedi spinel, hauyne, benitoite or kornerupine, even Paraiba, although all of those gems existed back then! These days, we see a much more educated buyer who wants to know the origin and treatment of gems, and who is requesting certificates for evidence.

This is likely due to the increase in internet education and direct (international) internet sales, but it is also the result of celebrities buying colored gems. Nowadays, buyers know what kinds of gems are rare and they want to have something unique rather than what they can get in a regular jewelry or chain store at the mall.

 This change in consumer behavior has caused luxury jewelry brands to pay significantly more attention when they acquire gems, and that in turn has led to a squeeze as no colored gemstone worth investment attention comes in near sufficient quantities to meet such a demand. In Manhattan we can see this trend unfolding first hand because most of the luxury brands, including but not limited to Tiffany’s, have their main location in NY and operate closely with the Trade on 47^th Street.

Word on 47th street has it that since 2021, these major jewelry houses are investing significant funds into securing gemstones with fewer treatments and enhancements, and paying a premium for acquisition! Some go as far as refusing to buy any gems from conflict zones such as Myanmar, the Congo, Afghanistan, or gems that have significant treatment like resin treated emerald from Colombia. Even heated sapphires are avoided in the market these days despite the fact that over 95% of sapphires are routinely heated, making unheated sapphires very hard to come by and expensive. This is a very significant development in the trade and I want you to take note of this, both with regard to what you want to buy but also with regard to what you have!

Now, let’s look on the supply side. Here, there has been an opposing trend, with production, availability and international exports actually shrinking. I was told, for example, that diamond prices have increased about 15-20% in just a few months. This has been the result of several major developments since around 2020, mainly of course the pandemic, but that has been by no means the whole story.

But let’s start with Covid 19. Some border closures remain in effect more than two years post the initial lockdowns. Otherwise, entry is subject to long quarantines, as is the case in Hong Kong and Vietnam, which are both facing some of their worst outbreaks since 2020, just as they were getting ready to reopen more broadly and had reduced their quarantine time. While Hong Kong does not produce gems, it is a major center for faceting them and for jewelry production and thus very important to the trade. With increasing pressure from China, many do not expect Hong Kong to be a major player in the industry in the future.

Gems from Vietnam have gained a lot of popularity lately, in particular, with cobalt spinel but also the somewhat lesser known lavender and pink varieties. But export from Vietnam is still mainly achieved by direct export, that is, by taking the gems or the gemstone rough across the border in person, i.e. by airplane from Hanoi to Bangkok. Needless to say this has been near impossible for over two years now, and things are not yet improving. In addition, the government has banned mining in the Luc Yen region, so while the gemstone market has reopened, there isn’t much new material. I do not know the reason why, unfortunately.

Thailand has just recently eased its restrictions but even though it is richer than Vietnam, vaccine and testing capabilities are not at the level that we can expect in the US, Canada or Europe. This will continue to disrupt trade as Bangkok is one of the world’s leading gem cutting and trading centers. Export has been largely by shipping since 2020 (rivaled by direct export before that). Word also had it that in Tucson 2022, Thai buyers came to purchase as opposed to selling, because, as a Bangkok buyer told one of my sources, some prices on sapphire in the US were lower than in Thailand by as much as 40%.

Also, because of the many border closures, tourism has not yet returned to its pre-pandemic levels, and countries such as Thailand, Vietnam but also Sri Lanka (among many many others) suffer from the lack of tourist income. In fact, Sri Lanka, a world leading producer of corundum, is on the verge of total economic collapse; there are food and fuel shortages, and the government is no longer able to pay back its foreign debt. This has a direct impact on mining because much of the small machinery used runs on diesel.

But not all supply chain problems in the colored stone industry are due to the pandemic. Political crisis has impacted the government of Myanmar, for instance, when in February 2021, the fledgling democratic government was taken over by the military party, the Junta once again. So Western nations cannot buy gems from Burma (Myanmar) anymore unless they want to buy them from a political dictatorship. The small illegal trading along the border between Myanmar and Thailand is down as well. Already exported Burma ruby and sapphire, but also spinel, have continued to rise in price, while at the same time, the major jewelry houses will no longer buy any ruby from Burma even though it’s not officially banned. As is so often the case, these companies think ahead by more than just a few months, and they do not want to advertise gems that come from conflict zones regardless of when they were sourced.

Moving East along the map, The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and its pursuant takeover by the Taliban has resulted in similar restrictions on the trade, impacting imports of emerald, for example. Gems can find a path out of the country via less traveled routes but that, too, has become very difficult. As far as I know there’s no gem purchasing right now on the open market in Afghanistan. Previously, the democratic government supported by the US was making import and export easier.

Speaking of the Asian continent, exports of demantoids and emeralds from Russia have always exacted a price to the government - I’m going to leave you to ponder the ethical distinction between what constitutes a government tax or a government exacted bribe in the case of a dictatorship. It has therefore never made sense for Russian gemstone sellers to bring back their inventory from a show outside of Russia.  Once exported, the gems remain in places like Hong Kong, where they have been since 2020 when travel there became nearly impossible, and will continue to sit now that Aeroflot is grounded and other air traffic to Russia on hold. Russians cannot leave the country, so they also cannot get to their merchandise to sell it.

From Russia, one’s thinking wanders naturally towards the Ukraine, and to the export of natural topaz. I witnessed a sale of natural bi-colored cognac (see video below) and blue topaz in Tucson. The seller was maybe 22 years old, and he had mined the gems together with his father. With poor English but a lot of pride, he was able to tell us exactly the block and lot number of his find for proper block chaining; meanwhile a well-known cutter who also observed the sale weighed in on how he would shape the rough. The deal was done, both parties were happy, and the grapevine tells me that there are further attempts to continue this fledgling business relationship during war time. I don’t know the details, and if I knew I would not share.

Last but not least, there have been some events unrelated to the pandemic or governmental crises. For example in 2018, the Tanzanian government prohibited exports of facet gemstone rough because it – correctly - perceived that the main profits in colored gems occur after the rough material is faceted, not before. The Sri Lankan and Colombian governments, have long restricted the export of gemstone rough, for precisely this reason. But both countries have been perfecting the cutting trade for many years, whereas Arusha, Tanzania had no more than a few dozen experienced cutters when the then new government suddenly instituted its new law, and despite many of the master dealers meeting with the president directly, the law was upheld for over a year.

When Covid hit in 2020, the Tanzanian president claimed that Covid did not exist in Tanzania and that masks were unnecessary. As a result, a few of the major gem dealers that had helped to build the trade in the 1970s simply retired and some even left the country. The Tanzanian government has since adopted a less strict stance towards gemstone export – partly because its president died in 2021 (from Covid, it appears), and the new president has a different agenda. But the Tanzanian economy has suffered nonetheless because aside from gemstones it mostly lives on tourism. These days, most of the export from Arusha is in the hands of well-funded Sri Lankan families who have tried their luck elsewhere. And many of these goods, in turn, are sold to China and other Asian countries for higher prices than they fetch in the United States.

Sri Lankan traders also happened to be involved in the event that caused the present export blockage in Madagascar that started just a few days post border reopening in November 2021. The story was all over Tucson but I also know some of this from my Malagasy friends who heard the same rumors in Antanarivo. In early November, a passenger boarding a diplomatic flight refused to check in his hand luggage even though it was slightly overweight. The luggage was eventually opened and revealed a parcel of uncut gems with an invoice for garnet for approximately USD 13000. The gems, however, were sapphire, and the estimated value is over a million USD. The traveler was arrested and all airport customs officers were also arrested for accepting bribes. (It’s a very tiny airport so imagine a couple dozen arrests). In addition, five members of the “Departement de Mines” were arrested for accepting bribes. As a result, mining sapphires (from Ilakaka) is forbidden right now and the mining director is currently hiding somewhere on the island.

All this said, keep in mind the following: the French word for bribe used by the Malagasy, is the word “cadeau” which actually means gift. This is VERY telling as it isn’t a word used merely to obfuscate the fact that a bribe is paid, but also because the need to secure food for the family without losing face by admitting one’s poverty is best recharacterized as the request for a voluntary gift. Border officials and mining department employees have very low salaries, but they are uniquely situated to be able to slow down or speed up the export of a rich Vahiny (stranger) by kindly requesting a small present. Really - the presents are small, no more than perhaps $25, which equals a weekly salary (this is a low salary even for Madagascar). Some gifts can go up to $100 but I have not personally seen anything larger than that.

That said, tens of thousands of USD, and an invoice that understates the value by 95%, is another matter entirely, and one where the government will not ignore the issue (in fact one may surmise that the government would express some interest in a more “official” bribe in form of a tax). So, once said Sri Lankan with a diplomatic passport was caught and put behind Madagascan bars, no bribe was large enough to buy him back out. And people in the mining office have decided that returning to work could get them arrested. Not even employees of DHL are willing to send packages with gems now, even if cleared by the mining division. The income even at DHL is pretty low, the substitute income one can expect from working at customs, at an international shipping agent, or a government office (like mining) is now just too risky. So at the time of this writing, these offices are, and remain, closed.

As it always is in economics, the causes for rising prices, and this includes gemstones, is never straightforward, and it involves certain contingencies that one may not have expected, like an overweight piece of hand luggage!

For this particular blog, I conferred with nine knowledgeable people that shared information with me that I would not have otherwise had access to. I, and my readers, owe them our thanks.

Here are a couple of lovely spinel examples currently available in our shop: 

After many requests we have finally managed to make Stuller settings available for custom options. If you click here, you will have access to our own Stuller showroom with all options and prices.  For example, you could do a search for “five stone bezel ring” or “six prong studs” and you will see all of the options including detailed pricing for all the metals that Stuller offers for that particular piece.  Once you have picked what you like and discussed it with us to make sure the style you picked works for our gems, we can order the parts for you and have the gems set.  

Stuller offers pretty much the largest inventory of rings, pendants, earrings and findings anywhere in the US, and items ship very quickly.  Most pieces are available for a number of different shapes and sizes of center stones, in addition to the various metals.

You will see that Stuller also offers gemstones and diamonds.  We can largely improve on these prices so I would not recommend that you use their gems.  For instance, the diamond prices I would pay with them are 1/3 above what I pay in NY.  Stuller doesn’t have natural colored diamonds, only enhanced ones (but of course if you’d like those I can get them).  And when it comes to colored gems, as you know, we offer a more unique inventory.  Having had a look through their offerings, I didn’t find the quality of the speciality items to be particularly high but the prices are. Should you see anything on the site that you like, however, or that we don’t have, I’m certainly happy to order for you.

For a more customized fit for our gems, Stuller offers a CAD adjustment to the exact calibrations of the center gem; if Stuller offers only 8x6 or 9x7mm and our gem is 8.5x7.5mm, we may want to adjust the CAD so that the gem fits exactly and doesn’t show too much of the setting underneath.  This could also be important when the gem of your choice is deeper than a standard diamond cut.  Most standard settings are not designed for colored gems but for diamonds or synthetics, and that means they have shorter prongs.  I’ve had it happen many times over that, according to a catalog, a gem should fit into a setting but when I get to the supplier and try it out, the prongs are shorter than expected and I end up with a poor fit, or have to opt to make a custom piece.  On the other hand, Stuller CAD adjustments do not cost much: $150 for changing the center stone size with a new printing and cast.  This makes the order non-refundable for us (so we have to make sure we get it right) but it will allow for a lot more options.  We are happy to guide you through whether or not an adjustment is needed.  As a general rule, it’s best if a setting is larger rather than smaller, so a size up is preferred over a size down.  And customization is most important when the size of a gem differs by half a mm or more.

Here are a couple of other things for you to keep in mind: setting the stones, final polish and side stones are not included when we order from Stuller.  For polish, we charge $40, and for the setting of melees it's $15 per stone. Setting costs for center stones can vary from $40 to over $200 for some very large stones.  Keep this in mind when estimating how much your custom piece will cost. 

As far as diamond pricing goes, for diamonds of GH SI quality we charge $1200/ct and for GH VS we charge $1400/ct.  Most Stuller listings show you the diamond number and total weight needed for halos (just scroll down for the item specs) & because our colored stone melee are all diamond cut, they should fit the Stuller settings perfectly.  Only Portuguese and step cuts are deeper and those cuts are usually reserved for larger stones.

Happy designing!

What does Retail Buying do for you?

Meanwhile the retail online seller like us, provides or should provide, an entirely different buying experience.

1. A retail seller does not get to assume that a buyer has the same level of expertise, making it obligatory to educate the buyer and give full disclose of what's important to the buyer (i.e. the risks of a cleaning product to kids or pets).