When Gems went Retail: The High Cost of Saving Money

It is an extremely common phenomenon these days: an individual buys a loose gem directly from a manufacturer with the intent of getting a piece of jewelry made. Then they try to find a jeweler to make it and discover that the jeweler does not work with client’s gems, cannot work with the gem the client owns, or will do it but only for a price that is higher than any finished piece of jewelry of a similar sort.

For retail buyers, this is an extremely frustrating scenario, as they usually hope not only to get something unique made for them but also – often – they had intended to save money, having obtained the center gem directly from the source without a middle man.

In this blog, I want to focus on how these misunderstandings come about, and what you as a retail buyer can do about them to avoid disappointment.

First, a bit of history. Until around 2010-2012, gemstones could not be purchased online. A buyer had to go to a jeweler who carried loose stones and purchase the gemstone there. Direct purchase of loose gems was extremely rare, except perhaps in the investment department: buying an expensive diamond or sapphire or a piece of jewelry for an estate. But once internet purchases became the norm, sellers from all over the world started to offer gemstones directly to retail buyers, often at a price vastly lower than a jewelry store. Naturally, this was very appealing!

There was a hitch, however. Gemstone manufacturers – meaning the people who source gemstone rough and cut gems for resale – do not cut gems to fit into settings.

But, you might say, isn’t that the whole point? Well, yes, it is! The problem is that you cannot cut most colored gems the way you cut diamonds, and all commercially available settings without exception are made for diamond cuts. Diamond cuts tend to be much flatter than the cuts commonly needed to create a colored gem without window: Portuguese cut, step cut, and most other non-round cuts such as emerald cut.

Diamond cuts are always the same: 1/3 of the depth is from girdle to table, 2/3 is the depth from girdle to culet. In a colored gem, the distance between girdle and culet is almost always deeper than 2/3, and the top part can be deeper too. The overall depths all vary from gem to gem. They vary so much in fact that whenever I make a custom piece, I have to send my CAD designer the girdle to table and girdle to culet measurements so she can make the seat and prong length match.

Commercially available jewelry has short prongs and a higher seat. This saves a lot of money on metal costs and so there’s incentive for jewelry companies like Stuller to maintain the status quo.

Also, the overall dimensions often vary. Colored gem ovals are rarely perfectly calibrated into 6×4 or 7x5mm. They can be 7.23 x 4.88mm or anything else, and that goes for all gem shapes. Each is unique, for the same reason as why the depth varies: to make the best gem possible out of the piece of rough. By contrast, most diamonds, and of course all synthetic stones are calibrated to fit into simple settings.

So where does that leave us? Gemstone manufacturers attempt to cut the gems to bring out the best in the gem, whereas jewelry manufacturers make settings not intended for these types of gems. In a way, their objectives are at cross purposes.

As a result, settings for colored gems must be custom made most of the time. And that means you cannot distribute things like design cost (the CAD) over more than one piece.

In addition, colored stones vary vastly in their properties. They have different hardnesses, different cleavage and different inclusions, all of which imply that they cannot all be treated the same way. Some need softer metal for setting (usually 18K yellow gold or platinum). Others cannot touch in pave setting like diamonds can (so the space between the gems in a halo has to be calculated differently).

And finally, when a jewelry manufacturer makes an entire line of pieces, they can distribute the cost of breakage. For all of us in the jewelry industry, it is mandatory that we provide additional gems for a design, especially accent and halo stones. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for a retail buyer to have only purchased the exact number of gems they believe they need for a design. And if the gems are rare or the colors were hard to match, it may not be possible to get more at a later point.

Just recently an Australian jeweler contacted me because they were asked to size one of my rings that belonged to one of my clients, and all the hauyne came out in the ultrasonic.

You cannot put hauyne rings into ultrasonic because they cannot be set with the same force as diamonds, so they are in the setting more loosely. Ultrasonic cleaning causes vibrations that wiggle the gems out. And because hauyne is very soft, all these gems broke. At $3000/ct that is an expensive break. Plus there are only 2-3 places in the world where you can buy calibrated hauyne for jewelry.

Obviously, as jewelers are beginning to better understand that they may be getting gems from clients that require a lot of special treatment, they raise their manufacturing costs to assume all that additional risk. Or they just refuse to work with clients’ stones like we do.

So, what is a retail gem collector to do that wants to buy a specialty stone because they prefer custom to commercial jewelry? Do they have to always pay more?

I think the answer is yes, they do. This is simply the price for not being able to distribute costs and risks the same way as one can in mass production.

That said, however, I would still always recommend that you buy gems from a jeweler rather than a manufacturer. If you would like to have a piece of jewelry made, you should work with someone who understands the gems they will be working with, and one way to guarantee that is to buy them from the person who will be working with them.

At CRD, we always made it a priority to be able to work with the gems we sell. We also often keep additional small stones around for setting, we do not expect our clients to pay for breakage; and we need not have you sign a waiver for a gem that does not belong to us and that we cannot replace. All of our custom pieces are made with longer prongs and the pave setting accommodates size variations. Everything is designed for colored gems, not for diamonds. Our setters have years of experience working with all sorts of colored stones, and we have the expertise to know how to communicate with them about what tools and setting methods will be needed, whether a piece can go into ultrasonic, if it can be steamed, pickled etc. We also steer clients away from risky designs that do not protect the stone (if they let us, that is).

For custom jewelry with gems that have unique properties, the best experience a buyer can have is by working with someone who understands not only jewelry, and not only gems, but both!