“Psst, want to buy an opal?”It’s not exactly what you’d expect to hear in the tourist thoroughfares of Mexico City…
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Month: December 2023
At least 70% of the typical Japanese cultured pearls are made in America—namely, from the shell of a freshwater Mississippi…
Quantity kills quality.As an example, we cite the Shanghai lake district of China, the world’s prime producer of freshwater cultured…
What’s in a name? Not much when it comes to conch pearls, the Caribbean’s contribution to mollusk-made gems. Gemologists treat…
According to Islamic mysticism, the first thing God created was a tablet on which was recorded every event that would…
Once a month, a boat brings provisions to a tiny Pacific atoll called Marutea in the outlying southeastern portion of…
In 1962, the last year Westerners were permitted to buy gems in recently turned socialist Burma, New York dealer Reggie…
After East African chrome tourmaline—a rare green tourmaline which, at its best, can double for fine tsavorite, even emerald—rubellite is…
Dealers old enough to remember the golden age nearly 30 years back when Burma ruby was so plentiful there was…
By now, East Africa has gained big league status as a producer of newcomer gems such as tsavorite and tanzanite.…
Remember how for years the iron-clad price ratio of gold to silver was 35:1? Then when recently it spread to…
Siam, excuse us, Thai ruby still has plenty of detractors in the world gem community. To many old guard dealers,…
Twenty-two miles from the Indian Ocean, at a small bend in Tanzania’s Umba River near the Kenyan border, you’ll find…
The stone’s blue is rich, royal and velvety, the quintessence of sapphire color. And because the gem is 24 carats,…
While buying American things may be in vogue again, national pride hasn’t helped sales of sapphires from the country’s vast…
It is almost a macho obligation these days for precious stone dealers to say they are versed in padparadscha sapphire,…
When importer Richard Postrel buys pink sapphire from Burma tribesmen, they call it ruby—and don’t take kindly to contradiction.When cutter…
Blessed is the corundum that contains rutile (titanium oxide). Not only does this mineral produce asterism—the star effect—in sapphires, it…
At its breathtaking best, tanzanite looks the spitting image of Kashmir sapphire—exhibiting the rich, royal velvety blue those stones are…
Dealers don’t like to admit it but blue topaz has given aquamarine, its blue beryl double, a hard time in…
If you had visited the Rio de Janeiro offices of gem dealer Paul Heubert in mid 1982, chances are you…
Just as East Africa is the brave new world of gem mining today, America was her counterpart a century ago.Certainly,…
Are the wives of the late African miner Ali Giowatta once again on speaking terms?One way to tell, say observers…
This sky-blue-color copper derivative, so important to the ancient Egyptians and Aztecs, has known better times.Perhaps the best times of…
One by one, the world’s most renowned deposits of blue sapphire are running dry or simply not running at all.…
By logic, pink spinel should have a much wider following among jewelers. It is often mistaken for pink sapphire (just…
The Gemological Institute of America (GIA) hosted its 16th annual research meeting at its global headquarters in Carlsbad, California, bringing…
Once upon a very real time, nearly 20 years ago, some miners in East Africa went looking for a purplish-pink…
Gem dealers are finding it harder than ever to make a plus of emerald’s greatest minus: its tendency to be…
Even in the best of times, it’s the worst of times, as far as supply goes, for natural-color (a.k.a. “fancy”)…