Tucson: The List

I don't think I've been this excited about a trip in a very long time - not even my Christmas trip home to Germany and France.  Going to Tucson is just different.  And expensive, lol.

I am slowly assembling a list of gems I want to look for.  Here is my progress.  Additional suggestions are welcome - if you have a specific order, let me know, suggestions are just that, I won't hold you to buying anything.  :)

Paraiba: Anything reasonable, but only from Brazil.  Melees.1-2mm rd.

Paraiba and Spinel

Emerald and Hauynite

Hauynite: 1-2mm round melee, maybe one larger piece (meaning 3mm or so).  They break easily so the investment is not a good one.

Burma Spinel: Melees and small baguette, there isn't likely to be anything larger that's good but I'll look.

Vietnamese Spinel: Matched pairs, elongated pear shape, lavender.  Maybe a color changer.  They also have pinks from Vietnam, nice color, no grey but less vibrant than Mahenge.  With Mahenges disappearing from the market, at least for the moment, I may buy though.

Vietnamese Cobalt Spinel: There isn't likely to be much, I heard there was little or no production.  But I will look.

Sapphire: Blue pairs, always. rich purple, color change, cool shapes.  Maybe stars (I could use thoughts on that, I'm iffy about whether I should buy).  Only no heat Ceylon of course, probably no other sapphire for me.  Melee - last year I got these nice lavender melees that I use a lot.  I will look for that seller, he also had the teal green rounds.

Purple Sapphire and Paraiba Tourmaline

Ruby: Maybe one or two pieces.  Madagascan has a nice blood red color.  So that's a thought.  Maybe a ruby star?

Aqua: Looking for nice baguette shapes.  At the moment aqua supply is low.  Prices have jumped up a bit.

Sphene: I'm totally out, but I will probably have to go for Sri Lankan stuff, which has more orange tones in it.

Tourmaline, other: not high on the list but if I see something nice I'm game.  Indicolite would be good.  Or a light seafoam color.  Afghani material.

Other: anything matched elongated pear (i.e. tourmaline).  Any other cool baguette shapes for my new pieces, larger ones for earrings.

What I'm not prioritizing: emerald (my supplier is in NY and last year nobody in Tucson had anything reasonable), Mahenge, Tsavorite, Mint and other Garnet (my supplier is also here).

There are three people I want to get to on the first day (tall order).  There is always a mad rush for the booths with more rare goods or good prices.  I remember one booth where I know the owner was over run.  You couldn't see anything.  Lucky for me that I knew them, so I put aside a small tray for myself and told them to do the invoice the end of the day.

Larger companies,like online retailers, often show up on the first day and buy a lot. They buy in big gobs and they seem to prefer to grab entire productions of something to corner the market.  That's what I saw in Tucson last year anyway.  Other companies send scouts, or hire gem buyers, to get them their goods.  So for certain things, there can be competition among buyers.  Other things seem to hang out the entire show and nobody buys them.  The trick is not to get caught up in the mad rush.

Vietnamese and Burma Spinel

Red Tourmaline

Again, let me know what, if anything, might be on the list.

Yvonne

Gem Shows: Past, Present and Future

Traveling to gem shows to shop was a new thing for me this year.  I did go to the Springfield Gem and Mineral Show last fall but I exhibited with my jewelry and gems.  Or rather, I pretended to exhibit because I shared the booth with Jochen Hintze from Jentsch Mineralien, and since nobody was interested in my jewelry (wrong audience), I shopped while Jochen watched my inventory.  Other than that, I regularly attend the JA (Jeweler’s Association) shows in New York, but most of the vendors there are sellers I regularly interact with.  Going to the show just makes it easier to shop. 

Given how successful Tucson and Vegas were for me - I spent money and you spent money, so that is my definition of success in this case – I plan to make these regular trips.  I have to admit that, as a town, Vegas itself was not very exciting for me.  I don’t gamble, although I found that sitting at a slot machine and putting in a few pennies was the fastest way to free coffee.  There are no coffee machines in any hotel rooms so getting coffee involves going downstairs, in the direction of the casinos.    In my five days there I gambled $23, and I walked away with $17 profit.  This was not a bad start, but still, I don’t see that this is where my future lies!  I am also a big fan of daylight, of which there is none in casinos.  Nor are there any clocks, which, for Germans like me, can be anxiety producing.  Not knowing what time it is, is inherently negative for me.

Selecting Hauynites in Vegas

Food in Vegas was great though, only New York is better (yes, I live near New York, so…).  However, the show was fun and every time I go to an exhibit, I connect with new vendors.  Vegas show prices are not as good as those in Tucson, where you can often find strange deals on stuff you didn’t expect.  But the more serious and solid vendors always offer you the same prices (market forces permitting).  So I was there to shop around, to find stuff for customers, and to solidify ties with my sapphire supplier Dudley, as well as with an opal seller from Germany who has hauynites (and opals, too).

The Strip

For fun, when I go to Vegas next year I hope to add a day trip to the Grand Canyon, and in Tucson I want to check out some nearby national parks.  When you are born and raised in Europe, where everything is tiny, the vastness of the mountains and canyons of Arizona and Nevada is unreal.

But let’s get back to business.  Next month, from August 5-9, I will be attending the Springfield Gem and Mineral show again, this time to shop in earnest and without pretending to sell.  There are not many vendors in Springfield that carry what I am interested in, but Dudley is going to be there, and so will a couple more people I know.  I can, for instance, get more emerald trapiche and cat’s eye (why nobody has bought any cat’s eye is beyond me as that stuff is ultra rare – and, yes, expensive).   Also, my friend Jochen is coming, and so I will have an opportunity to learn more about the current gemstone situation in Tanzania and Mozambique. 

Comparing Color Change Sapphires

For those of you who are fans of no heat sapphire and ruby, mainly from Sri Lanka but also Africa, please let me know ahead of time if you’d like anything in particular. I can also get heated ones.  I may find some new spinel from Vietnam and Burma and Cambodian zircon (hopefully those adorable emerald cuts I got).  Don’t hold your breath on Paraibas, I know of no vendors that carry it there unless there is some sort of freak occurrence (like my finding the Paraiba melee in Vegas at this booth where there was absolutely nothing else of interest and just buying the box on a whim before anyone else figured out it was sitting there).  My Paraiba suppliers sit in NY and they are pretty wiped out – of inventory that is.

In Springfield, I can also get a lot of weird cabs (like the purple chalcedony I had), and also bigger cab material.  I don’t normally look for that stuff but I can get it.  And beads.  So keep that in mind as you browse my shop (or other shops).

There will be no other shows for me this year - the next will be Tucson again in February. 

P.S. Before I go to Springfield, I’ll be having my annual summer sale.  My projected date for that is 7/19, with 15% off the store for 2 weeks.  There will be no second 20% gem sale this year as I plan for that to be an annual event only, tied to my Tucson trip because that’s when I need to raise funds and turn over inventory the fastest, so 15% will be the largest discount offered.  

Diary From My First Tucson Show

As I reported a couple of blogs ago, this year I took a big step forward for me in my gemstone endeavors because I went to Tucson for the first time.  Hosting over 55 shows with more than 20,000 vendors, the relatively small Arizona town turns into a theater of tents, cramped with visitors from all over the world, buying and selling gems, fossils, minerals.  You have to plan your trip carefully, otherwise you get totally overwhelmed.

AGTA Show Video From Outside the Show

I mainly visited two shows, the AGTA (American Gem Trade Association) Gem Fair which consists of about 200-300 mostly American dealers, and the GJX (Gem and Jewelry Exchange) show in a big tent across the street from the AGTA, which has several hundred foreign vendors.  Just walking up and down all the aisles of each show takes a couple of hours, and because I had a limited budget, I took notes, photos, and collected business cards before I started shopping.  That is, with the exception of Dudley B.'s booth, a wholesale and show dealer only (no web presence, phone calls only, and no retail), who travels all over the world to collect unusual pieces.  I immediately stocked up on unheated Ceylon sapphires from him because his booth, as usual, was overrun with sapphire buyers within 30 minutes of the show's opening - in fact I couldn't get my invoice written up till the end of the day so they just took my business card and stuck it into a baggie until they had time.  Dudley also had some tiny cobalt spinel, demantoids and Vietnamese lavender spinel that I looked at (and bought throughout the week).  Dudley, who is pictured in the photo below, is the small, athletic, health food type, generally quiet until you ask him an interesting gem question ("interesting" being the relevant term here), then he'll open up and chat (mostly about the properties of the gems, the mining, how much can be gotten at what prices, and so forth).  Dudley does all of his own buying and he is connected to families in Sri Lanka and elsewhere who have been supplying him for decades.

Dudley B.

Pretty much by the end of the day I realized that I would not have enough spending money, which is why I started selling Brazilian Paraiba Tourmalines right away (thanks to my FB fans who promoted my link, sent me new customers and requested custom listings).  The owner of the booth with the Paraibas, Jerry, was pretty happy - and impressed I will admit - because every morning I would show up, buy another piece or two of the items I had eyed and photographed before, then sell it and show up again.  It was pretty funny actually.  Because Paraiba prices are astronomically high, buying a bunch for stock was out of the question for me.  According to Josh L. from my lab, I made some nice purchases there (I am currently getting some of the Paraibas certified for copper content).  Sadly, filming was not allowed in either show but I took a brief clip from the gallery at the AGTA show from the top, outside of the actual show floor.  These shows are heavily guarded and everyone worries about thievery (makes sense...).

Brazilian Paraiba Tourmalines

 Another interesting vendor was a small team of Israelis operating out of Thailand, whom I met at the GJX pavillion.  These guys mine almost exclusively spinel (you know how much I like those) but only from Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Burma (not Tanzania).  Their collection of Vietnamese spinel from the Trumchum mines was incredible, they said it took them 3 months to collect about 200 pieces, and they do not display those until they get to Tucson where they hope to sell them all in one shot, directly to jewelers and other gem dealers.  All single pear shapes are set aside until a match turns up.  Consequently, there were about 10 sets of matched pear pairs of which I bought three. Some of these spinels also have color change properties, they exhibit soft hues of pink in incandescent lighting.

 Vietnamese spinel

 Vietnamese spinel

On my last day, I got to chat with some German dealers that featured Hauynite, a (super expensive and tiny) gem that is only available in one place in the world, the Eiffel in Germany.  The gems are a strong cobalt blue and don't require treatment.  They are soft though.  Anyway, I did buy some melees. 

Hauynite

My final treat was a visit of my friend Jochen's show at the Arizona Mineral and Fossil Show at the Hotel Tuscon City - an indoor outdoor show where vendors set up in their hotel rooms with the lower rows sprawling onto the yard.  Jochen, a seasoned and well traveled geologist with a weathered appearance, doesn't sell fine quality or cut gems, he mainly deals in rough and specimens that he buys directly from Tanzania, Madagascar, Kenya and even the Congo.  Aside from knowing just about everything there's to know about mineral specimens, Jochen also speaks French and Swahili, so he can get around the more isolated parts of the world with ease.

Arizona Mineral and Fossil Show, Outside and Inside the Shop of Jentsch Mineralien

My only regret about my visit is that I didn't get to see much of the Arizona landscape except from my hotel room at the Westin (I got two free nights as a VIB - Very Important Buyer).  But I will go again next year, and I'll try to stay an extra two days during which I will (force myself to) go to some of the national parks, or maybe visit a ghost town and an old copper mine.