The Green Diamond

So this is the story as it happened.  I am got permission to write about it, but there will be no names and no pictures. 

I was futzing around with princess cut citrines at D’s booth in one of the exchanges on 47^th Street, when one of his friends came downstairs from the office.  “They’re cutting a natural green diamond.  You should come up and see it.”

A green diamond?  “That’s a natural color – no treatment?” I wanted to know.  “It exists, but they are extremely rare,” was the answer.  So when it was time to close, D. quickly shoved his trays into the safe and we headed upstairs, to the 15^th floor of the building across the street.  We rang the bell.  D’s been using the office for nearly 30 years, but still, we had to get buzzed in.

The diamond cutters place was tiny.  The front “office” just fits the desk and some rickety chairs, the dirty windows face the back alley and there’s dust and grime everywhere from all the cutting.  Two Italian guys that I’d never seen before were lazing on the chairs, smoking cigarettes.  

The cutting room next door was even smaller.  There were three cutting wheels crammed next to one another, two of them constantly whirring around, the third one occupied by the guy who fixes the wheels, and who uses the space because he doesn’t one of his own.  The three high chairs for the cutters just fit into the narrow space, wheels to be fixed were lining the wall behind them.  D’s friend was sitting at his wheel, letting it shave away at a morsel of green glitter that was tightly fastened onto a grip. 

The mood seemed relaxed, and I started chatting with the Italian guys.  Or tried to – one of them know only a few words of English (names of gemstones, mostly), the other managed complete sentences here and there.  They traveled the world, they said, looking for diamonds and gold, going into mines and finding places to dig.  “Not very safe,” they claimed, there was always a chance of getting malaria or some other disease.  The green diamond, they had found on their latest dig somewhere in Brazil.  To have it cut, they stopped in New York on their way home.  Then they were going to try to sell it.

Meanwhile, the cutter had completed the bottom facets and much of the top of the stone.  D didn’t take his eyes off of it.  “You need to always be sure where the diamond is,” he said to me quietly.  “If it falls, we’ll be looking for it all over.”  That’s when I first realized that things were much less relaxed than I had thought.  The cutter, too, didn’t take his eyes off the stone.  He checked the facets every minute or so.  He told me that he usually just did just the back facets, which was his specialty, but the brilliandeer, the guy who does the front facets, was away in India, so he had to do those as well.  “Haven’t done this in ages,” he said, “but it all comes back.  It’s just in how the hands move.” 

By now, my eyes were fixated on the stone as well.  That was a good thing, it turned out, because at one point the cutter tried to pick it up with his tweezers to loupe it, and it fell on the table.  My eyes followed it automatically, so I spotted it first.  “There.” “Thank you,” he said, followed by a sigh of relief.  Meanwhile, D joked around to break the tension, skipping his 6 o’clock Long Island train.

So what was so special about this piece that we had to keep the cutter calm, and never taking our eyes off the stone?  The gem, once it was finished, turned out to be miniscule, maybe .25 carats and just 5x3mm diameter.  So surely it wasn’t the size.  I was trying to figure out how to ask. “Have any of you ever seen a natural green diamond before?” I looked around the room.  “No, never,” was the answer.  Not the cutter who’s been cutting for 30 years, not his friend who fixed the wheels, not D., and not of the Italian guys.  Nobody.  Not that color.  It was emerald green, more grassy green from the side and a little more bluish green from the top.  I didn’t even know diamonds could look like that.

D and I stayed for another hour, until the stone was done, which took two or three hours in total.  For this “once in a lifetime” job, the cutter got paid $200.  The stone didn’t have a ton of facets, and it had a tiny hole somewhere which, upon mutual decision, didn’t get polished out because it would make the gem even smaller.  My parting question to the Italians: “how much will you try to get for this stone?”  The answer?  “Between $25,000 and 50,000.”  Presumably, I will never see a natural green diamond again.

Emeralds: Before the Oil, After the Oil, and After That

So my gemstone dealer D. and I decided to conduct an experiment.  It was an ancient one, and he’s done it before of course, but I never had: we tested how an emerald would change if it got oiled.  Oiling emeralds is as old as the hills, and it is common practice.  Most emeralds on the market are oiled – an eye clean emerald that hasn’t been oiled is a rarity.  I’ve read that cedar wood oil is a commonly used filler, but D. uses linseed oil, and a friend of his uses canola oil.  The oil seeps into the stone through the cracks that reach the surface, thereby masking some of the flaws.  Over time, the oil dries out and the cracks get exposed, but the process can then just be repeated.  It is also reversible: if you want to get the oil out, just submerge it in acetone or denatured alcohol for a few days. 

For our experiment, D. temporarily sacrificed a matched pair of 6mm round emeralds that he cut himself.  Now the oil D. uses (but only when explicitly asked to enhance a stone) contains green dye.  That’s technically a “no no” in the industry.  Only colorless oils are considered acceptable, though who knows how many people also use dye.  Here’s a picture of his oil:

Dyed Linseed Oil

D. heated up the oil a little in order to liquefy it more.  He also warmed up the stones a tad over a flame (but not too much, as they can fissure).  That way, more oil gets into the stone, he claimed.  This is how the emeralds looked before submersion:



Emeralds Before Oiling in Fluorescent Lighting

We left the emeralds in the oil for a week, then D. took them out and wiped them with a cloth.  I’ve often seen D. throw one of his gems into alcohol for a little while before presenting it to a customer.  That way it is squeaky clean (it also signals that the gem wasn’t oiled).  In this case, he refrained from doing so of course. 

Upon visible inspection, the stones had actually brightened up a bit.  We were expecting them to darken because of the dye, but because this pair had a fair number of inclusions that were filled, and as a result they actually looked lighter (because more light could pass through would be my guess).  You can also see – a little bit at least – that the number of black inclusions in the stones visibly lessened.  My photos were not all taken in the same lighting conditions – I tried but it just didn’t pan out – and my camera isn’t the best, but I think you can tell the difference.  Look especially at the stone on the right.  It has a black line on the right top which has vanished in the second set of pics. 

Emeralds After Oiling in Sunlight

 

Emeralds After Oiling in Shade

Now, D. wouldn’t want to sell an oiled emerald, so we had to get the oil back out.  Also, I thought it was instructive to show that his can safely be done.  So I put the stones into denatured alcohol for a couple of days, then just wiped them dry.  I think they should be left in there some more, but already, you can see below the one larger black inclusion has re-appeared (the stone is on the left this time) and the coloring is a bit more grassy again. 



Emeralds After Submersion in Alcohol, Photographed in Shade

 Naturally, you cannot conduct this experiment with an emerald that doesn’t belong to you, and if it does belong to you, you may be in for a disappointment after getting the oil out (if you bought the stone from me, go ahead, nothing bad will happen).  Incidentally, you also don’t want to clean an emerald ultrasonically; it has the same effect.

But when you buy an emerald, there are couple of things you can do:

1) Ask about treatments, and ask specifically about oil.  In the worst case scenario, the seller won’t know.  But what he does know, he has to disclose.  Most likely, he will say that the stone has been oiled.

2) Loupe the stone, look for an oily film, or ask the seller to clean it in alcohol for you.

3) Under the loupe, look for cracks that reach the surface.  The fewer such cracks there are, the less likely it is that the oil has changed the gem very much. 

In terms of value, you get what you pay for: a heavily oiled stone has less value than an un-oiled one.  Oiling changes the stone somewhat, but not drastically, as you can see here.  Other fillers (epoxy and polymers) can achieve more dramatic changes.  Those definitely need to be disclosed to the buyer, and if you can, stay away from them.  A totally untreated, eye clean and richly colored Columbian emerald of even half a carat should cost you about $500 wholesale, so that gives you an idea.  And good luck finding one!  The emeralds I have, beautiful and sparkly as they are, all have at least a couple of inclusions that are visible to the naked eye.  Some of my low grade cabochons are opaque (but I’ll sell those for much less).  Also, the lighter stones, while they have less value in terms of color, are also cleaner and so they have higher brilliance.  I prefer the slightly lighter ones for some reason, but this is really a matter of taste. 

Garnets and the other Garnets

January is garnet month, or so the Jeweler’s Association says, at any rate.  And if you are thinking red or pink garnet, then this would be a very short blog entry.  It would end right here.

Luckily, garnet is a lot more interesting than that once you get away from the reds.  While there are, supposedly, a lot of distinctions to be made with regard to red garnet - pyrope, almandine, rhodolite - in the words of my favorite gemstone dealer, D.:

“It’s all the same stuff, it comes from the same places and it gets mined by the truckload.”

The good stuff, in my opinion and in that of many others, are Spessartite and Mandarin garnet, Tsavorite, and Demantoid.  Most of these are found in Africa, mainly Kenya and Tanzania, but now also Nigeria (Demantoid and Spessartite also occur outside of Africa).  And all of them are recent additions to the gemstone market.  Insiders think that these garnets are now where Tanzanite was thirty years ago: they are already fairly hard to find, but still reasonable in price because the mass market is barely aware of them.  But give it time and this will change. 

Garnet is also interesting is that it is never treated.  It doesn’t need it, for one, and secondly, none of the treatments that have been tried have actually enhanced the way it looks.  So there hasn’t been any point.

1. Spessartite and Mandarin garnet: the distinction between these two is fluid.  The lighter more orangy stuff is called “Mandarin,” the darker, more brownish gems are Spessartite (named after the Spessart forest in Germany where it was first found).  I’ve only ever seen Spessartite and some very heavily occluded Mandarin.  But garnet should not have a lot of inclusions, consequently, that stuff is very cheap, starting at perhaps $8 a carat.  The nicer stuff trades for 10 times that or more.  Larger sizes (say 3-10 carats) are around at the moment, but as with all gems, the price per carat changes with size.

Tsavorite Parcel from Nigeria

Anecdote: when I bought my first larger Spessartite parcel last fall (see picture above), the dealer quoted me a ridiculously low price.  I saw that his tray contained rather a large number of bigger size pieces.  So I asked if he was sure about the low price.  He said “yes” and so I took out all the big and clear stuff.  I could tell he was not happy, but a price is a price.  At the end of the transaction, he said: “you know you got a good deal.”  He was right.

Periodically, I list Spessartite earrings and rings on my site.  They all come from that dealer.  If it is at all your color, I recommend these to you as among my very best buys.

2. Tsavorite: these belong in the Grossular garnet variety, where Grossular is the occluded, non-gem grade stuff, and Tsavorite the clean stuff.  It is named after Tsavo National Park in Kenya where it was first found.  Already, Tsavorite is traded at a significantly higher price than Spessartite, and anything over a carat is hard to find.  Considerably more durable and cleaner than emerald but similar in coloring, Tsavorite is a great buy.  The darker colors are more highly valued than the lighter ones, but the medium green ones I offer out in my stud earring sections are a good buy.  The Tsavorite in those earrings are not the very best available, but they are an excellent value for the money.  I will try, this spring, to get some other, larger pieces.  But they will definitely cost more.

Tsavorite Garnet Stud Earrings

3. Demantoid: this is the most expensive garnet variety, and the only color I’ve ever actually seen it in is an olive green.  Demantoid is very clear, and comes in all green varieties from more yellowish green to more emerald green.  I don’t have any because it costs even more than Tsavorite, so there’s no point for me to stock it.  The olive colors are cheaper, but not as nice, the good stuff, again, is the clear stuff with fewer yellow overtones.  Wholesale prices are $100-$150 per carat for the small sizes.



Demantoid Garnet Parcel from gemselect.com



New Ideas for a New Year

After a first full year on Etsy, I have lots of new ideas, and I want to drop those ideas that didn’t work.  Here’s a first stab at my plans – any suggestions and ideas are most welcome!

1. More gemstones and gemstone designs, fewer wire wraps.  Sad but true, wire wraps and beaded designs don’t sell very well on Etsy.  So I’ve deleted my wire wrap earring section and replaced it with a hoop and dangly earring section that will focus on set stones, not beads.  I’m actually very exited about this, because it lets me use my gemstones in a whole new way.  I will work with both 14K and sterling hoops, and I will provide several design options for most listings.

Blue Topaz Hoop Earrings

2. Free earrings with wire wraps.  I’m not a matchy matchy person, but insofar as my wire wrapped earrings have sold at all, they have sold as complements to the necklaces.  So I’m giving them away.  Consider it a “wire wrap stimulus package”.

3. More squares.  My single best selling gemstone cut last year has been the princess cut, with baguettes running a close second.  So I’m going to try my best to find more of those.  I have some amethyst ready to go, and green tourmalines in the works for earrings.  Garnet, peridot, and citrine are fairly easy to get in princess cuts,  and I think I can also find another princess cut emerald.  And baguettes for rings.  Soon to be listed are a pink tourmaline, an aquamarine and a blue zircon ring using baguettes and emerald cuts. 

4. More rings.  Rings are my best selling item on Etsy, right up there with post earrings and of course, the never ending tie bars.  So more rings it is, low end to high end price range.  I’ll go for some larger stones as well, as many of you like those.  But note that this will either mean higher prices or less interesting gems.  Emeralds, rubies and sapphires, untreated and natural, are pretty affordable in the larger sizes.  I am also working on some more melted rings – I love them, and I’ve gotten a few sales (as well as many complements) out of them during the holiday season.

Blue Zircon Baguette Ring

5. More 14K gold.  Prices for gold are through the roof, so this is going to make some items more expensive.  But my main idea is to use some 14K gold beads as accents, and 14K gold bezels or settings for the rings.  That will keep the cost manageable.  But note that a 14K setting can cost me anywhere between $15 and $50.  Prong settings cost less than baguettes, and full bezels are the most expensive.  The 14K gold beads are not so bad in price, but they take time to add.

6. Clearance items.  What doesn’t sell must go at a lower price.  I’ve lowered the price on some of the items that have been on Etsy the longest.  It you want something out of that section but still think they’re too expensive for you, make me an offer.  I’d rather see the items worn than wasted.

The Ten Things I Learned in 2010

It is snowing outside, and the wind is howling.  So long as you don’t look down at the cars, Jersey City feels a tiny bit like a Winter Wonderland.  The year is drawing to a close.  This is when we reflect on what was good, or bad, about the year that has gone by, and make New Year’s resolutions.  I’m not the reflective type, however, not in that sense anyway, and I make resolutions whenever they occur to me.  My new year begins in September.  But taxes have to be filed, which means I have to sort through tons of receipts in the coming weeks.  And all those pieces of paper yield a picture of sorts, from which I can draw conclusions.

1. Tie bars are back in style.  Alternatively: I am one of very few people who still makes them.  In philosopher’s lingo, these two hypotheses are empirically equivalent: I sold over 250 tie bars this year.  240 of them (or something like that) were plain, which is too bad given how much I love gems.

2. December is not the busiest time of the year on Etsy.  I have to count this out, but I don’t even think I sold more tie bars.  I just sold them individually, as opposed to 5 or 10 at a time to a summer wedding.  In terms of other jewelry, business was about the same.  November, in fact, was better.

3. Sales do not slow down after the holidays.  Ok, it is a bit early to tell.  But I still have 10 custom orders pending.  And I’ve had six sales since December 24.

4. Etsy success tips don’t work.  I tried the gift certificate, I changed my shipping options, and I did a few other things that the Etsy success emails suggested.  Nobody bought the gift certificate, nor did sales increase from any of the other tips.  This makes sense: send a good tip around to everyone, a large number of people follow it, thereby diluting its success.  That’s why business success secrets are, well, secrets.

5. Craft shows are a two edged sword.  You get up early, pull out your shoulder from carrying your stuff, set up for an hour or two, and then you hope that someone comes by and wants your items, and not those of the other dozes of competing jewelery tables.  If you get busy, that’s awesome, if not, you feel that you've totally wasted your day.  Time does not grow on trees, and the German in me hates nothing more than to throw it away.  I may have to rethink some of these shows.

6. Etsy sales and craft show sales don’t overlap.  I’ve sold perhaps 50 pairs of wire-wrapped briolette earrings this year.  Only one pair was sold on Etsy (to a local customer).  It was the same with wire-wrapped and beaded necklaces: the ratio was perhaps 1 in 5, Etsy to craft show.  I think that stuff just gets drowned on Etsy.  Everyone and their mother knows how to string, and anyone can now buy beads at wholesale price from India over the internet.  On Etsy, meanwhile, I sell post earrings and rings with hard to find gemstones.  And - yes - tie bars.

7. I have too many beads.  That’s definitely a lesson learned.  I’m going to have to join Bead Hoarders Anonymous.  Or sell down, which is the plan.  So the wire wrapped and beaded stuff I will make in coming weeks will be more opulent and “wasteful”.  I plan to keep prices low and just sell sell sell.

*** And now for my top three – what I've gleaned from a year in the diamond district ***

8. The guys there told me this in the beginning.  If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll get cheated.  I didn’t believe it.  Not in America, with all those consumer protection laws.  I take it back.  The Street may be one of the easiest places to get cheated in America.  Now this lesson should take up an entire blog entry, so you’re going to have to wait.  I had to analyze why this is, and I’ve come up with what I think are some good hypotheses.

9. The Street is dying.  Slowly.  Two reasons come to mind.  The obvious one is the economic downturn, and jewelry, after all, is not an everyday use item like food or clothing.  The second reason is the internet.  Companies like Blue Nile are killing the diamond trade, and other companies offer beads and gems to the public at near wholesale prices (about double the wholesale prices is my estimate, where retail is 3-5 times the wholesale price).  Gem sales on TV are doing their own bit to pretend to the public that they are getting good deals (hint) when buying gems direct.  I personally don’t think there are very good deals to be had that way, but evidently enough other people believe it.

10. This last lesson follows from the previous two: once you get past the steep learning curve with high end gems – and it is steeper than I had thought – and once you have made some trustworthy connections, you can get great stuff at a great price.  Sometimes you have to buy parcels, mostly you pay cash by way of making the deal immediate and non-refundable, and very often you have to take your time to sift through unsorted material.  But it pays off.  I had a hunch about this before, and I am certain now that the emeralds I have, to give just one example, can’t be gotten anywhere else, or at anything like the price that I paid. 



A little selection from my Columbian Emerald Parcel



Holiday Rush in the Diamond District?

There’s certainly a noticeable change in the diamond district these days.  But not all of it is for the better.  As my tie bar orders are going through the roof (I thought I was selling jewelry, but ok), I found myself having to rush into the city on short notice to get more wire.  A great opportunity, I thought, because there are some other things I could get done the same day.  It’s now or never, after all.  I have two more shows this year, and then that’s it until March.

I had wanted to get my favorite setter, A. to burnish some diamonds into tie bars for me, but I couldn’t even get near him at first.  Three other guys were surrounding him, waiting for their jobs to get done.  A half hour later I found him busily setting away while chatting on the phone; Armenian music was blasting from the computer in front of him.  But at least there wasn’t anybody else waiting.  “Too busy,” was the response to my request.  And did he do the order from last week?  “No, got sick.”   At least he did that one on the spot for me, though. 

The other outfit I use was overwhelmed as well, so I asked my polishing service if they knew someone.  “Maybe,” the polisher said, and took my stones and tie bars.  Four hours later, I received my first real rush job: two totally unusable pieces of junk.  The stones looked like they had been jabbed into the silver by someone in bad need of glasses.  I returned them to the polisher, to go back to whatever setter he had dug up for the job.  “Maybe they can be fixed,” the polisher thought.  I doubt it.  It was a dumb idea on my part, really, with Christmas just around the corner.

Since I had to wait for several last minute engravings, and for two rings that I wanted to have set, I decided to make good use of my time.  I borrowed a hammer and mandrel from a jeweler to hammer a pattern onto a ring that is supposed to be my aunt’s Christmas present.  There I was, dinging away while sitting at D’s gemstone booth, when I got approached by a woman working for the silver dealer in the back.  “Are you going to be done soon?  This is giving me a headache.” “Yes,” I said.  Why was she annoyed?, I wondered, since this is a loud exchange and there are always jewelers at work.  But I don’t rent a booth there, so I guess I had no right to ding.

Other than that, the day was peaceful.  Way too peaceful in fact.  The number of people wanting to buy D’s gemstones aside from me that day?  Zero.  Nobody buys gemstones in December, unless it’s an emergency.  So all the gemstone dealers are broke – just in time for their own holidays, which are correspondingly meager.  Money doesn’t start flowing again until early spring, when jewelers are stocking up on new inventory.  One hopes, anyway.

One person did show up.  He needed a stone cut to fit into a setting, within the hour, so D. shaved it down on his cutting wheel.  He shaved a little too eagerly, as it turned out, because he cut the stone too small.  So much for that rush order.  D had to cut an entirely new stone. 

Aside from that, another dealer misplaced a $30,000 parcel of diamonds that was supposed to go to the GIA lab for a certificate.  (Even a $30,000 parcel can be really small.)  I don’t know if it got found, I only know it hadn’t turned up by the time I left.

I got home late.  By the time I was all done it was nearly 6:00 p.m.  And then I spent another few hours shipping out tie bars.  Tie bars without gem stones, that is.

December Birthstones: Is Tanzanite a Good Buy?

As most of you who read my blog know, I don’t think much of birthstones.  My own birthstone is pearl, with alternates of moonstone and alexandrite, but my favorite gems are emerald, sapphire and tsavorite.  All of these go well with my skin tone and with the colors I like to wear, which should really be more important.

While the association between zodiac signs and specific gems goes way back, the list of birthstones was standardized some time in the last century by the Association of Jewelers in America.  That list only bears a passing resemblance to the zodiac birthstones and the various other birthstone lists that are floating around.  And since Tanzanite was only discovered in 1967, it wasn’t on any of the old lists anyway.  It was only recently added to the December birthstones - for marketing purposes.

Melted Tanzanite Ring - SOLD

When first discovered, Tanzanite, which belongs in the zoisite family, was dirt cheap.  Nobody knew about it, so there was no market for it.  An old time jeweler told me once that he was given Tanzanite for next to nothing in the early 1970s.  Other dealers have told me the same. 

These days, the Tanzanian government controls production, and since Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world, I am assuming that the Tanzanian people profit very little from this.  Prices have risen significantly since the early days.  Tanzania is the only country in which Tanzanite is found, and there are only 4 mines or so in which it is produced.  Serious flooding issues have created difficulties for mining, so it isn’t clear how much Tanzanite is actually available.  Lastly, there’s a government ban in place which prohibits any Tanzanite to be shipped to Jaipur for cutting (many, if not most of the worlds gemstones are cut in Jaipur).

All these factors make it tough to judge if Tanzanite has any true collector’s value.  And there’s one more issue – the most serious one to me.  Tanzanite is a very soft stone.  It can crack during setting – this has happened to me more than once.  If you have it set in a ring, don’t wear it every day, and take it off before doing any chores.  My stone dealer D., who carries very little Tanzanite, which dates to the early mining dates, is no longer buying any more.  His materials consist of smaller, lighter, stones which show no evidence of heat treatment.  His reason for not trading in it is that often, jewelers will borrow a stone to show it to a customer, but they will put it in a mounting first (so it looks really nice).  If the customer turns down the stone, it may come back to D. scratched or cracked.  If D. does not carefully re-inspect his merchandize, he may not notice and then no reclamation is possible.  Or the jeweler will simply claim that he didn’t crack the stone, and these sort of disputes are hard to settle.

Tanzanites are pretty much universally heat treated.  During the earlier mining days, some deposits found on the surface, where they were exposed to sunlight (which provides natural irradiation), were naturally light purple.  Ordinarily, however, the material that comes out of the ground is brownish, and has to be heated to drive bring out the purple.

In terms of color, the most desirable Tanzanite has a rich dark bluish purple.  Lighter stones, the lavender colored ones, are less valuable.  In smaller sizes, however, that may be all that’s available because the depth of a stone is what creates the darker color.  If you re-cut a stone that has a rich dark coloring, you may surrender some of its color intensity.

My evaluation?  Tanzanite is a beautiful stone, you should buy if it you love it.  But if you are a collector, there are better investments out there.

My last pair of round Tanzanite Post Earrings