About Those Pretty Grape-Purple Garnets

There's been much buzz about these grape-purple Rhodolite garnets lately.  Well, actually they are closer to Malaia garnet than Rhodolite - my friend Josh Lents from GAL (Gemological Appraisal Laboratory of America: http://www.gemlab.com/) did a microscopic analysis.

Grape Garnet Ovals and Emerald Cut

But let me back up.  Purple-grape colored garnets have been around for a bit, but the material was generally from Tanzania and that stuff isn't quite as bright as these newer finds.  From what I can piece together, they first showed up at a gem dealer's office in Tanzania who is a big buyer over there (I can't disclose the name) and ended up in the hands of two US gem dealers who get many of their supplies through the Tanzanian dealer.  One of these gem sellers deals in rough, and that's how it most likely made it to some of the US cutters.  The other seller deals mainly in faceted materials, and that's how I got mine (though I buy from the other seller on occasion also).  Talking to both tracked back to the source in Tanzania, and neither of them knew of anyone else who had the material.  The actual origin of the garnet is Mozambique, however, and the market in Mozambique is not very controlled.  So even if you are a big buyer and put word out that you'd like an exclusive, the material will most likely be sold elsewhere.  This means it may turn up with other sellers in the US.  

Larger Grape Garnet Pieces from Mozambique

You should know however, that there are really only a few hundred good gem dealers throughout the US, and many know each other because they buy from each other and they vend at the same shows (i.e. the AGTA, the GJX, the JCK).  So it is ultimately a small world.  

Anyway, given the fact that these gems have not shown up anywhere so far but these two dealers, I surmise that the finds are very small.  

So what is unique about these gems?  Well, both Jaimeen Shah at Prima and Josh Lents from GAL have never seen this stuff before.  Nor had the other seller I talked with.  And that says a lot.  The color is a bright grape purple (purple with "notes" of red).  The material is clean, most pieces are smaller, and those have the best color.  

Why the name Malaia, and not Rhodolite?  Well according to Josh, Rhodolite is Pyrope and Almandine garnet.  But the microscopic association of this material isn't typical, Josh says, which is why he believes there's some spessartine in it as well.  And that would qualify it under Malaia.  He says that "Reviewing both spectral and microscopic analysis, it is interesting to note the association of apatite and rutile inclusions present in these samples, which is highly characteristic of mixed garnet crystals of pyrope, almadine, and spessartine."

Here's a look inside these pretty pieces:

Micro images of Mozambique Grape Garnet

And what about the most important thing, availability?  The honest answer is that nobody knows.  I would surmise that some locals sold these gems, and they got here through the chain I described.  Who else has it, where it is located, nobody traced that back as of yet.

For the time being, all the rough that I know of (from the original purchase) has been cut.  The larger pieces my supplier had are already all sold, so there's just what I have (the two smaller emerald cuts are also sold).  I may be able to get more 6x4 ovals.  Word has been put out for more, and some will presumably show up sooner or later.  Usually however, when "word is put out" and there's not a ton of stuff, prices will be higher next time.  For the miners and brokers that have to live hand to mouth, long term planning or relationships with gem dealers are a luxury.  If you can sell for more today and feed your kids, you will.  Prices are calculated from there on up.

Gem Setting Revisited

I have written about setting gems before, but in lieu of the fact that so much of my business is now custom, here are a few of the most important considerations worth having at your fingertips.

1. What metal should I use?

The softest metal is Sterling Silver, but setting costs are high in the US, so my personal view is that doing custom setting in the US in silver is a waste of your money.  Gold is better.  Yellow gold is the softest of the gold metals, white gold is the hardest, rose the most brittle.  So for soft stones, yellow is best. If you have a soft(er) or brittle stone that you really don’t want to get busted and want to use a white metal, splurge on Platinum.  That’s what I recommend for Paraiba tourmaline for instance.  Platinum is softer than white gold.

Note, however, that in the US,  most standard settings available only come in 14K yellow and white gold. Rose gold and also platinum are often special order and special orders are not refundable in the wholesale world, meaning that when I buy it I cannot return it.

2. What setting style is best?

If you want your stone to be kept safe during setting, use prong style.  That is easiest to do and least risky to the stone.  Sadly, if you want your stone to be safe after setting it, you want to bezel it, especially if it is a ring.  Silver prongs fold easily but bend open easily too, I counsel against them for rings unless there is some protection around it, like a halo (my settings are designed with thicker prongs too).  Bezel settings for faceted gems use the hammer setting method where the metal is literally hammered over the stone with a small electrical hammering tool (the ones for cabochons use thinner metals and can be folded without hammering, the problem there is that you need a very exact fit and that means most bezels have to be made by hand, which costs more).  This won’t work for very soft stones in gold (kyanite, apatite, sometimes emerald), so you can be stuck with using prong settings.  To help secure the stone, you might consider 8 prongs instead of four.

4 Prong Setting

Bezel Setting

8 Prong Setting

An alternative to both that I use, but that requires more expertise, is a beaded setting, or pave.  This is a kind of bezel setting (bezel on the outside) but little bits of metal are shoved over the gem to hold it down (so like prong setting).  The beading tools are sharp so that’s a risk but the gem is very protected after wearing.  My pave pieces are done by hand, so the “prongs” aren’t in the CAD.  This has a more handmade look but that’s how more high end stuff is made and when you have a great setter (I LOVE mine), you will get a nicer result than the commercial look.

Pave Setting

3. Are there other setting styles?

Yes, there is burnished or gypsy setting, which is like a bezel setting but into a flat surface, the metal is then rubbed over the stone.  This cannot be done with anything over 3mm and it cannot be done with soft gems. 

Gypsy Setting
Photo from www.ashford.com

There is channel setting.  This involves bending channel wire (imagine a straw sliced in half) around a gem.  That’s done by lazer because you have to solder the two ends together.  It can take up to an hour a gem and is very expensive (my retail price is $120 a piece!).  Channel setting works only for pendants and earrings because the back will poke out, but it offers a very delicate look.  Gems with more than one corner can’t be channel set because the metal isn’t pliable enough.  The corner is used for the soldering seam.  So rounds, ovals, and pears work, not emerald or princess cuts.

Channel Setting

4. I want to buy my own setting, what can I expect?

In the US market, expect to be restricted to 14K yellow or white gold and some silver (not much).  Get prong settings for faceted stones because bezels have to be fitted very exactly and if you order online you won't have the gem on hand.  Prong settings allow a little more give (.5mm at most).  When in doubt, buy the larger prong setting, not the smaller one.  For cushion gems, use round.  For elongated cushions, use emerald settings because there are hardly any cushion settings available anywhere. 

Specialty shapes: expect problems.  Many shapes just require custom jobs.  But if you have one you like, the cheapest way to go is doing a pendant and starting with a setting that can be adjusted a little (like narrowing down a pear to an elongated pear, or a trillion for an off shaped trillion). 

And one final note on using old settings: most settings are made for diamonds and those are not as deep as colored stones for the most part.  And since prongs get clipped to accommodate the gem, you may not have much room to work with.  Prongs can also get brittle with age, and they can break upon or after resetting.  So it may not pay to reset unless you have a more expensive ring.  Don't reset if it is pave style or if you don't see enough prong or bead to put back over the stone.  

Working With Color

As you all know, working with colored gems is my specialty.  I love figuring out which colors go together, come up with crazy combos, and matching them to the right metal.  And I often get the following response: "I would NEVER have come up with that combo."

Actually, coming up with the right color combination is not as hard as you think.  Here are some pointers for how to do it, followed by some of my own favorite pairings.

1. Start with beads, not gems.  All gems (or just about) come as beads too.  The colors are, nearly enough, the same.  Buy an inch or two of the various gem colors you like and mix them together on a piece of white paper or a white paper towel.  Add and subtract until it is right.

Before I moved to colored stones, I did beading for a good two years.  And putting together different colors what one of my favorite things to do.  A few combos were very surprising (kyanite and spessartite), others quite obvious (pink and purple sapphire).

Mixed Bead Layout

2. Combos of 3 colors work best when 2 colors are related.  Blue and purple are related but look boring together, so for a third color use something different, i.e. green or yellow.  When you use yellow and pink, add orange or red.

3. Combos of 2 colors should have some contrast.  So pink and a strong purple is nice, but lavender and purple is more boring.

4. Consider the metal when you do your layout.  I think the rules for metal are simple.  White gold is very neutral but doesn't bring out the color of a gem.  So if the gems themselves don't have much color the piece will look a bit washed out.  If the gem is very bright, white gold might be a good choice.  Yellow gold is not neutral at all and needs to be considered a separate color when you do your layout.  You have to think about whether or not yellow will go with your gem.  Rose gold seems to be a color enhancer but itself neutral.  It works well with lighter colors that need some "umph" but doesn't run interference.

I think that pinks work well with yellow gold but purples clash.  Blues are ok, greens are ok but some strong greens (i.e. emerald) can look a bit gaudy.  In general, yellow gold can make a piece look a bit gaudy and therefore cheap.  Son don't use too many different colors with yellow gold.  If you want a very bright piece with other colors, use white gold instead.  I use rose gold a lot because I want to enhance color without the piece looking gaudy.  Rose gold also goes with most skin tones.

5. Here are some of my own favorite color combos.

Color Combo	Gems
Pink, Yellow	Tourmaline, Spinel, Sapphire, Chrysoberyl
Pink, Yellow, Orange	Tourmaline, Spinel, Sapphire, Chrysoberyl, Mandarin Garnet, Citrine
Pink, Red, Yellow	Tourmaline, Spinel, Ruby, Sapphire, Chrysoberyl
Pink, Green	Pink and Green Tourmaline, Spinel, Mint Garnet, Tavorite
Green, Yellow	Tourmaline, Mint Garnet, Tsavorite, Sapphire, Chrysoberyl
Blue, Green	Zircon, Sapphire, Aqua, Tourmaline, Mint Garnet, Tsavorite
Blue, Green, Lavender	Zircon, Sapphire, Aqua, Tourmaline, Mint Garnet, Tsavorite, Tanzanite
Blue, Yellow	All Sapphire, Zircon and Yellow Sapphire
Dark and Light Blue, Yellow	Zircon and Sapphire or Kyanite, Chrysoberyl, Yellow Sapphire
Turqoise, Green	Apatite or Paraiba, Tourmaline, Mint Garnet
Pink and Purple	All Sapphire (Cold Colors), or Tanzanite

Tanzanite and Paraiba

Lavender and Blue Sapphire

Tourmaline, Chrysoberyl, Zircon

Sapphire, Burma Spinel

Sapphire, Burma Spinel, Chrysoberyl, Mandarin Garnet

Sapphire, Burma Spinel

Sapphire, Emerald, Zircon

The Trouble with Photos

One of the criticisms I hear the most regarding my shop is that my pictures, well – suck.  Ok, nobody puts it that way and that’s really nice.  But they could be much better.  Or maybe they couldn’t.  I kind of think they can’t but I’d love to be convinced otherwise!  Comments are welcome.

Let’s start by talking about light.  There are nice daylight lamps on the market, most color gem dealers have them.  You can build a light box (white box, open on top for light, the white then reflects the light all over and increases its power.  The daylight lamps shine in from the top, usually people use at least two, sometimes four or five.  That eliminates any extinction that is caused by the lighting coming from only one direction.

My thing about the daylight lamps is that I just can’t stand the way they change color.  And it is nearly impossible to change that color back to what the gem really looks like by adjusting the color after.  There is a certain vibrance that daylight lends to a gem which daylight lamps can’t imitate (Mandarin garnet suffers from loss of vibrance under daylight lamps).  Also, some gems actually pick up in color (purple sapphire is an example).  Others (blue sapphire) grey out.  I see this happening a lot when I purchase gems in indoor lighting.  Despite really strong daylight bulbs, it is really hard to make out the true color of certain gems.  With sapphire it is the worst (for me).  I have to take every single piece outdoors.  Most dealers that know me know this about me, and many appreciate it because it means you know what you are doing.  And if the gems are nice, taking them outdoors is a compliment to them.

I don’t use daylight lamps for photos.  I use daylight.  But there are drawbacks.  I use my window sill because when you use actual daylight you need a lot of it.  But unless you can get the daylight to come from directly behind you, you get the gems to show extinction.  Direct sunlight doesn’t work, the contrasts are too strong and you end up with strong shadows. Diffused daylight is best, but bright. Ideal lighting, to me, is when you sit in the shade on a bright sunny day.  I can only achieve that effect outdoors, not on my windowsill (and this is a problem in winter, plus I’m on the 4^th floor, I have a roof deck but I don’t like to go out on a cold and windy day).  Rainy days grey out a lot of gems (i.e. sapphire, mint garnet, Ceylon spinel).  Probably they just enhance the grey that is inherent in some of the gems, and so they look more drab.

Even with all this practice and preparation, a lot of times my photos come out too blue (especially my cell phone photos which are otherwise very crisp).  I’ve been told that all cameras, maybe even those in cell phones, can be adjusted for color accuracy in the camera itself.  (Just like a monitor can be adjusted).  In my case I’ve not yet managed.  So I adjust afterwards for color temperature, using my hand shots for reference (I know the color of my hands, which makes it easier). 

Too blue, you can tell from the "white" padded background

The direction of the light is also important.  If the gem is too tilted, the table will look white.  Or it shows tilt window, which almost all colored stones have and which forces you to photograph the gem straight on (hard to do when the light comes from only one direction).

Table is too white

In case you are wondering, I use a Nikon D5100, with the regular lens.  The camera is almost 3 years old now, so I could probably upgrade.  But I don’t know how much that would change things. 

A "good" photo

As you all know, gems thrive in the right light.  Or they “die” on you.  So the correct light, which produces the correct color, is everything.  Some gems also glow more in certain lighting.  Real paraibas show this.  Late daylight is wonderful for them.  Sapphires look better in mid-day in my view.  Morning light is often cooler than evening light, and winter light is different from summer light.  All this can affect what you see.  And – once everyone uses LED lights – say goodbye to the wonderful color change effect that some gems have.  I can see it only in my bathroom and that’s where I take all my color change photos.  :)

Cecile Raley Designs: Behind the Scenes

Perhaps some of you are wondering how it works. How things get done so fast - sometimes, and then painstakingly slow other times. How things get made, who makes them. Or what you need to run a business like mine. So here goes.

In my home office, there's just me and 2-3 days a week, my very cool friend Debbie. Two days a week we're out, making "runs" in New York. 

I work 7 days a week but not all day every day. I start right after waking up. Etsy questions, convos, listings, photos. That takes about two hours.  When Debbie comes in, she ships.  When she doesn't, I ship.  Shipping can sometimes take half a day.  Etsy insurance doesn't cover gems,  Ship Station does, PayPal does, the latter only up to $500. So we use different services. Payment plans require checking for total amount paid before insuring and all parts of the payment plan (or custom order) need to be checked as shipped.  Ring sizes have to be double checked, custom orders checked one last time, and if a second person is there, all packages are gone through twice to make sure no content got mixed up.

Debbie, My Assistant and Friend

By the time that's all done I usually already have more custom requests, so I take more photos and answer questions. I make a lot of quotes. I go though invoices, do some bookkeeping. In between we do Facebook, Pinterest, other social media, newsletter, blog, we order supplies and castings.  It easily takes all day.

Most of my time is taken up with customers and Etsy itself.  Most of Debbie's job is shipping and social media.  But we also switch off with that, with photographs and other stuff.

Twice a week I go to 47th street to process orders. Those are very busy days!  I am often off to a late start because I have so much Etsy traffic. So Debbie gets there first, going directly from her house, picks up castings and gets them to out pre-polish service - they cut the sprue, clean and tumble. New designs make it from there to Alex, the engraver, then go back to Taba Casting for a mold and castings.

Buying Supplies in New York City (Actually this is Cheese)

Our custom orders each have designated jewelry envelopes with customer name, order date, metal, size or length and order description or drawing. All the order steps are listed and get checked as we go (i.e. casting, parts needed, pre-polish, jewelry work, setting, final polish). Many steps are the same for each piece.  So we essentially funnel the envelopes through 4-6 stops a piece, leaving them at many stops for 2-3 days, and quality checking each time. Some days we pick up or drop at the lab, requesting certificates. On other days I have appointments at various gem dealers while Debbie does the "runs" between stops with the "jobs." We text each other all day long, double checking what is where or which setting works or which customer needs what.  Some days we run out of time. Plus I have to take breaks answering questions for customers (those are the days when you get convoluted convos with many typos).

"After New York" days are often the busiest.  Custom orders come back and need photos and listings and if possible, are shipped asap.

I love my New York days. I exchange news with Pierre the Setter, Vasken the jeweler, Josh from the lab and Jaimeen from Prima Gems. I find out what's new in gems, what the buzz is on the street, and I get to be out and about. I can take much of the news back to my customers.

Often there are errors to correct, and there can be slow downs (a casting has to be redone, a stone broke, or I don't have all the correct stuff in my bag so a custom piece is delayed). Debbie and I need to plan our day carefully so nothing is forgotten and we don't run out of time. One step is missed and we lose half a week!  It happens though. And often it is our fault because there is too much to think of at once.

I process up to 150 orders a month and half or more are custom. I stick to my wholesale pricing so getting more staff isn't easily paid for. But I love what I do and wouldn't go back to my day job for anything.

Designing Halos with Melee Gems

In the past year, my business has increasingly developed toward custom projects and quotes.  This brings with it a lot of design challenges, and in order to simplify matters a bit on my end, let me share with you some useful information about gemstone melees and how to think about designs involving them.  A melee is considered any gem that is 3mm and smaller. 

First, note that not all gems come in all sizes.  For anything under 1mm, there are really just diamonds available.  Most colored stone melees come in 2mm and up, sometimes 1.5mm and up, and not everything comes in melee.

To calculate the weights of diamond melee, you might use a chart like this one:

Colored gems are often a little bit deeper and a little bit denser in their structure, so they weigh more, too.  The most easily available colored stone melee are sapphires and rubies, but as you know from my shop I also have many others: aquamarine, zircon, mandarin garnet, color change garnet, spinel, tsavorite, mint garnet, peridot, tanzanite, chrysoberyl, among others.  I collect melees because I use them a lot in designs, but for the most part, they are not readily available on the gemstone market.  I don't have all of these in all sizes so you'll have to ask.  Some are hard to replace (i.e. chrysoberyl) and lucky buys, others (sapphires, ruby, tanzanite) I can get almost all the time.

Setting:  the most common setting styles for melees is pinpoint and pave (especially the smaller sizes).

1. Pinpoint setting: this is easier and faster for a setter, hence cheaper - tiny prongs are directly entered into the CAD file.  But making a CAD model with ooodles of tiny prongs is time consuming and expensive.  So it's a wash more or less.

Sapphire Ring with Pinpoint Setting

2. Pave setting: this involves drilling individual holes in the metal and shoving tiny beads over the gems.  The risk here is more breakage, and it costs more time (and money).  The CAD model usually involves a flat surface only.  Sometimes we also put the holes into the model (good for bigger melee, like 2mm). This saves a little on metal weights.  There are two basic pave styles:

a) Bright Cut: This involves a straight line of metal on each side of the gem.  This line has a standard thickness of 1mm.  So if you want bright cut pave on your ring shank, you calculate the width of the melee plus 1mm on each side.  So the smallest is 3mm for a shank.  The bright cut can be millgrained, which is very common these days.  Millgrain often costs a bit extra.  

b) Cut down: this involves no rim, the sides of a ring shank (or halo) are cut down into little scoops with a resulting look almost like prongs.  Cut down pave will look like "all diamond" from the top, so a 3mm ring shank will need 3mm gems, and from the top you will basically just see gemstone and a little bit of prong.  Cut down pave can be expensive because you need bigger stones for a good look, but you can also do a very fine shank with 1mm gems that looks like all diamond.  There are different forms of cut down styles, the one pictured here is a simple scoop, but there are others, like fish tail, or Tiffany style.  You can google them on the web.

Paraiba Tourmeline Ring with Diamond Pave and Millgrain

Closeup of Cut Down Pave with Millgrain

Mint Garnet Ring with Cut Down Pave

Close Up of Cut Down Pave

Note that jewelry design is three dimensional, so you also need to consider the depth of a stone.  On average, a gem is 2/3 as deep as it is wide.  So a 1mm gem is .66 deep.  That's the depth you need for the shank in that case.  Colored stones are deeper.  As a result, you may need almost 3mm depth for a 3mm colored gem, and that makes for a very thick ring or pendant.  In a pendant with a larger center this is less noticeable but a ring shank that is too thick may look weird.

Now let's talk about halo styles more specifically.  A halo is a ring of melee (usually diamonds) around a larger center stone.  Halos add a lot of sparkle, an extra color, and generally enhance the look of a gem.  Standard halos are about 1mm or smaller in size because of the diamond cost.  But you can also go larger for a different look.  The trick is knowing how many gems of what size can fit around a center stone.  Here are some layouts we did for you to see how many options there are for just rounds and ovals (and only a few diamond sizes):

Round Melee Layout

Here's the downloadable layout sheet for you.  The sheet will print out to scale so you can lay gems on it upside down to see which layout they fit.  Printable Round Melee Layout Sheet

Oval Melee Layout

Here's another downloadable layout sheet that will print to scale: Printable Oval Melee Sheet

The next thing you should do is calculate the cost of your halo.  You do this by adding up the total carat weight of the diamonds you use, once you know the gem size you want.  Then you need to know the per carat price of the gems you are using, which is why I've added a rough guide below.  Most colored stones are not very expensive and much of the price is the cutting cost.  Diamonds are another story.  This is a table with two prices, slightly lower end and more fine quality goods.  For up to 2.5mm or just above, prices are usually the same per carat.  3mm involves a price jump.  I have calculated this at my standard markup, so other sellers may have different prices.

F/G Color VS Quality, Swiss Cut	G-H Color, SI Quality, Standard Cut
Below 3mm: $1800/ct Retail	Below 3mm: $1400/ct
3mm: $3600/ct	3mm: $2500/ct

Is there more you'd like to know?  Do you have suggestions for blog entries that help your design efforts?  Please let me know here in the comment box, via FB or Etsy.  I'd love to hear your suggestions.

My thanks to Brandy Belenky, my CAD designer, for helping me with this entry and doing the layouts.

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.