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Newsletter & Market Report. June 2010 Thailand Trips - Coloured Stones So whilst Alison and Faye wrestled with the Chantaburi mud, Jon and Mark went on a cultural tour of downtown Bangkok. Ruby - Material in the market place needs careful checking due to the prevalence of glass filled material. To complicate matters, a new treatment seen mostly in stones from Mozambique has been detected that’s a modification of the lead glass treatment. The new technique involves in-filling and healing of fissures to improve clarity. Durability testing shows them to be more stable than glass filled material but it will be a little while before we can assess the problems they throw up once on the jewellers bench in repair work. Good quality stones, whatever the variety, seem to be getting a little harder to source year on year. The problems caused by glass filled material in the market seem to have increased demand for quality ruby, particularly certificated stones. We purchased several top quality rubies in sizes from 1 to 3ct including a couple of very nice 1ct cushions at £790ct and a stunning 3ct Swiss cert’ed oval at £5700ct. We were very pleased to find a stunning parcel of extremely fine Madagascan sapphire. The colour is spectacular, a beautiful rich, royal blue “Ceylon” which initially made us think they may be ‘too good to be true’. We had several stones from our selection tested by the Thai Gem Lab and all were ok - no beryllium enhancement, but it’s a limited supply and will be gone very quickly. Sizes range from 4mm to 6mm in rounds with ovals up to 3ct and prices from £290 to £950pct. This material is amongst the best we’ve seen since the Pailin material that was coming out of Cambodia over a decade ago. If you have a specific requirement or just fancy hoarding a piece whilst it’s available give us a call. Amongst the sapphire specials we also found an exceptional, certificated, pear shaped sapphire weighing 3.03ct @ £950ct. We found the lower grade mid blue sapphire traditionally mined in Australia, then Madagascar has now been largely usurped by Chinese material. These stones are characterised by a slightly green hue. The black material generally used in lower end jewellery is also now largely coming from China. Emerald - Supply was relatively untroubled with nice Colombian and Brazilian stones readily available. Matching stones up is always problematic but we did sort pairs including a couple of beautiful Colombian pear shaped drops totalling 3.67ct at only £850ct. We have all calibrated sizes in round, oval and emerald cut up to around 3ct in various grades with larger free sized stones available. Spessartite Garnet - This material is certainly a stone to keep an eye on in the coming months. It had been a collector’s stone for many years until a significant find in Namibia in the early 90’s brought it to wider attention. The early Namibian deposits were soon exhausted before new ones were discovered in Nigeria. Although found in various localities around the world, the finest material - often referred to as Mandarin Spessartite is now coming mostly from Nigeria and Mozambique. The best material has a clean, fiery orange-red colour; internally clean with a high lustre. We saw plenty of this material available from the Thai cutters with prices for 7x5, 8x6 material around £95ct with large, fine pieces commanding several hundred pounds pct. It was typical that the week the Thai trips started the UK was amongst 26 governments warning people to avoid Bangkok due to the escalating political unrest. As it was there was no trouble other than a small grenade explosion just over the road from the hotel which interrupted Jon and Mark’s romantic meal together. The only damage apart from blown out windows was Mark dropping his Murgh Hyderabadi into his lap and Jon inhaling his Gosht Tandoori. It is uncertain what effect the worsening Thai political situation will have on the gem trade in Bangkok. The commercial centre of the city has been a focus for demonstrations and our suppliers say visits from foreign buyers have all but dried up. So whilst Mark and Jon were “working” Alison and Faye took on the fascinating task of visiting the mining and cutting operations in Chantaburi and the many friends we’ve made there and over the years.
The Chantaburi area was best known for its mining of ruby and sapphire as well as its cutting and heat treating operations. Now ruby and blue sapphire production has largely switched to Kanchanaburi with Chantaburi mostly producing yellow and green sapphire. Cutting just one stone from the massive parcels of rough (such as the one below) committed the cutters to buying the whole parcel from the owner.
By day 2 competition was high between Alison and Faye to find the best Sapphire ...but worth it in the end. |
| India Trip – Diamonds
Stock Update We have excellent stocks of rose cuts, old cuts and 8-cuts as well as natural and treated coloured diamonds too. Large stocks of rough material had been bought by manufacturers during the booming 2008 market who were then left in a precarious position as the market collapsed. By early 2009 output had dropped to only 20% of its usual level. Putting a stop to further imports of rough at the end of 2008 allowed the trade to digest the overstock and focus on a direction out of the slump. A strong domestic jewellery market and support from India’s banking sector whose banking policy reflects the importance the county places on exports helped sustain businesses and during 2009 a recovery started which today sees output at 80% of 2008 levels, with an anticipation of a full recovery in the coming months. Concern is mounting in some quarters of the diamond trade regarding stones from the Merange deposits of Zimbabwe finding their way onto the international market. It is estimated that 4.4 million carats of diamonds have been mined there of which 1.6million carats have already entered the market legitimately under the Kimberley process. A reported 2.7 million carats are still stockpiled. The argument/concern is that the Kimberley Process definition of conflict diamonds to mean "rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments” does not cover the Zimbabwe government run operations. The definition given by Martin Rapaport describes these diamonds as “blood diamonds” saying "Blood diamonds are diamonds involved in murder, mutilation, rape or forced servitude.” Interestingly about 60% of the rough mined at Merange displays a faint green tinge. |
Other News
There must be something in the water here at Weare’s as this year has seen the marriage of 5 staff members - not to each other, which would be strange even by our standards - not least because it’s an odd number and would involve a threesome somewhere along the line. No, actually the marriages were as we worryingly say here at Weare’s, “outside the family”. So far this year we’ve seen Mark, Helen, Sarah, Jon and Olivia get married - any excuse to wear a dress…particularly in Mark and Jons case. We’re getting a lovely family feel to the business here with Helen’s toddlers Grace and Matthew regular visitors and 2 new children born to staff within the last year too - Marks little boy Louis and Donnas little girl Kiki. Chris in accounts became a grandma too!
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Price List. Sapphire Ruby Tanzanite Tourmaline Aqua Emerald Tsavorite |
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Copyright (C) 2010 R.M.Weare & Company Ltd. |
