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I'm reading through the thread, so forgive me if i'm retreading ground, but are there any good resources for rough gemstone pricing, appraisal and selling. I have a ton of rough aqua, green/pink/watermelon tourmaline and some assorted quartz with morganite/kunzite mixed in. I'm not nearly skilled enough to cut and facet this material and i'd rather sell some of it off to finance that; but i'm overwhelmed by all the information I find online. What options do I have other than wildly guessing and throwing the stuff up on ebay/etsy?
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Jan 12, 2017 00:34
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Arkanomen posted:I'm reading through the thread, so forgive me if i'm retreading ground, but are there any good resources for rough gemstone pricing, appraisal and selling. I personally can't give much in the way of hard-and-fast rules, but instead of just wildly guessing you can search ebay's 'sold' listings (which I think go back 3 months?), compare against other material with similar size/color/clarity, and get a feel for the current going rate.
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Jan 12, 2017 00:42
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Tunicate posted:I personally can't give much in the way of hard-and-fast rules, but instead of just wildly guessing you can search ebay's 'sold' listings (which I think go back 3 months?), compare against other material with similar size/color/clarity, and get a feel for the current going rate. That's what I thought, but half the problem is a lot of sellers don't give good pictures of their stones and then there's the question of pricing it for faceting or pricing it as an "interesting specimen". I'm packaging everything to drag to a trade show and then trying to get some help with appraisal but I'm new to all this.
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Jan 12, 2017 00:49
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Other goons who do faceting, I'm curious about the setups you use! I currently use my university's machines, which are old, hand built handset-style machines from like the 80's (they're super cool). The laps go from 100 - 800 - 1200grit and we use various metal oxides to polish stones with, mostly cerium and aluminum. Unfortunately this setup cant polish harder stones like corundum or cz  I might be thinking about buying my own setup sometime soon, but I know what I learned on is pretty old and out of date. I just want to cut this synthetic sapphire rough!!
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Jan 12, 2017 01:03
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Arkanomen posted:I'm reading through the thread, so forgive me if i'm retreading ground, but are there any good resources for rough gemstone pricing, appraisal and selling. I can tell you exactly what it's worth if you'll post some photos. Where did it come from?
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Jan 12, 2017 06:05
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Xun posted:Other goons who do faceting, I'm curious about the setups you use! I currently use my university's machines, which are old, hand built handset-style machines from like the 80's (they're super cool). The laps go from 100 - 800 - 1200grit and we use various metal oxides to polish stones with, mostly cerium and aluminum. Unfortunately this setup cant polish harder stones like corundum or cz And I just want some synthetic sapphire rough so I don't gently caress up this Umba Valley rough I just spent all my pennies on! I've mentioned it before but I use an Ultra-Tec, with a gearloose sintered 1200 - gearloose batt 3000 - gearloose diz Z+ (only using inner ring) 60k all diamond So far it has worked really well with garnets, tourmalines, and beryls. I've got some of that amethyst Johnny's been posting and apparently Quartz doesn't play well with diamond so I might need something else to polish it. Last stone of 2016 was a re-cut of an aquamarine given to me by a friend to practice with:  Potato quality photo but I'm very, very proud of this one. I need a better camera.
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Jan 12, 2017 06:22
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JohnnyRnR posted:I can tell you exactly what it's worth if you'll post some photos. Where did it come from? All of it came from Pala/Oceanview mine here in San Diego. I have a huge amount of loose rough but I think these have the highest likelyhood of being usable. Much of it is I guess, damaged? Its hard to tell unless you shine a light through it and I'm struggling on how to photograph it all. I tried a few of the good gem pieces/large hunks. Any advice on how to image this stuff would help. I have bags of this stuff varying from clear to cloudy. A number of smaller and larger pencils and just tones of Black. I gave it a shot but I know this most likely doesn't help much. Thank you for taking a second to look though. Really appreciate it http://imgur.com/a/sJjPy
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Jan 12, 2017 08:31
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Arkanomen posted:I'm reading through the thread, so forgive me if i'm retreading ground, but are there any good resources for rough gemstone pricing, appraisal and selling. I'd love to buy some from you at fair prices, pming
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Jan 12, 2017 09:05
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Xun: Don't use a 100 grit for faceting. It ends up being a bit like whacking your stone with a rock, and it can cause subsurface damage that will make life harder later on. I don't facet yet but I've had some real headaches from that while doing basic flat polishing. Arkanomen: "Yellow apatite surrounding pink tourm" No, that's tourmaline on tourmaline (ie, a watermelon tourmaline). If sufficiently clean for faceting, Pala mountain tourmalines do command a bit of a premium (and all tourmaline rough has gotten pretty darned pricey). The specimen grade pieces also have some value since again it's a classic locale and they're not quite as plentiful as Brazilian or Afghan specimens. Prices for rough vary all over the place but I'd think the neighborhood is tens of dollars per gram for good facet material (I don't think I'm seeing too much here but I'll leave that judgment to others). Variable prices for crystals suitable for being sliced and polished, which also produces nice gemstones. Specimens are variable, see what they go for on eBay I guess, since that's probably one of your better options for moving them. The aquamarines don't look too promising--color is nice but included aquamarine is very plentiful. Basically they are neat specimens for locale value but that's about it. Oceanview kunzites tend to have deeper stable colors than some Afghan material (particularly since much of the inexpensive Afghan material has often had its manganese's oxidation state bumped up past where it's comfortable with some gamma rays) and again have a nice 'name brand' locale. Triphane isn't really very valuable for cutting no matter where it's from unless it's really big and really nicely colored (spodumene is also awful to facet thanks to some oddball properties and easy cleavage)--that said, the etched crystals are quite attractive and have some value as specimens or for setting as-is. Some of this shows up on eBay with regularity. Afghan material in facet grade is usually around 1/g unless something has changed recently, and since stability isn't an issue with triphane and it's more plentiful the Oceanview material's premium isn't as great. By the way, if you haven't put them under a compact fluorescent light, do it! Triphane goes from "eh..." to "EH!" when you take it from any other light source to fluorescent light. Also, a UV light because they tend to be exceptionally fluorescent, and sometimes even phosphorescent. Scarodactyl fucked around with this message at 10:32 on Jan 12, 2017 |
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Jan 12, 2017 10:18
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Scarodactyl posted:Xun: Don't use a 100 grit for faceting. It ends up being a bit like whacking your stone with a rock, and it can cause subsurface damage that will make life harder later on. I don't facet yet but I've had some real headaches from that while doing basic flat polishing. Oh yeah we rarely ever use the 100 grit, mostly its for teaching students because they get these bigass chunks of synthetic quartzes that REALLY need to be cut down. Why does the professor give them such huge chunks?  (lazy TA's) Claes Oldenburger posted:So far it has worked really well with garnets, tourmalines, and beryls. I've got some of that amethyst Johnny's been posting and apparently Quartz doesn't play well with diamond so I might need something else to polish it. We always use cerium oxide laps to polish quartz, used to have actual cerium stuck on a lap but switched to these super cheap plastic sheets that you stick on top of a lap. Xun fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Jan 12, 2017 |
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Jan 12, 2017 15:22
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Scarodactyl. Thank you! That gives me a pretty good basis for starting to price stuff. Problem with the material rock-hounded from Pala is that everything you can get from there is old cast off material/tailings so it's all either chips or blasted and fractured to hell. Rarely is it like a clear gem chunk, but then again you can just go and pick the stuff off the ground. At least I can get more quartz to practice with than i'll ever use. I think i'll sell the larger stuff as specimens and the stuff nearing gem at or a little under market bulk price. Shops open on saturday. Think I'll polish the aqua and see how badly included it is.
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Jan 12, 2017 16:25
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I'd note that if you go to the Himalaya mine and pay for their bags of pegmatite dirt (not cheap) you have a very good chance of getting high quality material. I have had a lot of luck with those over the years, definitely got more than my money's worth.
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Jan 12, 2017 20:55
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Scarodactyl posted:I'd note that if you go to the Himalaya mine and pay for their bags of pegmatite dirt (not cheap) you have a very good chance of getting high quality material. I have had a lot of luck with those over the years, definitely got more than my money's worth. I haven't tried them yet. They do the similar "pile and sift" dig that Pala does, but its hit or miss. Maybe I'll try Himalaya out. Thanks!
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Jan 15, 2017 02:32
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Help I've been bitten by the jewelry bug  When purchasing a fancy colored diamond, what should be the main considerations? Say if I find (for a similar price/size) a deep yellow SI1 stone and a pale yellow VVS1 stone, which is the better deal? I don't know how visible inclusions in colored diamonds are to the naked eye, and jewelers near me don't seem to keep them in stock. I did look at yellow sapphires because $$$, but diamonds seem to have more sparkle, so I'm thinking of drinking the Kool Aid.
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Jan 15, 2017 23:15
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Claes Oldenburger posted:Cut a tourmaline over the last week and a bit, picture sucks but the stone turned out great: This is from a while back, but did you find that there was a lot of color mixing in the light within the stone after you cut this (when you look at it head-on, i mean...obviously it looked yellow at that angle)? I have a piece of ametrine that is mostly citrine with just a bit of amethyst one one side, but it seems like such a nice deep purple I'd like to have it on one edge. My teacher in the faceting class I took says I should just forget the amethyst and cut it based on the citrine because the amethyst won't show up or if it does it will make the color "muddy".
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Jan 15, 2017 23:33
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littlebluellama posted:This is from a while back, but did you find that there was a lot of color mixing in the light within the stone after you cut this (when you look at it head-on, i mean...obviously it looked yellow at that angle)? Yeah that yellow is actually green from a watermelon tourmaline but it comes off as kind of odd (in a cool way-ish). It's a bit of a toss up, I'm not good enough to know how well colours will mix with each other so sometimes I just roll the dice and see what happens  I figure I'll make a pendant with some accent stones the same colour as the small bit and try to tie it all together if no one buys the stone by itself.
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Jan 16, 2017 08:41
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Do we have any experts on moissanite here? More specifically for the various colorless ranges such as Amora, NEO, Forever One, etc. I feel like I've been waiting for an Oval Amora Gem forever and I'm kind of sick of waiting. Like, already gotten married and had a baby sick of waiting.  I'm thinking about just getting a oval synthetic blue sapphire in the interim or going with a different moissanite.
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Jan 16, 2017 15:41
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Blue Scream posted:When purchasing a fancy colored diamond, what should be the main considerations? Say if I find (for a similar price/size) a deep yellow SI1 stone and a pale yellow VVS1 stone, which is the better deal? I don't know how visible inclusions in colored diamonds are to the naked eye, and jewelers near me don't seem to keep them in stock. COLOR! The strength and purity of the color is the primary consideration. More intense colors are rarer than lighter ones. Then consider the face up appearance. A GIA clarity grade is less important than how well the stone faces to the naked eye. These are a specialty of mine. Due to the rarity very few jewelers will have a nice selection to compare. I own a couple fancy pinks, a fancy white, a green, an orange, a cognac, and a couple canary diamonds. Many fewer than I would like, but I'm fortunate to even have fine examples of those colors even if they are mostly in smaller sizes.
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Jan 16, 2017 16:28
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JohnnyRnR posted:COLOR! The strength and purity of the color is the primary consideration. More intense colors are rarer than lighter ones. Are the "chocolate" ones just a scam to sell less desirably colored ones?
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Jan 16, 2017 19:30
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JohnnyRnR posted:COLOR! The strength and purity of the color is the primary consideration. More intense colors are rarer than lighter ones. Excellent. Thank you. A nearby Jared has two in stock--I would never buy from them, but they're the only store near me that has something I could look at in person. My budget for the stone is $4000 or less (lol), and I'm not hung up on carat weight so much as how the size dimensions look on my finger. Stuff in the 5 mm range seems to be the sweet spot, but I could take something smaller if I got a better color and the right setting. Regardless of my own purchase, if this is your specialty, I would love to hear what you know about fancy color diamonds and I bet I'm not the only one  There's not much about them in the thread. It seems like you have to look for pretty different qualities in them than in colorless diamonds.
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Jan 16, 2017 20:07
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Hoover Dam posted:Are the "chocolate" ones just a scam to sell less desirably colored ones? Desirability is a creation of marketing, so no more than diamonds themselves being a scam.
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Jan 16, 2017 23:12
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Hoover Dam posted:Are the "chocolate" ones just a scam to sell less desirably colored ones? It's a weird sentiment. I've bought and sold several fine ones before the current trend. It's all about pretty. My personal favorite "browns" are the ones that are more of a copper color then next would be the reddish-cognac colors.
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Jan 17, 2017 22:14
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Anyone interested in a tucson meetup?
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Jan 23, 2017 18:21
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Tunicate posted:Anyone interested in a tucson meetup? Let's do iiiiit. I only have the two days of the 3-4 but I'm going to try to fit as much in as possible.
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Jan 25, 2017 21:28
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Sounds great. I'll set something up for a happy hour near the convention center. Stay tuned.
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Jan 26, 2017 04:33
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Both days look good for me!
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Jan 26, 2017 05:12
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I'm still waiting for a call back to confirm they have space, but let's tentatively call it 6pm, Feb 3rd at The Owl's Club. It's two blocks from the convention center so should be easy for everyone to get to. http://www.owlsclubwest.com
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Jan 27, 2017 00:36
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JohnnyRnR posted:I'm still waiting for a call back to confirm they have space, but let's tentatively call it 6pm, Feb 3rd at The Owl's Club. Sounds good!
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Jan 28, 2017 03:47
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My faceting teacher told me this rough is a topaz. It has a blue bump at the top (it's more obvious in real life when you can move it around), and he said natural blue topaz is rare. I don't know if I'm up to polishing topaz yet, but maybe in the future I'll try to cut into some kind of "fancy" shape that would preserve the blue area. Also if anyone recognizes this is actually a different kind of stone, let me know! 
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Jan 28, 2017 22:01
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It looks like topaz but I don't want to sound too certain from a photo identification. Topaz has perfect basal cleavage, just rotate the stone around in your hand and look for a directional flash. Natural pale blue topaz isn't really very rare though it's often described as such. Nevertheless there is no reason at all to cut colorless topaz so I'd definitely plan on saving as much blue as you can. Just be sure to avoid that cleavage plane and you should be fine. I've been finding some great stuff here at Tucson! Here are some assorted pictures: http://imgur.com/a/WDuGA
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Jan 29, 2017 06:30
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I'd agree with topaz. It has a distinctive silvery sheen. When you cut it the blue can be placed at the culet & the entire stone will face light blue. :-)
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Jan 29, 2017 06:32
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Scarodactyl posted:It looks like topaz but I don't want to sound too certain from a photo identification. Topaz has perfect basal cleavage, just rotate the stone around in your hand and look for a directional flash. Thanks for the tip. Love those rose quartz pieces, and that big tourmaline with the white mineral is cool! JohnnyRnR posted:I'd agree with topaz. It has a distinctive silvery sheen. Interesting, I'll have to try that!
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Jan 30, 2017 00:23
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Just put a deposit on this diamond with Leibish & Co. Posting it now because their pictures are way better than what I'll be able to capture with my phone. Thanks to JohnnyRnR for basically telling me I'd be nuts not to buy it 0.52 ct, fancy vivid yellow, S1 clarity. They also sent me a video where they waved it around in natural light to show the sparkle. I'm in love and can't wait to get it!  
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Jan 30, 2017 23:51
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That's crazy gorgeous. The color is just beautiful. I love yellow diamonds and wish they suited my skin tone.
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Jan 31, 2017 06:00
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I almost accidentally bought a ring with an emerald cut yellow diamond like that. The only thing that stopped me was when the cashier rung up the sale and I realized I missed a decimal place 
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Jan 31, 2017 21:16
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DarkHorse posted:I almost accidentally bought a ring with an emerald cut yellow diamond like that. As I've learned, not all yellow diamonds are crazy expensive! In fact, depending on the weight and the color intensity, some of them can be less expensive than a colorless diamond of comparable size and quality.  For example, you can get this IF fancy light yellow for less than you can get this colorless diamond with VVS2 clarity and F color. ($1800 vs $3000, in case the stones get bought and the links break.) The right setting can make a pale color look more intense, so if it's something you want, it's doable. While shopping, I saw many pretty jewelry pieces with lighter stones. Some people even buy colorless diamonds in lower color grades that have yellowish tints. For anyone who is interested, fancy colored diamonds are not graded with letters like colorless ones are, but like this:  Like with regular diamonds, the price jumps a crazy amount once you reach a carat, then jumps again when you reach a carat and a half, etc. It also jumps exponentially as color intensity increases. Also, forget about pink, blue, green, purple, and especially red diamonds; the OP is right, once they reach a carat they cost more than your house. In fact, your house listing on Trulia probably didn't say "Call for price." Blue Scream fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jan 31, 2017 |
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Jan 31, 2017 22:43
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Here are a few more Tucson photos if anyone's interested: http://imgur.com/a/eLpbO http://imgur.com/a/ZXMCR http://imgur.com/a/UBZVE
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Feb 1, 2017 06:17
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Scarodactyl posted:Here are a few more Tucson photos if anyone's interested: I am! One more day and then I'm heading on down. I want that crocodile for my wall :O Blue Scream posted:Just put a deposit on this diamond with Leibish & Co. Posting it now because their pictures are way better than what I'll be able to capture with my phone. Thanks to JohnnyRnR for basically telling me I'd be nuts not to buy it That is one SERIOUSLY yellow diamond. So cool!
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Feb 1, 2017 07:04
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Tucson pictures are hot
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Feb 3, 2017 08:57
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Two more questions about topaz: Is the flash I'm looking for like a reflection off a veil or a spot where it has already started to cleave, or is it more like chatoyancy? When I turn my pieces around under the light, I can see some spots like veils or separations, but I also see a sort of more general glowing flash, but I'm not sure if that's a reflection from the relatively smooth natural "facets" of the other side of the stone. Also: Most websites I've looked at recommend setting the cleavage plane about 9 degrees off the table. Is there any reason I shouldn't just turn it 90 degrees to the table so the cleavage plane would be on the girdle, which I don't polish anyway (or would this make the area near the girdle chip off)? thanks
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Feb 5, 2017 04:46
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