Eye candy from the HK gem and jewelry show (Nov)

[derbygal]

Those Paraiba cabs are calling my name!

 

[mochiko42]

This Mozambique one was $750/carat.



One very nice Indian vendor who chatted with me a bit without pressuring me to buy anything, took a $100k Mozambique cuprian/"paraiba" out of the case and let me see it up close.. I was so nervous! According to him most of the paraiba on sale at the show was Mozambique and Nigerian, not a lot of Brazilian. I didn't know much about Nigerian paraiba/cuprian so he told me a little bit about it. His son had just finished the GIA jewelry design course at Carlsbad and was trying to expand their family business from loose gems to finished jewelry. I think I've improved a lot, at the September show I was too nervous to try to talk to anyone about gems but this time I talked to several people and learned a lot! Very educational experience.

Sounds way too expensive if you ask me, and for that price, I would want a lab report because they are fracture filling them these days. Were they all completely eye clean and super deep blue throughout the stone, even when tilting it? Please note that moonstones look far more blue on a black background, as depicted in the photo you took, then on a lighter background. When buying moonstone, it's really important to look at them away from a dark background in a photo or otherwise.

Barry is able to sell nice Sri Lankan material for much less per carat, so I don't get that pricing, but again, dealers can charge whatever they want. At gem shows, they can also make up pricing on the fly. For those prices, I would want a top end moonstone that looks like this with the rainbow effect, and deep blue color all throughout the stone.





ETA: Maybe the larger carat sizes justifies that expensive pricing???? It's hard to find really large clean moonstones with deep blue color, but then again, I don't think that's wholesale pricing. JMO.

Hi TL, exactly! I didn't buy because I don't know enough about feldspar and also because it was too expensive for me (especially since I've learned so much via PS) :p But I did ask that particular vendor about treatments, and he was very emphatic about them being heat-only and no coating and no fracture filling. I turned the cabs upside down to check and a few of them were not eye clean, they had a few tiny inclusions (like small stress cracks inside the stone?) that I could see without a loupe (they did face up eye clean). But you are right, without a lab report you cannot verify the heat-only claim. They had a nice blue sheen but nowhere near as nice as the Sri Lankan one you posted. It seems that the mine in Sri Lanka is now closed so not much new material is available, hence most of the moonstone I saw at the show was Indian or Burmese. Also, is the one you posted a rainbow moonstone (labradorite)? The ones I took photos of are blue sheen moonstone (orthoclase) so they do look a little different and from what I could observe are not as shimmery/rainbow colored.. (just my amateur observation).

The Burmese lady from whom I bought the little moonstones was much,much cheaper; she also claimed heat-only. So not cheap but not terrible. I got something mainly so I had a souvenir of the show so not that worried about treatments etc.

I would say that the price of US$150-250 per carat (if the stones are heat-only & no other treatment) seems OK to me given that this is Asia so the prices are much higher than what many American PSers may be used to at the US gem shows; most of the visitors to the show were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. I chatted with a few of the Indian vendors and they mentioned that their biggest customers are the Japanese and Chinese, and prices for those markets are very different from the US. I would not pay this much at a US gem show, I guess! :p But in a city where everything is very expensive, you know your sense of perspective tends to get a little skewed. Still, I am continually mystified by the buyers in this region who are willing to pay so much for gems..I don't get it either (esepcially now that I've found PS and online shopping!).

 

[T L]

This Mozambique one was $750/carat.



One very nice Indian vendor who chatted with me a bit without pressuring me to buy anything, took a $100k Mozambique cuprian/"paraiba" out of the case and let me see it up close.. I was so nervous! According to him most of the paraiba on sale at the show was Mozambique and Nigerian, not a lot of Brazilian. I didn't know much about Nigerian paraiba/cuprian so he told me a little bit about it. His son had just finished the GIA jewelry design course at Carlsbad and was trying to expand their family business from loose gems to finished jewelry. I think I've improved a lot, at the September show I was too nervous to try to talk to anyone about gems but this time I talked to several people and learned a lot! Very educational experience.

Sounds way too expensive if you ask me, and for that price, I would want a lab report because they are fracture filling them these days. Were they all completely eye clean and super deep blue throughout the stone, even when tilting it? Please note that moonstones look far more blue on a black background, as depicted in the photo you took, then on a lighter background. When buying moonstone, it's really important to look at them away from a dark background in a photo or otherwise.

Barry is able to sell nice Sri Lankan material for much less per carat, so I don't get that pricing, but again, dealers can charge whatever they want. At gem shows, they can also make up pricing on the fly. For those prices, I would want a top end moonstone that looks like this with the rainbow effect, and deep blue color all throughout the stone.





ETA: Maybe the larger carat sizes justifies that expensive pricing???? It's hard to find really large clean moonstones with deep blue color, but then again, I don't think that's wholesale pricing. JMO.

Hi TL, exactly! I didn't buy because I don't know enough about feldspar and also because it was too expensive for me (especially since I've learned so much via PS) :p But I did ask that particular vendor about treatments, and he was very emphatic about them being heat-only and no coating and no fracture filling. I turned the cabs upside down to check and a few of them were not eye clean, they had a few tiny inclusions (like small stress cracks inside the stone?) that I could see without a loupe (they did face up eye clean). But you are right, without a lab report you cannot verify the heat-only claim. They had a nice blue sheen but nowhere near as nice as the Sri Lankan one you posted. It seems that the mine in Sri Lanka is now closed so not much new material is available, hence most of the moonstone I saw at the show was Indian or Burmese. Also, is the one you posted a rainbow moonstone (labradorite)? The ones I took photos of are blue sheen moonstone (orthoclase) so they do look a little different and from what I could observe are not as shimmery/rainbow colored.. (just my amateur observation).

The Burmese lady from whom I bought the little moonstones was much,much cheaper; she also claimed heat-only. So not cheap but not terrible. I got something mainly so I had a souvenir of the show so not that worried about treatments etc.

I would say that the price of US$150-250 per carat (if the stones are heat-only & no other treatment) seems OK to me given that this is Asia so the prices are much higher than what many American PSers may be used to at the US gem shows; most of the visitors to the show were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. I chatted with a few of the Indian vendors and they mentioned that their biggest customers are the Japanese and Chinese, and prices for those markets are very different from the US. I would not pay this much at a US gem show, I guess! :p But in a city where everything is very expensive, you know your sense of perspective tends to get a little skewed. Still, I am continually mystified by the buyers in this region who are willing to pay so much for gems..I don't get it either (esepcially now that I've found PS and online shopping!).

IMO, Nigerian paraiba is the least saturated of the three locations (Mozambique, Nigeria, Brazil). Wow, I would never pay $130K for that highly included stone, and the saturation doesn't look like Brazilian to me, but maybe the photo isn't representative of the actual saturation??? I'm not saying it's ugly or unworthy, it's nice, but not $130K nice. Again, JMO.

The stone I posted was just described as "rainbow moonstone," and that's all I know, but it is divine.

Well, I guess we're a lot more educated collectors than people with a lot of disposable income over there.

I didn't realize that moonstones were regularly being heat treated. It's so confusing because so many sites, and "experts" I talk to say they're not commonly treated, but you say that the vendors mention they're all heat treated. Does the heat treatment affect the color and/or the inclusions???

 

[mochiko42]

IMO, Nigerian paraiba is the least saturated of the three locations (Mozambique, Nigeria, Brazil). Wow, I would never pay $130K for that highly included stone, and the saturation doesn't look like Brazilian to me, but maybe the photo isn't representative of the actual saturation??? I'm not saying it's ugly or unworthy, it's nice, but not $130K nice. Again, JMO.

The stone I posted was just described as "rainbow moonstone," and that's all I know, but it is divine.

Well, I guess we're a lot more educated collectors than people with a lot of disposable income over there.

I didn't realize that moonstones were regularly being heat treated. It's so confusing because so many sites, and "experts" I talk to say they're not commonly treated, but you say that the vendors mention they're all heat treated. Does the heat treatment affect the color and/or the inclusions???

Yep, the paraiba/cuprian prices here are craaaaaazy. Obviously somebody (in Japan?) is shelling out big bucks for average/mediocre quality paraiba. I think that ring was about 10 carats though, it was a big one, I guess the price was due to the size. It did have nicer glow and saturation than the pic shows but was not top quality IMO.

I felt so confused when talking to the vendors (I talked to three Indian and one Burmese), all said their moonstones were heat treated, but wouldn't heat destroy the schiller /adularescence, like how heating can break up silk in sapphires? (this is super confusing for a gem newbie like myself). It's funny because I didn't ask them about heat, I only asked them about coating or fracture filling but they all volunteered the information about the heating.

I found a few interesting articles online about moonstone which differentiates between orthoclase moonstone and labradorite moonstone, it seems that high quality moonstone (orthoclase feldspar) with blue/multicolor schiller can be called rainbow moonstone, but some vendors also sell labradorite feldspar and label it as rainbow moonstone:
http://www.jckonline.com/article/294337-Labradorite_s_Blue_Rainbow_Moonstone_.php
http://www.gemsociety.org/article/moonstone-jewelry-and-gemstone-information/
http://www.gemselect.com/gem-info/moonstone/moonstone-info.php

I guess also because moonstone has relatively low value compared to corundum or more valuable colored stones, most vendors and consumers do not bother to get a report, adding to the lack of education and awareness. Pretty confusing! All I know now is that I know very little about moonstones

 

[mochiko42]

Oh, to put things in perspective, I walked past one booth and saw a guy paying for a largish unheated ruby that was labelled as "unheated Burmese pigeon blood" in CASH. .. he had a giant pile of US$100 bills and was counting them out at the booth. The stack of bills on the counter was probably at least $50k, if not $100k! I would feel so nervous carrying hundreds of thousand of dollars in cash around in public like that..oh, and many of the loose gemstone vendors only took USD in cash, definitely felt a bit like the "wild west"...

 

[T L]

Oh, to put things in perspective, I walked past one booth and saw a guy paying for a largish unheated ruby that was labelled as "unheated Burmese pigeon blood" in CASH. .. he had a giant pile of US$100 bills and was counting them out at the booth. The stack of bills on the counter was probably at least $50k, if not $100k! I would feel so nervous carrying hundreds of thousand of dollars in cash around in public like that..oh, and many of the loose gemstone vendors only took USD in cash, definitely felt a bit like the "wild west"...

I hope it wasn't synthetic.

 

[mochiko42]

Oh, to put things in perspective, I walked past one booth and saw a guy paying for a largish unheated ruby that was labelled as "unheated Burmese pigeon blood" in CASH. .. he had a giant pile of US$100 bills and was counting them out at the booth. The stack of bills on the counter was probably at least $50k, if not $100k! I would feel so nervous carrying hundreds of thousand of dollars in cash around in public like that..oh, and many of the loose gemstone vendors only took USD in cash, definitely felt a bit like the "wild west"...

I hope it wasn't synthetic.

Haha yeah! It happened to be a booth of a Japanese vendor so I assume it should be real and it had GRS, Gubelin or some other report, but yeah who knows (though the buyer would be a bit naive to buy without a report)... I just saw that huge stack of cash from across the aisle and my eyes almost bugged out because of the casual way the guy was counting out all that money! I saw many serious-looking Japanese, Chinese, European (and Russian??) buyers at various booths though.. really wonder how much cash was being carried around in that exhibition hall

 

[mochiko42]

Managed to take some photos of my learner moonstones! Face up, they are mostly eye clean (if you look really carefully and very close you can spot a couple of colorless inclusions); if you turn the cabs face down you can see a few inclusions like needles easily. They were much, much cheaper than the other moonstones I posted earlier. They are not as transparent, and their adularescence is not evenly/entirely spread over the whole stone (it depends on the angle), but as learner stones I think they'll do. I bought these from a Burmese lady who claimed they were heat-only, but who knows... I intended these for earrings/pendant or at worst, for my bowl of rocks and seashells on my bookshelf, so not too fussed about treatments for these ones, really.



Sorry for the pic overload!! I tried to take photos in various lighting situations for educational purposes. Even took a couple of photos with the lavender/grey spinels that I got from Jeff Davies I would say they are quite translucent, in the handshots you can easily see my greasy finger prints and in the other photos you can see through to the other side a bit..

Indoors, in the shade


Indoors, indirect sunlight


Indoors, direct sunlight (one-directional, on a window ledge), on a yellow hazy day (we have bad air pollution where I live so the sunlight is a gross yellow haze, unfortunately this affected the lighting in the photos so there is a bit of a yellow tint):

 

[T L]

Thanks for the pictures! They're pretty stones, and I think they would look nice with tanzanites, or those purple spinels.

It's way better to under spend on some nice learner stones than to overspend on something that may not be worth the price! Kudos to you for having good self control at that gem show. It sounds like there were lots of sharks there waiting for bait.

 

[thecat]

Mochiko42, do you remember the name of the vendor selling the gorgeous blue sheen moonstones in your photo?

 

[mochiko42]

Thecat, I bought my three small translucent ones from Mimi at Yoma Jewelry (from Yangon, Burma), the transparent Indian ones were at the booth of Vivid Gems (HK), the guy was called Mahak Kala. I collected the details of several vendors who sold moonstones at the show, can provide a few more names and contacts if needed.

 

[chrono]

TL, is that your moonstone from ACS? It's beautiful!

That moonstone belongs to PSer fzpanda who purchased hers someplace in Asia.

 

[chrono]

Thecat, I bought my three small translucent ones from Mimi at Yoma Jewelry (from Yangon, Burma), the transparent Indian ones were at the booth of Vivid Gems (HK), the guy was called Mahak Kala. I collected the details of several vendors who sold moonstones at the show, can provide a few more names and contacts if needed.

If only we can pool together and get a parcel that can be split up. Those look very clean and the blue looks dark, although I'm sure some of that is attributed to the dark velvet case. A big thank you again for sharing all the pictures and write up. I never get tired of reading about and looking at gems.

 

[T L]

TL, is that your moonstone from ACS? It's beautiful!

That moonstone belongs to PSer fzpanda who purchased hers someplace in Asia.

It does? I wasn't sure. Lucky her!

 

[chrono]

If only my memory for other things is this good as it is for old PS posts.
[URL='https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/what-to-look-for-in-quality-blue-moonstone.165533/']https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/what-to-look-for-in-quality-blue-moonstone.165533/[/URL]

 

[Starzin]

Thanks again for the photos Mochiko - that tray of blue moonstones is gorgeous... like captured water they look so liquid.

I love the pairing of your moonstones with the grey spinels too!

 

[thecat]

Thecat, I bought my three small translucent ones from Mimi at Yoma Jewelry (from Yangon, Burma), the transparent Indian ones were at the booth of Vivid Gems (HK), the guy was called Mahak Kala. I collected the details of several vendors who sold moonstones at the show, can provide a few more names and contacts if needed.

Thanks for the contacts but I just realised that the moonstone is around $1k each. I mistakenly thought the tray of stones is $1k total. If my initial understanding of the price is right, then it's around $50 per stone assuming there are 20 stones in all. And if you ladies are interested in sharing that parcel/tray that costs $1k total, I will sign up for 2 stones.

Thecat, I bought my three small translucent ones from Mimi at Yoma Jewelry (from Yangon, Burma), the transparent Indian ones were at the booth of Vivid Gems (HK), the guy was called Mahak Kala. I collected the details of several vendors who sold moonstones at the show, can provide a few more names and contacts if needed.

If only we can pool together and get a parcel that can be split up. Those look very clean and the blue looks dark, although I'm sure some of that is attributed to the dark velvet case. A big thank you again for sharing all the pictures and write up. I never get tired of reading about and looking at gems.

 

[thecat]

If only my memory for other things is this good as it is for old PS posts.
[URL='https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/what-to-look-for-in-quality-blue-moonstone.165533/']https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/what-to-look-for-in-quality-blue-moonstone.165533/[/URL]

Thanks, Chrono. That's so helpful.

 

[minousbijoux]

Thanks again for the photos Mochiko - that tray of blue moonstones is gorgeous... like captured water they look so liquid.

I love the pairing of your moonstones with the grey spinels too!

Perfect description and so poetic!

 

[pregcurious]

If only my memory for other things is this good as it is for old PS posts.
[URL='https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/what-to-look-for-in-quality-blue-moonstone.165533/']https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/what-to-look-for-in-quality-blue-moonstone.165533/[/URL]

Thanks, Chrono!