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- Jul 25, 2008
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- 3,988
Finding coloured stones to buy in Brazil is easy: you can find coloured stone stalls selling overpriced bad stones in any tourist street fair, tourist shops selling overpriced bad stones to tourists, jewellers selling overpriced bad stones to tourists and so on. If you look a little harder, you can find the real dealers selling better stones in small shops, three flights of stairs up in a dingy buildingin the center of town. Many will only do business by appointment. If you are a walk-in, you will pay inflated retail unless you can show a real good knowledge of stones and pricing, in which case you will pay around retail. If you buy quantity and have developed a good reputation (with this dealer or with others who can recommend you to him), then you start getting wholesale.
But for the real deals, you need to get closer to the source and remove a lot of the overhead. Going out to the mines and Teofilo Otoni is great, but even so you can get scalped (notice a trend here?). There is a third way, which is how I get a lot of my stones: itinerant dealers. These guys have partnerships with rough cutters out in Minas Gerais (mostly), who supply them with cut stones. Then, these dealers will do their rounds, calling up designers, shop owners, jewelry houses and so on, telling them they have new stuff. A meeting is set up, usually at the client''s shop, and the gems are shown. After several weeks, they will return to Minas, to settle accounts with all their suppliers and get a new lot of stones.
Itinerant dealers come in many flavours, from very low end all the way to high end, who will sell stones to the important jewellers such as HStern and Amsterdam Sauer. I routinely meet with two: one is mid to low range, with very good prices, and one is higher end (he once showed me the most gorgeous 3ct paraiba, a bargain at $4.000).
Last week, I got word that the mid to low range dealer was back in town. Now, since he was just in, I knew prices would be higher than at the end of the round (when he wants to get rid of as much of his inventory as possible), but fewer people would have picked over it (just the mine owner, rough dealer, cutter, the cutter''s best clients and distributors...). We agreed to meet at a jewelry designer''s house, along with 2 other silversmiths. I like buying with these ladies, as we go for different things (I like small, good colour and clean gems, they go for the huge, often badly coloured and included pieces, which can be set as large pendants) and we can chat, point stuff to each other and discuss designs.
After waiting for over an hour (puntuality is not strong here!), the dealer arrived. As usual, he was carrying a carry-on suitcase stuffed with gem papers. He starts spreading them over all available surfaces (a large work table, several sideboards and so on), piling them over one another, when things get covered. He would asks us if any of us are interested in opaque emerald cabs or aqua or lapis and so on. Ocasionally he would smile and hand a packet straight to one of us, saying with a smile that he knows I love tourmalines or X likes rutile. We have done this many times and he knows our tastes.
I am one of his favourite customers (or so he says
, the flirt), because, even though I am not his biggest buyer or close to it, I always loupe all the gems and talk gems to him. He usually has one or two unusual gems he keeps back for me (which once nearly created a cat fight over a parcel of teeny tiny, adorable 0.1 ct alexandrites).
To buy good stones in this situation, it is necessary to be very patient and pick through every parcel, as they are just very roughly sorted (large aquas or medium aquas, with perhaps a gem paper or two with premium aquas). Since a lot of gems are packed together in one paper, they must be looked at closely for chips.
A lot of mid tourmalines are sold as salads. The dealer will hand you a large packet with gems that were all cut from the same crystal or rough parcel. They may or may not have been sorted by shape but never by colour or clarity. Inside, the gems may range from half a carat baby gems to large 5ct stones. You may pay a fixed price for the entire package or pay a pick price per carat. I, of course, always pick. This takes quite a while, as I separate the colours I like in the sizes I want and then start louping for damage and clarity. This can sometimes pay off nicely, as there are sometimes some nice stones in there. Native cuts, of course.
After I pick what I like (with an ocasional query to the price per carat, but I can generally pinpoint what the price range is), I sit down with the dealer and start weighing stones according to the parcels they came from, pricing them and placing them in plastic baggies. And then we haggle. The dealer will usually throw in several of the stones I selected in as freebies (the small citrines or cab tourmaline), we will agree to a lower price per carat for stones from a certain parcel and so on. He will tally up everything, I will explain that it is too much money, I better return some of the stones, which is his cue to give me a final discount on everything and that I will pay him in 2 months time. We shake hands, he hands me my baggies and we drink a final cup of coffee, talking about new finds, treatments and international buyers. He knows that I will deposit him the full amount on the agreed date, so no money changes hand at that moment.
In a few weeks time, when he is about to return home, we will meet again, so I can see what he still has and at what price. I home a certain tourmaline will still be around and very reduced!
But for the real deals, you need to get closer to the source and remove a lot of the overhead. Going out to the mines and Teofilo Otoni is great, but even so you can get scalped (notice a trend here?). There is a third way, which is how I get a lot of my stones: itinerant dealers. These guys have partnerships with rough cutters out in Minas Gerais (mostly), who supply them with cut stones. Then, these dealers will do their rounds, calling up designers, shop owners, jewelry houses and so on, telling them they have new stuff. A meeting is set up, usually at the client''s shop, and the gems are shown. After several weeks, they will return to Minas, to settle accounts with all their suppliers and get a new lot of stones.
Itinerant dealers come in many flavours, from very low end all the way to high end, who will sell stones to the important jewellers such as HStern and Amsterdam Sauer. I routinely meet with two: one is mid to low range, with very good prices, and one is higher end (he once showed me the most gorgeous 3ct paraiba, a bargain at $4.000).
Last week, I got word that the mid to low range dealer was back in town. Now, since he was just in, I knew prices would be higher than at the end of the round (when he wants to get rid of as much of his inventory as possible), but fewer people would have picked over it (just the mine owner, rough dealer, cutter, the cutter''s best clients and distributors...). We agreed to meet at a jewelry designer''s house, along with 2 other silversmiths. I like buying with these ladies, as we go for different things (I like small, good colour and clean gems, they go for the huge, often badly coloured and included pieces, which can be set as large pendants) and we can chat, point stuff to each other and discuss designs.
After waiting for over an hour (puntuality is not strong here!), the dealer arrived. As usual, he was carrying a carry-on suitcase stuffed with gem papers. He starts spreading them over all available surfaces (a large work table, several sideboards and so on), piling them over one another, when things get covered. He would asks us if any of us are interested in opaque emerald cabs or aqua or lapis and so on. Ocasionally he would smile and hand a packet straight to one of us, saying with a smile that he knows I love tourmalines or X likes rutile. We have done this many times and he knows our tastes.
I am one of his favourite customers (or so he says
To buy good stones in this situation, it is necessary to be very patient and pick through every parcel, as they are just very roughly sorted (large aquas or medium aquas, with perhaps a gem paper or two with premium aquas). Since a lot of gems are packed together in one paper, they must be looked at closely for chips.
A lot of mid tourmalines are sold as salads. The dealer will hand you a large packet with gems that were all cut from the same crystal or rough parcel. They may or may not have been sorted by shape but never by colour or clarity. Inside, the gems may range from half a carat baby gems to large 5ct stones. You may pay a fixed price for the entire package or pay a pick price per carat. I, of course, always pick. This takes quite a while, as I separate the colours I like in the sizes I want and then start louping for damage and clarity. This can sometimes pay off nicely, as there are sometimes some nice stones in there. Native cuts, of course.
After I pick what I like (with an ocasional query to the price per carat, but I can generally pinpoint what the price range is), I sit down with the dealer and start weighing stones according to the parcels they came from, pricing them and placing them in plastic baggies. And then we haggle. The dealer will usually throw in several of the stones I selected in as freebies (the small citrines or cab tourmaline), we will agree to a lower price per carat for stones from a certain parcel and so on. He will tally up everything, I will explain that it is too much money, I better return some of the stones, which is his cue to give me a final discount on everything and that I will pay him in 2 months time. We shake hands, he hands me my baggies and we drink a final cup of coffee, talking about new finds, treatments and international buyers. He knows that I will deposit him the full amount on the agreed date, so no money changes hand at that moment.
In a few weeks time, when he is about to return home, we will meet again, so I can see what he still has and at what price. I home a certain tourmaline will still be around and very reduced!
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