Emeralds & cutting

[jasita]

Hi there, this is my new aquired rough gem. An 84ct emerald rough. Ok so its probably not worth much but its nice. How would I go about getting it cut down. I bought it off ebay.com
I know its pretty small compared to some I''ve seen. But they were all really high prices too.
I don''t feel like I got taken to the cleaners on this item.

 

[valeria101]

Who does this to people on Ebay!!!

 

[jasita]

theres lots of companies and individuals on ebay as sellers of loose gems and rough rocks. Why is there a problem buying something off of ebay?

 

[valeria101]

No problem (this comign from my Ebayer self).... but from this distance I see lots of fractures in the respective piece: maybe there is facetable material after all, but I would not bet. You have it in hand though, not I.

It is not usual to sell rock samples by the carat. Is the pic far from reality?

 

[diamonddelux]

I have the emerald rough in hand and yes the pic is very close to what I am holding. There are some whitish areas that the camera didn't pick up right or shall I say it picked it up but the whitish wasn't really there. I think it was the light in the room when I took the pick. But I would still like to have my dreams and get it cut down. Especially if I could get a respectable nice 10 ct stone out of it and maybe alot of small faceted stones. What do you think Valerie

 

[Richard Sherwood]

Looks like mineral specimen quality, at first glance.

I doubt you'll be getting any 10 carat commercial quality or better stone out of it. Perhaps promotional quality, but then it really wouldn't be worth the price of recutting, unless you had it done down in South America on "the cheap".

How much did it cost you? That's a pretty good indicator of quality. No dealer lets a potentially saleable commercial quality or better rough piece go for nothing.

 

[diamonddelux]

Thanks Richard, I only paid about $19 US for it

 

[Richard Sherwood]

Pretty good price, actually, for a nice mineral specimen.

I wouldn't put any money into recutting it though. Unless an experienced lapidary who looks honest tells you differently.

 

[GLudlow]

You could always try cutting the stone yourself

A guy at work, I found out, is an amateur lapidary, and I'm thiking about getting into it myself. Seems a time consuming hobby, wih some high initial costs, but after that it seems like it would be very rewarding. A $19 rough emerald isn't a bad way to start

 

[jasita]

Well, I'm happy I didn't get ripped off for the specimen. Its a little diappointing though that I wouldn't be able to make anything off of it. Getting tired of playing the lottery...no luck there.
Ah, maybe someday I might find something respectable...probably have to weight til hell freezes over though. People aren't very stupid in this line of business.
Sure would love to learn about cutting it myself, but you know, I've never seen any of that ever done before. And the equipment would be astrinomical in price. I don't know any jewelry's personally either.

 

[Nicrez]

Actually that IS a good price for Emerald rough. I bought a mineral quality 78ct amethyst for $35, so onbviously an emerald is a bit more...

As for cutting stones, the cost of cutting one can run upwards of $300, from what I have seen to MUCH MUCH more. Even recuts are about $200 or so (at least in NYC) Lots of cutters out here, but mostly diamond cutters, and their time is obviously quite precious!

Not worth the cost to cut almost ANY rough purchased from E-Bay, mostly. That's why it's sold there and not in the jewelery trade shows, and primary wholesalers...Here in NY (and I assume in other Diamond Districts) you will have jewelers and sellers who sell "wholesale", but truly are selling to the public, because the real sales come when you have lots of cash on hand an occurr in those inconspicuous office buildings that have NO signs and advertising.

Like the cutters in NYC I have seen where in office buildings, with literally just a name tag on the door and absolutely NOTHING fancy. Very very non-descript. Maybe, just mybe if you live near a Diamond District, you can search around, ask for cutters that are usually inaccessible...?

But still, I would buy the gems already cut, as the cost is STILL cheaper, unless you have LOADS of rough and a cheap lapidary you know well...

Try getting the gems through E-bay for lower end stones (SettGold is QUITE cheap) and see what you can get, but try creativegems.com, concavegems.com, multicolour.com, etc...for nicer stones, and perhaps when you find a jeweler, maybe you can get a discount for setting them all...? Good luck!

 

[pyramid]

Not the same as yours from ebay but a sort of similar story.


This is from a UK company whose web page is
www.24carat.co.uk





So, You Have Won an Emerald

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: What is the value of an emerald?
Not a week goes by without someone asking us this question, we often get asked more than once daily. It is almost always an uncut emerald, although many people forget to mention this fact.
Obviously nobody can value an emerald without seeing it. All gemstones vary enormously in value, and the value depends on how attractive the stone is, and several other factors, but this does not stop many people from telephoning or e-mailing us expecting us to know the answer without even seeing the stone, and expecting our expert advice for nothing into the bargain!.
Nevertheless, we still try to help people.
After we had been asked about six times in the same week, we started asking the enquirers for more information.
Help Us To Help You
It never ceases to surprise us that most people asking for our advice do not give us all the information they have before they expect our answer.
By the time we had received about the sixth enquiry, we had learnt that these "uncut emeralds" had been received as a scratch card prize.
Once we were armed with this clue, we asked our enquirers whether the competition organisers stated the value of the prize, or sent a valuation with it. The answer was negative.
Eventually somebody turned up in our showroom with one of the stones, which they had been given by a friend who had won it. Now most of the emeralds we deal in are already cut and polished, and knowing the value of uncut stones is another area of expertise. There is a lot a waste, perhaps 50% of the stone weight gets lost, cutting costs money, and coloured stones usually get paler when they are made smaller. Some attractive looking uncut stones may lose all their attractiveness when cut, and be worthless. Even so, we reckoned that it would probably cost more to have the uncut stone facetted and polished than it would be worth when finished. In other words, the stone was of very little, if any, value.

Another Clue
Not long after, another person brought us their emerald which they had received as a "competition prize".
It was an irregular shaped piece of quite attractive green material, we did not get as far as testing to check whether it was a real emerald. It was packaged in a small cellophane packet which was stapled to a small piece, perhaps 5" x 3", of cheap paper. The paper was badly and cheaply printed to the effect:-

Congratulations!
You Have Won This Genuine Emerald.
Guarantee of Authenticity.
Weighing over 1 carat, this is a genuine uncut Emerald from Colombia, home of the world's finest Emeralds including those in the British Crown Jewels. It does not reflect light in its natural state. Colour, fire and lustre are only revealed by skilled cutting and polishing.
Turn over to discover how to transform your emerald into this precious pendant.
Actual Size 16mm high.
18" 9 Carat gold plated chain.

To Claim Your Prize
To receive your "prize" you have to telephone a premium rate phone number, which is likely to cost you about £5.
Transformation
In order to turn your "prize" into a pendant, you are likely to be asked to pay £10, £20, or more to have "your" emerald polished and mounted to create a lucky horseshoe, or similar pendant.

Worth £1.99 on a Market Stall?
We reckon, even though it may have been a genuine natural emerald, the finished product would probably be the sort of thing you could be offered on a market stall at some price from 99p to £4.99, and probably cost £50 per hundred from an importer.

Scratchcard Marketing
In other words, the whole deal turned out to less attractive than it would seem.
The "emerald" from the scratchcard is possibly only a piece of glass, or at best a piece of low grade emerald not worth polishing. When (if?) you receive "your" stone back, polished and mounted, effectively you will merely have purchased for good money, a piece of junk (we would hesitate to call it costume jewellery), with very little value.

How Can People Be So Stupid?
This is the question that we are left asking ourselves.
The answer of course, is that people will readily believe what they want to believe. When told they have won a competition, do they not stop to ask themselves what competition, or read the leaflet to find out? Do they not look at the cheap nasty print job, and work the above out for themselves? Most of them have probably not entered any competitions, so don't they think it's slightly odd to be told they have won one? Do they wonder whether it's been delivered to the wrong house?
The sad answer is no, they don't stop to think about any of these things, they want to believe they have acquired something valuable for nothing, so believe it they will. Naturally when they ask us, and probably hundreds of other jewellers thoughout the country, the value of a one carat uncut Columbian emerald, they don't volunteer all the details, or we would probably shatter their illusions, but these people are wasting their own time as well as ours. Ultimately they are only deceiving themselves, and nobody else.

Fraudulent Trading?
Because of the low price asked for the pendants, we would not suggest that the vendors are being fraudulent in their trading, although Trading Standards Officers and The Courts, may take a different view. Nobody is being deprived of a serious amount of money, and they do we presume, receive something in return matching its description. Any deception is in the claim that the original "emerald" is a prize, rather like the prizes announced by the pushy timeshare salesmen.

Question Answered?
Hopefully by now, if you found this page because you have "won" an emerald, you now know its value.
We are happy to have been able to help you.
We hope we have not upset you by our direct manner on this page, you may gather that we get a little frustrated at times.

Don't Give It To A Friend!
Please, whatever you do, don't give your "prize" to a friend. If you do, please leave it in its original packaging so your friend can work things out for themselves, don't do what one person in our story above did. You could hardly blame the recipient of the gift for not realising that it was only a free leaflet give-away.

Scratch Cards
The latest occurrence in the "One Carat Emerald" saga is the appearance of them as prizes in scratch card competitions. The example which we looked at was one where the "lucky winner" had a premium rate telephone number to call, minimum 5 minutes at £1 per minute. We suspect the only winners of this and other similar competitions are the organisers. We would not like to call this a scam without stronger evidence.

Gemmological Laboratory Findings
On 21st November 2001, we read a report from the London Gem Lab, which had tested five pieces of "rough emerald", some at the request of a local authority trading standards office. They found that two out of the five pieces were not emerald but mica schist with a few grains of emerald embedded, and would therefore fall foul of the Trade Descriptions Act.
The laboratory obviously doubted that the cut and mounted emerald received was the same as the original one.

 

[jasita]

mine from from a U.S. company called caratfarm.com

 

[bullionaire]

You didnt get taken to the cleaners if you like the stone. If you did want to have it cut, and don''t mind
the risk of the stone turning to dust, find a faceter. There are hundreds of good ones out there. Or,
take up the hobby yourself, and give the stone a try. You may want to use your search engine to find
"cabbing rough" or "faceting rough". Many faceters deal in rough, and they can point you in the right
direction. It is unusual to sell mine run rough in carats, as I buy the same type of rough by the kilogram.
I hope that helps, but keep in mind that if you like the stone, the price doesnt matter.

 

[PrecisionGem]

I have seen (and have) a whole lot of that type of emerald material. These stones are full of fractures and typically kind of fall apart when trying to cut. THe material is very light, very included and has much non emerald material running though it. It really is not facet quality.
However, what you could have done with it, is a cab cut, or maybe sliced on a saw and polished. This could then be set into a pendant or something. They may be a few crystal pieces here and there in the stone, but they would only end up being .15 ct or so stone, and certainlyl not worth the time to saw out and cut, since in this color, they could be purchased for less than $1 each from overseas cutting houses.
Just keep it as a mineral specimen, or maybe find a guy who does cabbing.

A good facet grade emerald of 84 cts would sell for $500/ct or $42,000 or more.

 

[MJO]

Date: 2/23/2006 10:28:12 AM
Author: PrecisionGem
I have seen (and have) a whole lot of that type of emerald material. These stones are full of fractures and typically kind of fall apart when trying to cut. THe material is very light, very included and has much non emerald material running though it. It really is not facet quality.
However, what you could have done with it, is a cab cut, or maybe sliced on a saw and polished. This could then be set into a pendant or something. They may be a few crystal pieces here and there in the stone, but they would only end up being .15 ct or so stone, and certainlyl not worth the time to saw out and cut, since in this color, they could be purchased for less than $1 each from overseas cutting houses.
Just keep it as a mineral specimen, or maybe find a guy who does cabbing.

A good facet grade emerald of 84 cts would sell for $500/ct or $42,000 or more.

Hi Gene,

The last emerald facet grade 80ct rough I saw was $100,000 and still had to be cut into smaller 4ct and less stones. This was pashmir afghan material.

Regards,
Maurice