Greetings to the community!
Let me thank you collectively for the fantastic content on the forum. There is nothing quite like a community of enthusiasts and I am respectfully submitting my request for some thoughtful advice in my quest for a top-notch ruby.
My budget is $50k-$100k, for which I expect a beautiful stone (perhaps "investment grade"?). Naturally, I want to give careful consideration to the purchasing process, and here is why:
- gems are only marginally a matter of taste. There is a hierarchy of values, i.e. some stones are intrinsically more beautiful than others, and it is not a matter of taste. The corollary is that for a given budget, there is a set of stones that are the "most beautiful within that budget" (let's call that "Best Value Stone"), and only within that set can one quibble about which is nicer, and this is where taste kicks in (I'm simplifying, but you get my point)
- buying a good ruby is hard, certainly relative to buying a good diamond. It seems to me it is very hard to define that subset of objectively Best Value Stones for a given budget
- I am essentially ignorant in a world of very knowledgeable people
- There is no way to tell whose intentions are pure and whose are not, so I have to assume the worst
- I don't know how to find an "advocate", i.e. someone who is on my side, whose interests are aligned with mine, and who will guide me to find the best possible stone - I'm prepared to pay for good advice, but I'm not sure how to even recognize it with certainty
My natural inclination would be to buy at auction, where at least market forces give me a (relative) comfort that I am getting what I am paying for.
Again, any thoughtful piece of advice would be very much appreciated!
Thank you.
Let me thank you collectively for the fantastic content on the forum. There is nothing quite like a community of enthusiasts and I am respectfully submitting my request for some thoughtful advice in my quest for a top-notch ruby.
My budget is $50k-$100k, for which I expect a beautiful stone (perhaps "investment grade"?). Naturally, I want to give careful consideration to the purchasing process, and here is why:
- gems are only marginally a matter of taste. There is a hierarchy of values, i.e. some stones are intrinsically more beautiful than others, and it is not a matter of taste. The corollary is that for a given budget, there is a set of stones that are the "most beautiful within that budget" (let's call that "Best Value Stone"), and only within that set can one quibble about which is nicer, and this is where taste kicks in (I'm simplifying, but you get my point)
- buying a good ruby is hard, certainly relative to buying a good diamond. It seems to me it is very hard to define that subset of objectively Best Value Stones for a given budget
- I am essentially ignorant in a world of very knowledgeable people
- There is no way to tell whose intentions are pure and whose are not, so I have to assume the worst
- I don't know how to find an "advocate", i.e. someone who is on my side, whose interests are aligned with mine, and who will guide me to find the best possible stone - I'm prepared to pay for good advice, but I'm not sure how to even recognize it with certainty
My natural inclination would be to buy at auction, where at least market forces give me a (relative) comfort that I am getting what I am paying for.
Again, any thoughtful piece of advice would be very much appreciated!
Thank you.