My husband and I recently jumped headfirst into the world of gems. He made a surprising and cool connection with a miner in Brazil, I met a very talented and experienced cutter here in the States, and now we have some pretty stunning natural topaz on our hands, with colors ranging from golden to Imperial to pink.
We are learning as much as we can as fast as possible, but have a very long way to go. The secrets of the gem trade seem to be pretty well protected even in this internet age.
We aspire to be gem dealers, eventually hoping to sell both rough and cut topaz and other gemstones.
I am very much looking forward to learning from all of your collective years of experience.
If you have advice on networking I would love to hear it. If any of you are going to be in Denver in a couple weeks or Tucson in the winter we'd love to buy you a beer and pick your brain in person!
Cheers,
Rachael (& Gregg)
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Lovely material. I also really love fine quality imperial topaz. Fine, intense pink/red/purple rough is difficult to get and expensive. The more yellowish material is more common, and is generally a price point kind of business proposition. Congratulations on finding a good source.
If you intend to buy rough and sell cut for a profit, you will need to be very attentive to yield, and color. I did not see the rough your stones were cut from so cannot judge results on individual stones. However, in general the style of cutting being shown tends to sacrifice color and yield for brilliance. The advantage of this style is that the professional cutters from overseas will not cut in this style, so you won't have to compete with them on price if you can find clients who prefer this style of faceting. It is not that the professional cutters can't can't cut this style, it is in fact easier because you just follow a published diagram. it is simply less profitable for the dealers to do so.
Could you please elaborate a bit more on cutting styles for me? I believe I understand how cutting for yield over brilliance would look different, bit I'm not sure what you mean by cutting for color. How would this differ from the style of my stones?
Also, could you please tell me to whom you are referring when you say "professional overseas cutters"? So far I have heard pretty negative reviews from folks who have had stones cut in Thailand and Sri Lanka- big windows and facets that don't meet cleanly, as we'll as some stories of rough that just goes missing!
Are there perhaps more reliable and professional "overseas" cutters that I haven't heard about yet? That would be exciting news. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and advice.
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