Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2006 12:27 pm Posts: 764 Location: Western NY
I've been traveling around Tuscon shopping for rough with fellow GO members Roger Dery, Steve Wallner, Gary Braun, and Naomi Sarna, a gem carver, (who I hope we've talked into becoming a GO member in the near future). It's been an absolute joy walking the shows with this group of professionals -- the insights and laughs alone have been worth my trip.
As others have pointed out, the weekend attendance has been very low. This, of course, works to some advantage for our buying, but I feel very badly for the dealers (especially the guy with the multi-kilos of Paki peridot refusing to let anyone pick -- $30K+ lots only. We suspect he'll change his terms in a few days).
Yesterday, we visited a long established dealer at the LaQuinta show. We purchased a good deal of rough from him at good prices. As things progressed, he pulled out a parcel of somewhat purple, red rough and handed it to us. My jaw dropped when he said, "it's spinel from Tajikistan."
We were holding an approximately 330gram parcel of the largest pieces of spinel I've ever seen -- the smallest piece was probably around 4grams, the largest had to be around 70grams. The most amazing part of it was that the parcel was mostly clean!
Happily, I had my point & shoot camera along and received permission to take some quick pictures. All of the lights were incandescent and I didn't use a flash -- I'm typing this from the hotel, so I can't tweak these pictures. Check this out
Asking price? $500,000. We encouraged him to contact the GIA, AGTA or some high-profile gemologist to document this lot before it gets sold.
As always, you can click through the image to my Flickr photostream for a larger version.
Update: I spoke with the dealer again today and he gave me permission to post his info: you can see this lot at Five Lions Gems. Presently, they're at La Quinta, room 115. But they'll be transitioning to GJX some time tomorrow -- they'll be at booth 1033. Ask for Wali.
The views expressed here are V. Pardieu’s opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of GIA Laboratory Bangkok (http://www.giathai.net)where he is an employee since Dec 2008.
Joined: Sun Nov 20, 2005 2:15 am Posts: 76 Location: Bangkok, Thailand
Spinel from Tajikistan can be quite large, and certainly very beautiful. The color is very consistent, a slightly orangish, slightly purplish, light-medium pink.
The rough is much more expensive now that it was even several years ago. While the rough usually goes through Peshawar, there is high demand in Russia for the best faceted stones.
Inclusions usually are in the form of minute specks. These can be difficult to see in the rough, and makes buying rough Tajik spinel somewhat risky. With the light tone, even one small spot is easily seen in a faceted stone. As such, if possible, one should cut Tajik spinels to be absolutely loupe-clean.
_________________ Scott Davies
American-Thai Trading, Bangkok
Joined: Wed Nov 01, 2006 5:00 pm Posts: 391 Location: Dolan Springs, Arizona
I went by the Five lions booth today at GJX. The spinel was unbelievable, but hehad a lot more than the Spinel (which was out of my league.) He had seafoam and neon blue-green color tourmaline to die for. Also saw the three largest, most perfect Kunzite crystals of deep fushia color. They were worth the trip alone. Beryls and peridot all of sizes you never see any more. I haven't really seen any other rough dealers yet with Wali's quality and sizes. Prices were very fair for the quality and size.
Joined: Sat Aug 18, 2007 11:46 pm Posts: 353 Location: Kingsport, TN
I too paid Wali a visit and was absolutely floored by the spinel. I saw him early on at LaQuinta and again yesterday at GJX. The size was incredibly-impressive, but equally so was the clarity. Some of the pieces looked completely flawless to my brief inspection. Some lucky (and extremely well-funded) cutter or cutters will have some killer spinel by the end of the show....
Joined: Wed Apr 26, 2006 12:44 am Posts: 2056 Location: San Francisco
I've dealt w/ wali.. he's quite the stone guy.. those spinels are incredible and what i'd come to expect from him.. unfortunately he doesn't break those parcels down ( he's the guy I got that sky blue tourmaline rough from you like Barbara).
I'll have to say hi and take a look..
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