Joined: Wed Feb 25, 2009 5:53 pm Posts: 175 Location: Toronto
Is that cut tris-de-garnet? Holy cow it was 9 years ago that I cut that (or something similar) in some hazy material lying somewhere between clear quartz and lavendar rose quartz.
Seems we have similar tastes (...though side-by-side, your polish puts mine to shame. Great cutting!)
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Joined: Fri Jun 25, 2010 10:06 pm Posts: 2267 Location: Chapel Hill, NC / Toronto, ON
I'm planning on doing a bulk buy of FF sapphire and spinel from Djeva in July. I think there's a lot of heartache involved in doing bulk multi-person buys of natural material, but with synthetics since everything's the same there is no risk of people getting cheated out of "good stuff".
Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2012 10:15 am Posts: 352 Location: Cary, NC
Arya,
Let me know and I may be in for some of it. Good practice (with a wife and daughter that take everything that's any good from me instantly). I'd love to stock up on some good synthetics
_________________ Bob Hodges
Faceter: When turned into a zombie, they stumble around crying "roooouuuuggghhhh"
I have split parcels with another guy a few times in the past. This is what we did.
Flip a coin to decide who picks first. Then the guy who picks second gets 2 picks. After that alternate until the parcel is gone. Weigh what each has and figure the cost for each based on weight.
Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2009 1:56 pm Posts: 282 Location: The Upper Beach
Sometimes members of local clubs will make a large purchase and offer some pieces for sale. Some clubs have dealers as members with special offers at meetings. Hint, hint, Toronto soon.
Joined: Tue Jun 12, 2007 6:41 pm Posts: 5534 Location: Massachusetts, USA
The problems in buying rough parcels that I have seen is friendships ending because "He highgraded the shipment and left us garbage". Even if it's not true. So on rough parcels there is this risk, as others pointed out. There will be a few good stones. There will be average ones. There will be uncuttable ones. As many people know, I have always handled group purchases and given Guild Discounts. There are local guilds who every year or so give me a Wish List from their members, and I do one big order with a discount. Usually the club makes some money, or sometimes, the members get a deal, depending on how they set it up. The reason I do this is in the past when I was starting out with the BATT, local guilds were the vector by which people saw and learned of the products. Without them I may never have had a business. I discovered the effect buy noticing Zip Code clusters. Someone brought their new toy to a meeting and showed it around!
I think for this work, and get any kind of discount, you need to think about much larger parcels. A rough dealer with quality material isn't going to think a $5000 purchase as something they would consider to discount. In fact I don't think a discount is really what you're after but more being able to purchase the parcel. Quality rough always sells, so there is no need for the dealer to discount it, but many dealers will only sell in parcels, and often they are too much for one person, with a small 1 man show cutting to handle.
Here's a few parcels over the years I had been offered, but had to turn down due to the cost. These would have been great to split up with a few people.
1. Blue Tourmaline from Afghanistan - $120,000 2. Hot pink spinel from Mahenge - $300,000 3. Winza Ruby in larger clean pieces - $400,000 4. Tsavorite Garnet 1 gram to 3 gram - $180,000
Sometimes dealers will allow you to do a blind pour from these parcels, but often at a price of 2x the price per gram if you took the whole parcel or even more.
I did a blind pour this year in Tucson on some Umba Sapphire, and still had to buy $10,000 worth as the minimum pour.
Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2012 10:15 am Posts: 352 Location: Cary, NC
Precision,
Let me first say "gulp", those numbers are a wee bit outside of what I was thinking of spending. However, I do understand you're a professional and we're speaking apples and oranges here for the use case
Truly appreciate all of the people that have chimed in here, I'm learning more with each post
_________________ Bob Hodges
Faceter: When turned into a zombie, they stumble around crying "roooouuuuggghhhh"
There are parcels other than the top end, and dealers other than the top end as well. There are plenty of cases where 5k will be a significant number, you just need to find the appropriate material and dealer.
I used to do joint buys once in a while with some of the Idar dealers.
In many parcels, there is one or a few stones that make the parcel. In fact these stones often almost pay for the entire parcel. We would often take these stones out, cut them, remain partners in them, splitting the money evenly when they sold. Very fair way to do it.
With the balance of the parcel (or the whole parcel when distribution was fairly even), one of us would sort and divide the parcel into two lots as even as possible. The other would then get to pick which of the two parcels he wanted.
Although never perfect, I never felt cheated, or lost money because of the split. Over time, and a number of parcels it averaged out fair.
Not exactly a group buy situation though. That would be very tough, probably impossible, with high end material.
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