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| davegimchee |
 Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 9:47 am Post subject: microscope repair video |
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Forum Freshman
Joined: 28 May 2008
Posts: 18
Location: South Korea
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Hi everbody~
I am new to this forum and I am not sure where to put this but since earth science is as close as you can get to gemology I will place it here. I am a gemologist by trade and I recently posted a video on my blog that might be interesting to those of you who have microscopes. It is a basic maintenance routine that I have demonstrated on video. It includes a list of tools and on the video there are step-by-step instructions.
Although this video was made for a gemological microscope with a darkfield well, the basic concepts are applicable to many different kinds of microscopes particularly those with a rack-and-pinion focusing mechanism.
I would be grateful to anyone who stopped by, and I am also looking for any criticism or comments that anyone would like to share.
You can watch the video at my blog:
http://tiptopgem.com/
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Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
~Napoleon Hill |
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| davegimchee |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 9:32 am Post subject: Also- gemstone questions |
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Forum Freshman
Joined: 28 May 2008
Posts: 18
Location: South Korea
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If you have any questions about gemology I would be really happy to answer them- or at least try. There is a lot to know and I don't pretend to have all of the answers but I will give it my best shot!
David Fortier, GG (GIA)
Staff Gemologist
tiptopgem.com
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Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
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| KALSTER |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 9:39 am Post subject: |
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Forum Cosmic Wizard
Joined: 08 Sep 2007
Posts: 2082
Location: South Africa
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Will you answer them here or on your blog?
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"Gullibility kills" - Carl Sagan |
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| davegimchee |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 11:09 am Post subject: your call |
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Joined: 28 May 2008
Posts: 18
Location: South Korea
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It's your call- I think if I want to contribute to your forum then any that come here should be answered here. And I do want to contribute!
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Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
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| Frenchi |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 12:02 pm Post subject: |
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Forum Sophomore
Joined: 06 Mar 2008
Posts: 129
Location: Port Saint Lucie, Florida
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What exactly does one do as a gemologist? Does the "IN" box on your desk contain just a pile of precious stones that need identification ? =P
Kidding aside, what does being a practitioner of gemology entail? |
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| davegimchee |
| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 8:47 pm Post subject: yes, a big pile of gemstones! |
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Forum Freshman
Joined: 28 May 2008
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LOL. Well, sometimes that happens!
The field is so vast- I guess it would be like asking "what does a mechanical engineer do?" But in my case, our company is small so I wear many hats. There are only three of us running tiptopgem at the moment so my days are full of customer service correspondence via email and instant messages and phone calls.
Also I list stones on eBay and have a lot of contact with customers who buy stones directly from our company. This means taking a lot of photographs of the stones and writing descriptions of them, and deciding whether a stone is slightly purplish-red or very slightly purplish-red. Small differences like this can mean large differences in value so it's important to get it right! For the average colored stone dealer on eBay that is not such a big deal because they are selling more common stones to new collectors. But our specialty is rare stones and our customers are the more advanced collectors who have a lot of experience, and also other gemologists who are buying for themselves or for clients. They are well-educated and their knowledge means that I have little room for error.
The other end of it is travel and buying, which I really enjoy. I live in South Korea, but the largest colored stone wholesale market in the world is in Thailand. It is in a small town 4 hours by bus southeast of Bangkok called Chanthaburi, not far from the border with Cambodia. I travel there at least every two or three months to buy stones. You can actually see a video on my site of the gemstone market. It is a magical place to a gemologist or colored stone dealer or collector. It is our "heaven" as about 70% of the colored stones that are sold in Western markets travel through Thailand, and the majority of these go through Chanthaburi.
Usually when I travel to Thailand I will spend the weekdays in Bangkok with my regular contacts who handle rare stones, then I will go to the market in Chanthaburi which is open Friday and Saturday. Depending on what orders I haven't filled and/or how much of my budget I have not spent, I may travel back to Bangkok and start the circuit over again. My costs are fixed pretty much- the plane ticket is the largest expense- so the greater the portion of my budget I can spend on stones for each trip the better it is. If I buy one stone, the customer who buys that stone has to pay for my whole trip! But if I buy 100 stones, each person only pays for 1% of my trip. That's more reasonable.
Actually, on a typical trip I might only buy 200 stones. That is a very, very tiny number compared to the high volume, low quality dealers who make up 99% of the colored stone market. From the beginning my partner and I decided that we wanted to deal in quality stones and that has been our niche. It also makes the business a lot more fun for me because I am a collector myself and I have a lot of appreciation for rare stones.
Once I come back with the stones, there is a lot of time weighing and measuring each one, adding them to the database, and then doing clarity grades using the microscope set at 10X. After that I usually take photos and write copy describing the stones that will be put on eBay, and I actually do the listings. But the majority of our sales are direct so that means I don't have to do listings or take photos for each one. When I get a request for something, and I have the stone in the weight and size that a customer is looking for, I will do some photos and a description and send it along to him or her.
Things are about to change quite a bit as we are opening a buying office in Thailand which means I will be there full-time. I am really excited about that both because I like the country a lot, and it means that I will have greater access to more stones as a collector and as the buyer for the company. So our customers will really benefit too.
Also literally every single day is spent with continuing education for me since the trade and the science moves very quickly. There are regularly new treatment methods for colored stones that greatly affect their value. I need to be aware of all of the latest techniques if I am going to be able to recognize these treatments at the marketplace before I buy. Mistakes are very expensive in this business. I spend time reading the latest forum postings on gemology forums and sometimes correspond with other dealers or gemologists about these treatments.
Wow, I feel so tired now. LOL. Holler if you have any questions!
Dave
_________________
Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
~Napoleon Hill |
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| KALSTER |
| Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 1:35 am Post subject: |
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Forum Cosmic Wizard
Joined: 08 Sep 2007
Posts: 2082
Location: South Africa
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Thanks much for that detailed description of your work! I was just wondering, do you get the whole variety of precious stones from Thailand?
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"Gullibility kills" - Carl Sagan |
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| davegimchee |
| Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 3:21 am Post subject: kind of! |
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Forum Freshman
Joined: 28 May 2008
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My pleasure! We don't see much emerald, which mostly comes out of South America although there are some newer sources in Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Because of Thailand's relatively easy access to the gemstone-rich sources of Sri Lanka, India, the Middle East and Africa- and the low-cost transportation between Bangkok and those sources- there is a very wide variety of stones in Thailand. Also the Chinese Thais have practiced aggressive source-control of mining operations in many countries. As corundum (blue is sapphire, red is ruby) sources became depleted in Thailand the cutting houses and heat-treatment facilities wanted to stay in business. Many of these individuals secured rights from mines overseas and continued to import rough gemstone material to Thailand. Sometimes they bought the whole mine, sometimes they bought the production for life, or they made arrangements with mine owners to be the sole outlet for the mine's production. Yet other Thai people established buying offices in these mining regions to ensure that the "rough" continued to flow through their businesses in Thailand. It's a really fascinating business because it rolls a lot of interesting disciplines together like politics, social science, geography, of course earth science, and also entails one of my favorite concepts- beauty.
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Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
~Napoleon Hill |
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| Frenchi |
| Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 8:51 am Post subject: |
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Forum Sophomore
Joined: 06 Mar 2008
Posts: 129
Location: Port Saint Lucie, Florida
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| Fascinating. Is any significant portion of this market driven by commodity trading, in the vein of buying and selling stocks? I'm sure diamonds are traded this way, but the rest of the gamut of precious and semi-precious stones dont exactly have universally accepted grading sysetms. I can imagine it would be hard to maintain or increase the value of your investment if nobody can agree on it's value. |
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| davegimchee |
| Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 9:16 am Post subject: you understand... |
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Forum Freshman
Joined: 28 May 2008
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I think you have a good grasp of this. Yes, there is no commodity-style trading because there is no universal standard. It is even hard to agree on basic things like color. I will say that a ruby is slightly purplish red and medium dark tone, and someone else will say no, it is very slightly purplish red and medium tone. I will say that it is deeply saturated, and another dealer might say "well, it is reasonably well saturated. the term 'deeply' might be going overboard'." So there is always disagreement over value factors like tone and saturation and hue- which keeps people from agreeing on prices.
Also one dealer might sense weakness in the market for a particular stone- say a Ceylon sapphire over 3 carats, in cornflower blue. So he might price his stone at a 10% or 20% premium. But another dealer might have just sold one from his safe, and went to the market and got lucky to buy a couple more. To him, the world is rolling in cornflower blue sapphire over 3 carats! He might discount it. Supply is not plentiful in colored stones the way it is in diamonds, and there is no universal methodology or system in place to judge supply.
A good example is blue tourmaline. When I see a parcel of blue tourmaline, I get excited. But I don't want the seller to know- and the last time I bought a parcel I paid a reasonable price for it. Now he and I don't agree on something. He thinks blue tourmaline is plentiful, and I think it is rare. Maybe he has seen a lot lately, and I have not seen much at all. If I can sell it at a profit, then I am right for my market. And I guess, in a way, his ideal is the same. If he can make money, it's OK. But if he knew how excited I am to see his blue tourmaline (we call it indicolite) he surely would charge me more. His starting price would be higher.
It's a hard business to learn I would say because you have to be able to make mistakes to learn. And some people are not well-financed going in and they are so afraid to make mistakes that they stagnate. They only make very conservative buys at low prices so they never have quality stones that people are willing to pay for- and that they can profit from and use the proceeds to grow the business.
On the other hand, if you are crazy about stones you would be crazy to do anything else. Especially if you love to travel and are flexible about how you live, what you eat, and what kind of toilet you use! LOL. If you are adaptable you can make your way in this kind of trade and have a lot of fun in the process.
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Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
~Napoleon Hill |
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| Frenchi |
| Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 10:00 am Post subject: |
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Forum Sophomore
Joined: 06 Mar 2008
Posts: 129
Location: Port Saint Lucie, Florida
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Ah, thanks for the clarification. When you go gem-hunting, are you generally dealing with raw stones or cut stones? Which do you see more demand for from your clients?
Also, I visited the link provided in your opening post and all I'm getting is a placeholder page saying "Welcome to the future Website for tiptopgem.com". |
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| davegimchee |
| Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 12:50 pm Post subject: alternate route! |
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Forum Freshman
Joined: 28 May 2008
Posts: 18
Location: South Korea
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ahhhh!!!
Startlogic is down again. No surprise. You can see my page here:
http://tiptopgem.wordpress.com/
I only buy cut stones; rough is just an entirely different ballgame. I may do rough in the future but that will mean basically starting over in terms of assessing quality. I will benefit from my customer base and that will help turn inventory over after it is cut, but you don't just start buying rough and do it well unless you have a very good tutor who has decades of experience to guide you through it. Even then, you will have to make your own mistakes and learn from them. I guess with a mentor the idea is to learn from his or her mistakes and avoid them- which means you start with a leg up.
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Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
~Napoleon Hill |
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| Frenchi |
| Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 9:42 am Post subject: |
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Forum Sophomore
Joined: 06 Mar 2008
Posts: 129
Location: Port Saint Lucie, Florida
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Wow, quite a bit of information on there, slowly working my way through it =)
I had a question on parti-color tourmalines, specifically about what causes the color bands. Looking at electron microprobe data from one, I see increased amounts of Bi2O3 in the pink bands and Na2O in the green rinds, but I also see pictures of tourmalines with brown and yellow bands. Are specific elements responsible for the bands, or is it simply a chemical crapshoot during crystallization? |
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| davegimchee |
| Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 10:08 am Post subject: Chemistry?!? |
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Forum Freshman
Joined: 28 May 2008
Posts: 18
Location: South Korea
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Well, we get the basics of gemstone chemistry when we study gemology but a laboratory gemologist would be able to give you a more meaningful answer than I can certainly. But if you want to see a ton of chemical formulas that relate to tourmaline, take a look down a ways on this page:
http://www.mindat.org/min-4003.html
Hope that helps answer your question! I could, of course, simply get out my electron microprobe and compile some data for you...LOL. If this doesn't answer your question, or if you need more information to make sense if it give me a holler! I will do my best!
Dave
tiptopgem.com
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Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
~Napoleon Hill |
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| Frenchi |
| Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 10:19 am Post subject: |
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Forum Sophomore
Joined: 06 Mar 2008
Posts: 129
Location: Port Saint Lucie, Florida
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Thanks Dave, I'll check that out. It's not a huge deal, just casual interest, so no need to break out an electron microprobe, hah. =)
One thing I have always had difficulty with is visualizing carats. Hearing a particular stone is say, 2 carats, is completely meaningless to me. Is there a handy mental device you use to associate a particular scale of mass or size to a carat value, or does one just need to be exposed to many different sized gems over time to get a good sense of the magnitude of a carat? |
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