I guess I should not be irritated with all the posts asking for a valuation based on a photo. After all, the people who post these requests are the people who keep this forum in business. However, it might help a little if they were to bear a few things in mind.
Gemstone sellers are in business to make money and they are generally either very well educated about gemology or at least savvy as to current prices for the materials they sell. If you have to ask what the value of a gem or mineral is, you obviously don’t know your gems and minerals. So you are an uneducated buyer buying from a savvy seller. In this situation, the absolute best that you can hope for is that the seller will give you a fair retail price. As soon as you buy the gem or mineral, you have lost money, because you, a customer, cannot resell the material for a retail price. Your selling price will probably be somewhere between wholesale and retail, and toward the wholesale end.
Bearing the above in mind, you need to banish all thoughts of making money buying and selling gems and minerals until you have become educated as to ID and value and market forces. This is going to take you a good while. Gemology is not that hard to learn, but takes time, probably a couple of years or so. As to valuation, that takes experience judging clarity, color, etc. and often that is hard to come by, since you are not buying and selling quantities of gem materials daily and your access to markets overseas may be limited.
Your best route to making money in gems is going to be learning a lot about how gems are fashioned and how jewelry is made, how gems and jewelry are marketed, etc. It isn’t impossible to do, but it does take a lot of time. If you take the time to learn how to buy rough gems wisely and learn to cab and/or facet, you can make some money, because now you are buying rough at wholesale (in bulk) and then fashioning it and mounting it for sale at a retail price.
I hope this is somewhat helpful. We could discuss various gems and how they are cut, what the yield is, how they are mounted and sold, etc., but that would be the subject of other posts… -royjohn
Hear! hear! I hope all members who question what their purchase is worth read your sage advice. I agree that there are very few bargains in the gem world unless the buyer has some experience with gemstones. Also, trust is paramount. Does the seller have a refund policy? Also, buy small and check the merchandise before buying big. Lastly, if it’s too cheap, it’s not natural or not gem quality.
I have been buying rough on line from sellers in Thailand and Pakistan lately. They are folks I really don’t know well, but they are frequent posters to the various FB rough sale pages. Some offerings are very unrealistically priced, esp. lately…and I do hear talk of prices rising. However, I know what I should be paying and wait for the right prices, colors and sizes. I also always bargain with the seller and with some experience, I pretty much know how much discount I can wring out of these dealers. I pay via Paypal and keep my purchases below about $1000. I haven’t had any problems that couldn’t be resolved. These sellers appear to be loathe to refund money but are fine with offering credit towards some other purchase, which is fine with me. Buying rough is a lot different from buying cut stones or finished jewelry, however. I have been faceting about 27 years, so I do have some experience in buying and evaluating rough and cut stones. It’s not a “We found this in old Aunt Minnie’s things after she died and we’re sure it’s worth big money” situation. LOL. -royjohn
This has been a most interesting discussion. I am in a different position on the food chain in the world of gemstones. I only buy finished beads but have learned a lot over the years about the quality, value and authenticity of those gemstones. I also know that the price of everything in the line of gemstones has gone up due to trade agreements, global warming, routes of transportation not being open and child labor laws.
Only offer or pay the amount you can afford to loose sight unseen.
If you have never seen a gem and only way you are given details is by reading sellers past customers comments.
Read all of them.
If they have 97% great reviews probably good chance good gem.
If they have no reviews risk is considered.
Loss is up to person taking chance.
Recently I took risk and on all purchases so far very happy. So far. Not to risk further issues.
I look forward to obtaining the rest of my orders.
We can risk what we can afford to loose.
If a risk is worth effort use credit card.
If risk was worthy of effort have contingency toward financing options after so no risk and payments are not high rate upon purchase.
I’ll have to check FB again. Because a few years ago someone said “oh try to sell on FB marketplace” but when i searched all I found was small cheap looking stones. Nothing that was sizeable or of true fabulous gemstone quality.
Is this where you’re referring you purchased from?
FB Marketplace?
Im not looking to buy but am looking to find an on-line area to sell my inventory at wholesale or below.
I don’t know what you are trying to sell…facet or cab rough or faceted stones or ??? I was not talking about general FB Marketplace, but about various public and private groups devoted to cab rough, facet rough, faceted stones and wholesale jewelry. You have to look for the particular market in which you have an interest. You may have to gain admission to a particular group or several groups. The membership of the groups is listed, so you will know how many people frequent each…in the case of gem groups, some will be buyers and some sellers. If you find a group that has 5K members in a faceted gemstone group, it stands to reason that at least some of them want to buy, so a seller of faceted stones might try to see if they could do well there. Make sense? -royjohn
Yes, it makes sense royjohn. We’ve messaged before on topics. First off I was referring to faceted jeweler quality gemstones usually of substantial size for their type, at a wholesale or better price not chain stores.
When I read your long message you wrote on IGS I only asked you because I’m am only aware and have only been told by others about FB Marketplace period. No subsections or categories you now mentioned in this message!
I apologized if you found the message annoying or confusing.
Hi Kend,
I was not annoyed at all. I apologize if I didn’t see previous info about what you are planning on selling when I asked my questions to clarify. Just wanted to be precise and helpful.
I agree with you that FB Marketplace is all over the place in terms of quality of what you find, education and savvy of sellers, etc.,etc. It’s like a big yard sale on line and you meet all kinds of people with all kinds of stuff. I’ve seen stuff for porch pickup 200 miles from me and offered to front the entire cost of shipping it, even to sending a priority box with my label on it, for them to insert the item and put it in their mailbox…and also offered to pay $10 more than their asking…and had them refuse this “what’s not to like?” offer. I love to get out my popcorn and browse there just for entertainment!
That said, if you search for specific FB groups for sales of specialty items, you will find large and small, private and open groups. From my own interests, I know there are sites for the sale of faceting machines, ones for the sale of sewing machines of one specific vintage make, etc., etc. I just looked, and there is even a small group for the sale of “jewelry and beanie babies on the low low…” I am not making this up, as Dave Barry used to say. It just takes a little searching with creative search words to find what you want.
Hope this is helpful. Kend, I’ll also send you a DM about this.
Best,
royjohn