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Popular gemstones and cabochons:
Amazonite
Parrot Wing quick guide: 1" = 25mm 1/2"=13mm 1/4"=6.5mm
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A culet (kew'-lit) is the smallest facet on the face of a diamond, the point at the bottom. I'm calling this page of informal notes specifically drafted for my special customers CULETS, referring to small points made by something brilliant. February 5, 2007: Special Notes on The Availability of Stones Druzy. On the whole, the news about druzy is mixed. Let’s start with the OK to good news: Prices on the whole haven’t changed for high-quality coated drusies, and I was able to obtain some really lovely blue and purple (Carib) titanium drusies in the small to mid-size ranges. I also got some stunning small and medium-large drilled platinum druzy pendants at great prices. In addition, I was able to obtain more natural white druzy, some natural blue, and natural red jasper druzy. And I have a good source for new rainbow pyrite druzy as well. On the other hand, all the green garnet Uvarovite druzy at the Tucson show looked very poor in comparison to what I have been offering on the site. It is very “spotty” looking, with uneven coverage and bits of matrix showing through. This is now the norm for Uvarovite. I spoke with my Russian dealer who mines the material, and he said that they have been unable to obtain anything comparable to the quality they were selling several years ago. The dealer told me that I am currently underpricing my Uvarovite. He said that, for example, the piece I recently sold for $38 really should have sold for $90. So I have to warn you that soon I will be forced to drastically raise the prices on my Uvarovite. The top-quality Uvarovite which customers have purchased from me in the past is now easily worth 2 to 3 times what you paid for it. If you have already used it in your jewelry, you should consider adjusting your jewelry prices accordingly. I also went on a hunt for more Chrysocolla druzy. Imagine my shock when I picked up a small triangle, about 18mm by 12mm, and found a wholesale price on it that was more than my typical retail prices for it on my website! If anyone out there is interested in paying $120-130 for a small-to-medium-sized piece of chrysocolla druzy, let me know and I can get it for you. Otherwise, I won’t be carrying it. Oh, and a jumbo piece of really beautiful blue chrysocolla retails now at literally ten times what I would have charged for it on my site two years ago. Why is this druzy suddenly so precious? Well, the dealer explained that a section of the mine in Baghdad (Arizona) where they were beginning to extract chrysocolla druzy suddenly collapsed, burying the stone under millions of tons of rubble, so they won’t be going after it anytime soon. That was really frustrating for me to hear, but I just can’t bring myself to pay such high prices for stones. Black Druzy: There was not a single piece of natural black druzy available at the show. What they now sell as “black” is really a not-very-dark grey color with a polished rim of black agate. And, these new ones are not dyed with the long process I described on the website, which results in a permanent color change. No, now they are coated somehow. I didn’t even want to know how. The dyed black agate calibrated drusies that I offer on the site are the best blacks you will see in a while. I have a couple more of them in stock, but not many. The worst news, although not a total surprise, was Kammererite. No cabs were available directly from the miner, and the only piece of rough that he had to offer which I could have made into cabochons was a ½-lb chunk that had one face with druzy on it, a total area of about 4 by 2-1/2 inches in size. For this one piece, from his personal collection, he wanted $3,200. I passed it up. I have a very limited supply of Kammererite rough in stock, and I will have a couple pieces cut during the coming months, but this is warning that the price for any new Kammi that I can post during 2007 will be very high. The mine is closed and there is no new source of this material. The people who purchased my Kammererite from my website—your pieces are now worth on the retail market at least three times what you paid for them. Because of this, I can no longer offer a professional discount on any Kammererite. In other words, if you bought Kammererite from me, it cannot be counted towards a professional rebate at the end of the year. I just can’t afford to do that, and I hope you understand. There is one piece of good news, and that is I found a very interesting form of Rainbow Pyrite that I will be posting to the website in 2007. It is found in Russia, and I don't want to describe it in detail now, because that would spoil the surprise. *********
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Heart of Stone Studio Gemstones
Cabochons
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