Dave Fortier's Tip Top Gem blog

Dear Readers,

I must apologize for neglecting my blog, but I have been enjoying Dave Fortier's posts and he has most kindly given me permission to repost his most recent one. Especially note his interesting slices of tourmaline crystals!

The show circuit is in full force

We are delighted to welcome the nice people from the Southfield, Michigan Intergem show- where Melanie and I displayed two weekends ago. Welcome aboard everyone!!! Melanie and I are trying to get in touch with those of you who left your e-mail with us either with this newsletter or via Facebook. We show gemstones and jewelry on Facebook as well as in the newsletter, and in our online store. Take a look at what we have- there are links to the left of this article.

For those of you who have never been to a gem and jewelry show, Melanie and I very highly recommend it! You can see a wide range of stones that you would not see elsewhere, compare prices, ask questions to dealers in person, and most important- evaluate stones in real life instead of from a picture. I can not begin to tell you how many stones I have shown in the newsletter or on Facebook that created no interest but sold immediately on the first day of a show. I can say things like "this gemstone has 90% brilliance" but until you hold such a stone in your hand, you can not imagine the sparkle. Check out a show near you!!!



As we prepare for the buying trip to Thailand we need to know what you are looking for- ruby, sapphire, collectible stones, or any other custom jewelry projects that you've been thinking about. I will be in both Chanthaburi and Bangkok next week- so be sure you let us know what we can help you find.

As many of you already know, I offer the very best prices on ruby and sapphire because I go directly to the source and you do not have to pay me to keep these expensive stones in inventory! Any dealer that you see who has expensive stones in inventory will have higher prices. He has to. Business always functions on three "concepts of cash"- money in, money out, and TIME. The longer a dealer has to wrap up his cash, the more he will have to get out of that stone.

If you bought something from us at the Southfield, Michigan show you are eligible for Inner Circle membership. If you click on the link below, you will see stones for sale and you will see prices. But you will not see INNER CIRCLE pricing!!! If you want to make sure you see the very best prices that we offer, just send me a note asking for an upgrade. You can e-mail me at dave@tiptopgem.com or just call me at 800-607-1425. That toll-free number always rings to my cell, whether I am here or in Thailand. If you go to tiptopgem.com, you will see clocks that show local time in Thailand- generally if it is late or early here in the states it is a good time to call. The middle of the day in the states is the middle of the night in Thailand and you will get my voicemail. Do not hesitate to contact me if you need something or if you have a question!

Tip Top Gem ONLINE STORE

The stunning images you see in this newsletter, by the way, are CAD renderings of a ring that we are making for a client. She found a wonderful design in a magazine while vacationing in the Caribbean and asked if I could tweak it to her tastes and proportion it to a gemstone that she had purchased from me- a sphene from Madagascar. As always the answer is "of course"!!!! We love doing projects like this- actually creating a piece of heirloom-quality jewelry to our clients' specifications. It is one of the most pleasurable and interesting parts of this business- almost as much fun as buying stones at the largest gemstone market in the world in Chanthaburi, Thailand!!!!

Because I am not exactly sure when I will return from Thailand I can't tell you the next show we will do, but please keep an eye open for the April newsletter as that will have details. Also remember if you are my friend on Facebook (find a link in the upper left corner of this newsletter to go to my profile and add me) you will not only know what show we are about to do but you will also see gemstones that are available nowhere else...my Facebook friends always know first!

Our Entrepreneurs ROCK!!!

Take a look at yet another of our blazing-fast repayments on Kiva. These people are proving their focus, determination, and integrity over and over and over again. Please, please support Kiva.org. They are worth it! You can NOT help anyone out of poverty with a handout. These people are not asking for one. They want a loan- which they pay back with interest- but the interest goes to the local field partner to service the loan. Your principal is paid back to you and you can loan it out over and over and over again.

Melanie and I started this program specifically to help people in the source countries where our gemstones are mined. To date we have helped entrepreneurs in these countries:

Over on the left you will see a link to Kiva.org- please check them out now. Or just buy a stone or order a piece of custom jewelry from us. The better we do, the more support we can provide to hard-working, honest people in the third world who want to pursue the growth of their business and support their families. After decades of handouts in the third world that only teach people how to extend their hand, microfinance has found a way to help people without charity.

All our best,



PS- It is as easy as ever to get in touch with us. Our toll-free
number has never changed and rings to my cell: 800-607-1425. If you are calling at an inconvenient time your call will go to voicemail and I will either return your call or e-mail you- whichever you instruct me to do in the voice message.

E-mail me at dave@tiptopgem.com if you have a question or request and I will reply via e-mail unless you request that I call you back.

PPS- If you are not yet friends with me on Facebook please click on the link in the upper left corner of this newsletter, or just add "David Fortier" as a friend and I will accept you! Some gemstones and jewelry are only available on Facebook and you don't want to miss out!

update---update----update---

I am in Thailand right now as I type this- check out the amazing slices of tourmaline below- from Brazil!!!!


5.69 carats; olive green fades to yellow/brown, then clear, then intense pink, and a deep green center- $20 per carat


5.60 carats; pastel blue-Violet indicolite center with intense purplish-Pink exterior; magnificent example of the type with phantom crystals converging in the center- $28 per carat

4.63 cts, green to clear then pink and green again in the center, actually a good match to the 5.69 carat stone above if you like an earring pair. $20 per carat.

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As you might know by now shipping is always $10, and you can pay with a check or money order or credit card or in gold or silver. LOL. I do not take live animals for payment.

REMINDER-- these stones will ship from Thailand- allow 8-21 days in transit!

As always first come, first served for the newsletter stones. If two people want one stone, the time and date on the e-mail will determine the "winner".

Good luck!!!!

Gorgeous, enormous, and problematic green tourmalines in Teófilo Otoni

Let's talk about these two beauties.

The first one, at the top (or on the left, depending on how your browser displays this page), is actually green going into blue-green. It is a good 2 inches long. If you were to buy it for yourself, all well and good. But if you are buying it to resell, what to do? What types of clients do you have? For example, what is a jeweler going to do with such a long stone? Really, it is too long to put in a ring. Should it be set into a pendant? I dunno. A pendant would not really show off the beauty of this stone. What about a brooch? Do you have jeweler clients who specialize in making brooches? Hmmm. This leaves you with thinking about your clients who are collectors and who are not interested in setting this stone. It is a marvelous example of a flawless bicolor tourmaline that goes from green into blue-green.

OK, now let's have a look at the second stone on the right (or below). This beauty has even more problems than the first one. This stone is so large that it is next to impossible to set (if I remember correctly, it was somewhere between 40 and 60 carats). This leaves it for a collector. But look at the cut. Look at the table. Hellooo! Really nice window to the bottom, isn't it!

You could have the stone recut as a round, but it might still be way too large to put in a ring, unless you are willing to lose a lot of carat weight. And for that, you need to pay a low-enough per carat price, because basically we are talking about rough here now, aren't we?

This stone is a perfect example of the prevailing tendency (by the less sophisticated dealers) here in Brazil to cut the stone as large as possible. This is called to aproveitar the stone (or to "take advantage" of the stone). They will have the stone cut as large as possible while still avoiding inclusions. Some of the really unsophisticated sellers will have the stones cut even larger and include inclusions in the belief that size is more important than an obvious flaw.

Copyright © 2009 N. Tenney Naumer -- All rights reserved.

French Fried Tourmalines in Teófilo Otoni

And this is why you should never ever turn your back on a six year old!Just click on the photo to enlarge it and see the details.

The cutter and owner of the oven told me that he had been babysitting his young daughter at his place of business, and when he got ready to leave, someone stopped him to talk while he was walking out. His daughter was behind him, and was eye level with the dial on the oven, which she must have turned to the right, up to well over 700 °C, and so the blue-green tourmalines he had cut were cooked from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning.

Note that the stones were cut and polished before heating, just like the ones in the photo that were not over cooked. Another dealer told me that if the stones are not polished before heating, in which case the surface is not smooth, then during heating the stones can acquire a coating that cannot be polished out.

Copyright © 2009 N. Tenney Naumer -- All rights reserved.

Strongly pleochroic tourmalines from Araçuaí in Teófilo Otoni, Minas Gerais, Brazil

As promised, here are two photos of some nice furta-cor (parti color) tourmalines encountered in Teófilo Otoni, in March 2009.

The top photo shows a selection from a rather pricey salada. [The price was high because the seller owed the buyer a bundle of money, so he over-priced the stones.] The golden tourmaline in the front is considered furta-cor. If you look closely, you can see that it is gold and pink. From the side it is greenish, if I remember correctly (always a good question).

The bottom photo shows what is known as "millenium" cut around here. Any cut on the bottom of the stone that is remotely similar is called a millenium cut. Just the local jargon. These furta-cor tourmalines were actually much paler in color than the photo would have you believe. In fact, Natasha would have bought them if their colors had been stronger, but based on her experience in trying to resell such stones in Moscow, these lighter colors are not very salable (at least with regard to tourmalines -- morganites and aquamarines are a different matter entirely).

Most of these tourmalines are probably from the region of Araçuaí, Minas Gerais.

Copyright © 2009 N. Tenney Naumer -- All rights reserved.

Green and blue-green tourmalines available in Teófilo Otoni in 2005

Tourmalines selected from a "salada" and purchased in late 2005 in Teófilo Otoni, Minas Gerais, Brazil, from Valdair Santos.

What is a salada (salad)? Well, a salad is a bag of tourmalines of all different shapes, sizes, and colors. The bags can be of different qualities of the stones.

For example, the selection above was taken from a very high quality salad. In fact, the seller was doing me a big favor to let me select out the ones that I thought were the best (or at least the ones that I thought that I could afford).

These saladas that are a large quantity of cut stones in a big plastic bag have some essential drawbacks -- 1. you are not going to find any matching pairs. 2. the chance of finding an undamaged stone is really slim -- they are not being well-treated by being flung around together like that. 3. since it is difficult to find a stone in relatively good condition, you will have to spend a lot of time looking.

But if you have the time and patience and you don't go blind while you spend hours looking at the stones with a loupe, then you may be rewarded by finding some very pretty tourmalines.

Once, while still a relative newbie, I spent 10 hours over two days looking through saladas, only to buy just R$800 worth of tourmalines (about US$400, at that time), but it was worth it. I did actually see nothing but colored tourmalines dancing in front of my eyes when I tried to sleep that night.

Usually, dealers prefer to sell the entire salad in one go (yeah, who wouldn't?). They would rather not waste their time while some tourist or buyer without much money sits there and spends an hour picking over their wares.

They particularly would prefer that someone not pick out all the really good stones and leave the rest. (A few years back, dealers would "sweeten" the salada by putting in a few larger, higher-quality stones to make the whole salada look better.) Those were the good ol' days, long gone, now, it seems.

Usually, on the last day of the annual gem fair, the prices will go down, and on the day after the last day, you can sit out in the praça, in the morning, and possibly get some really good prices. Some mighty nice pickin's are to be had if you can stay over an extra half day.

Have a look at this salada from the Brazil Gem Show held in Governador Valadares, MG, in 2007 (photo taken indoors under artificial light). I picked over it for at least an hour and found nothing.


But, there are also other types of saladas, for example when cut stones, often with some that match in size, cut, and color, are laid out on pieces of cotton covered with saran wrap (the stones sort of stick to it) and folded up in sheets of white paper.

THIS POST IS INCOMPLETE -- TO BE CONTINUED . . .



OK, this photo is of a lot of wimpy-colored, rubelite tourmalines, but I am using the photo to show you how a salada is laid out on saran-wrapped cotton. Also, notice the middle stone in the second row from the bottom. That might be a keeper. And also possibly the one to the left of it. Or, on second thought, maybe not. Look, this is not the real juicy rubelite color. But, if you click on the photo, you will be able to see in detail some of the usual rubelite inclusions. Personally, if someone shows me a rubelite with no inclusions at all, I am not going to buy it unless I know and trust that seller really, really well.

Do you wanna go window shopping? Just look at 'em all!

Do you see any stones that have the same dimensions so you could buy a pair to be used in earrings?

Don't pay a lot for this muffler!

Copyright © 2009 N. Tenney Naumer -- All rights reserved.