January 24 Through February 4—TUCSON, ARIZONA: Annual show
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 Post subject: Bangkok Gem Fair
PostPosted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 10:10 am 
Since I attended today, I thought I'd make this a more interesting thread than the two-line nothing thread it was before.

The Bangkok Gem and Jewellery Fair (I tend to forget the 'jewellery' bit, as per the title) is a 5-day event at the Impact Challenger Arena in Bangkok. As my taxi crawled towards these two rather large buildings, I was trying to decide which one was in fact the ugliest object ever to sit on planet earth. However, I then remembered the departures hall at Abu Dhabi airport, and thus dropped these two monstrosities to competing over the less-coveted runner's-up spot.

One thing I have to make clear is you must bring some official ID to the event to gain entrance - be it a passport, driving licence, ID card, or whatever. I arrived with none of the above, and with this being Thailand, was allowed to enter. I did, however, have to 'fill-in' a form about myself. Well, when I say 'fill-in', I was told I had done enough having filled in my name and the first few letters of my nationality. With my personal contribution to the event's beurocratic requirements complete, 'Simon Wingate from Grea...' (and his forbidden sandals) was able to enter the rather large main hall.

What first faced me was some rather, how to say, pretentious jewellery outlets. For a second I wondered if this event was more of a jewellery event than a gemstone one (and for sure if I had turned left from here, my concerns would have multiplied). However, a right turn and a short stroll had me right in the heart of the loose gems section. Seemingly, rows and rows or exhibitors selling, basically, the same products as eachother. However, in my quest to find the best, weirdest and wackiest of the vast collections I commenced my attempt 'slalom' through every row (no small ambition, with the rows going from A to Z, and then AA to ZZ).

So on the extreme right, as you enter, seems to be mostly rough material. The African fellas in negotiations (sometimes momentarily suspended for benefit of pretty passing member of the fairer sex) with people who presumedly know a lot more than I do. I don't know much about rough quality. In fact, I don't actually know anything about rough quality, but the sorts of materials that were on display in many of the outlets did not exactly seem to be the expensive marquee names - prasiolite (which, in keeping with 99.999% of vendors at the show will henceforth be called 'green amethyst' in this article - assuming of course I will actually be forced to mention it again), blue topaz, green tourmaline? Actually I can't remember. On to cut stones...

As you would expect, lots of the usual suspects - corundum, tourmaline, peridot, quartz, garnets and beryl. Less spinel floating around than I expected though.

I especially enjoy looking through those Sushi-style 'bargain bins' in shows and shops, with the small colour-coded packets of loose gems piled on top of each other in a big heap. That dream of finding a 6ct faceted rhodonite listed as the cheapest 'pink' category, or trying to find a packet of the most-expensive (usually black and non-existant) category out of morbid curiousity. However, despite enjoying these little rummages, I have NEVER bought anything as a result of them. Today, as usual, I 'hid' a few things I was 'going to pick up later' in the back-corner of the trough, and then proceeded to forget the price, the stone, the location of the vendor and even the fact I was at a gem fair. Coffee time..

After my 'coffee', which consisted of a Indian meal with naan, sweet lassi and basically everything it is possible to injest, minus coffee, I re-entered the great hall with replenished energy. However, as I write this I am unable to determine if the new spring in my step was indeed down to increased energy from foodstuffs, or decreased weight of my wallet due to said foodstuffs. It would have been easier to pay for this Indian meal in unheated Kashmir sapphires than my felling of a Wales-sized region of forest to pay in Thai paper money.

The award for 'most interesting exibitor' amongst the sapphires and paraibas and more sapphires, was 'Freakingcat'. To be honest, it didn't seem like a name to fit anything other than a small-time surf/skate apparel manufacturer, but this stand had a real Rouge's Gallery of obscure and devilishly-soft gem materials. I could, and did, spend hours looking at these rarities. My frequent excursions to Classicgems.net meant I was at least name-familiar with most of the oddballs on show, but any gaps in my knowledge were filled-in upon request by the very nice and enthusiastic store owner. It was nice to talk, albeit briefly, to a dealer who has enthusiasm for stones as well as the usual hobby of selling - especially as the stones were generally very obscure. I had already decided that, if I bought something, it was going to be 'a bit different' and at least moderately 'hard'. Unfortunitely, it seems that often gem materials are the former because they are the latter. However, I did show some interest in the gahnospinels he was exhibiting for his friend and the wacky orange kyanites. He also introduced me to one I had not heard of before - green kyanites. These stones ticked the three fundemental boxes of obscure gem materials: unknown - check, soft - check (kinda), ugly -CHECK!! I would have doffed my cap in the direction of these green kyanites for being the ugliest non-rutiliated quartz or non-trapiche sapphire stones at the event, but a 'colourless star taffeite' that looked like it had had an atomic bomb explode on top of it stole the award late-on.

Aside from this fantastic treasure trove of rarities, I was making a mental note of which of the less-heralded gem materials were making regular appearences at the event, and one thing stood out - there is A LOT of sphene. I would say that half of the non-specialist coloured stone exibitors had sphene, which didn't make my heart beat too fast as sphene is something I don't have any great affinity for. Even if it wasn't as soft as butter, it always appeared to me like a stone that doesn't know what colour it's meant to be. I sometimes find very high-dispersion stones look a bit tacky. Maybe it's a subconcious thing that arose from images of high-fire cheap diamond simulants and other junk in teenage girl's 'fashion' jewellery shops. Did I mention I hate Mystic Topaz and concave cutting? Probably not, so now is as good a time as any.

Aside from the staggering amount of sphene, there was a surprising number of cameos from clinohumite.

My progress through the 50+ rows (each fifty metres long) was slow. It picked up speed when I literally ran through the pearl sections, and ignored the sections selling machines that do strange things. The sales girls at that end of the hall (with all the machines) were pretty, but I had 100000000 rubellite tourmalines to look at, and only three hours left in which to do it. It almost sounds like a storyboard for a worst-ever episode of 24.

As I approached the 'halfway point' (where the wall looking left was about the same distance as the wall looking right - about half a mile) I was a bit bored. Yes I have immersed myself in gems for 18 months now, and yes I am interested. However, after around four hours of walking, I had grown tired and weary. The view to far end of the hall, where my journey would be complete, looked a lot like that big Mount Doom thing did to the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings - no nearer for all the walking, and I didn't even have Elven bread to sustain me.

Occasionally the brutal quest was interrupted by a rarity or an interesting price. A 7ct Pakistan peridot was offered for $100 /stone (not /ct as I, or anyone for that matter, might have assumed). I also had a look at a two-carat chrysoberyl which was a very blueish shade of low-saturation green, and got waylaid by my interest in boulder opals.

Suddenly, however, things started to look up. If my speed through the pearls was 'Carl Lewis', then through the diamonds I was 'Tyson Gay' (I'm saving Usain Bolt for the possibility of a whole section devoted to rutilated quartz).

After the diamonds came the jewellery shops I was faced with at the very beginning. Rows and rows and rows and rows...... all the way to the far end of the hall. This would have been the equivalent of the Hobbits being lifted to Mount Doom by some big eagle-griffon type thing, as I literally cut a swaithe through the entire jewellery half of the hall in minutes. Having finished my quest to view everything (if you overlook my ignoring of pearls, rough, machines, diamonds and the entire jewellery half of the hall) I treated myself to a well-deserved (and long overdue) trip to a urinal and had a stroll around some of the education centres who were exhibiting at the show.

The usual suspects were there - GIA, AIGS and my former captors at GIT, plus a few I had never heard of. AIGS had an interesting competition to guess six gem materials and win a $9000 .AG qualification. Well, I don't think you get the qualification, just for naming the six stones - they probably just pay for it and you still have to pass the exams. I would have entered, but I doubt "Uh? Iolite? Dunno. Uh? Green one. Apatite? Uh?" was the correct answer. In fact, my attempt would have been the best possible AIGS advertisment for convincing people to do the .AG over the .FGA. There was also a 'guess the weight of these 10000000 stones' competition to win a free entry to an obscure course that seemed to be taught over the period of 15 nanoseconds.

I walked past the affluent seated visitors, as they waited to be whisked off, next to signs with 'Shangri-La Hotel', 'Landmark Hotel' etc. scribbled across them. Next I watched some of the smartly-dressed rich gem people enter some event at the 'Pavilion Ballroom'. It all seems a world-away from the seemingly knuckle-bitingly poor minors who, quite literally, risk their lives in the gem mines around the world.

Being on neither side of this rich-poor divide, I jumped in a taxi and returned to my 4000 baht-per-month Ram Intra room. I had managed to not be tempted into spending any money on gems I can't really afford, but had a few in mind for a possible return. With three days of the event left, it's a possibility.


Last edited by Kyriakin on Wed Sep 16, 2009 11:49 am, edited 4 times in total.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 16, 2009 11:39 am 
Forgot. As that post was an edit of an existing post, it didn't move it up the forum.

So, in the words of spamming web forum users everywhere: 'bump'


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PostPosted: Wed Sep 16, 2009 1:38 pm 
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Great report! You may have a journalist future as a back up! Interesting to hear that sphene is abundant.. would be the time to stock up on rough supplies..

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PostPosted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 7:25 am 
Since that last report went down such a storm, I thought I'd add about a visit to the final few hours of the event's fifth and final day.

Arrived at around 1pm - this time armed with a passport, smart shoes and even a smart shirt. Trotted over to the Freakingcat stall to remind myself of what was going on there. Was looking at some stones labelled as 'gahnospinels'. I asked if gahnospinels were the same as gahnites, and the store owner said he wasn't sure. In the back of my mind, I thought both were Zn-Al-Oxides, but wasn't certain. However, I was told that the director of AIGS would be over in the next half an hour or so, I said I'd return a while later.

Was in a better frame of mind for gems today. Certainly less grumpy/cynical and a lot less weary.

I had decided, even on my own modest government school teacher wage, to withdraw around 5000 baht ($160) to buy something today. My first target was that $100 7ct Pakistan Peridot from wednesday. Gone. It wasn't the elite deep green colour of the real top-end peridots, but it was a decent peridot colour, clarity and size for that price. Similar stones were up to three times that price elsewhere. While viewing the other stones here, my entry pass was hanging down and getting in the way, so I swang it over my back. Some andesine here, of various colours. I don't know what the various numbers are for the optical properties of andesine, but I imagine they are low. Absolutely no 'vra vra voom' in these stones at all. It was like looking at pieces of cut red milk bottle glass.

I then headed over to the Sri Lankan gem merchant at Blue Cuts Co. Ltd. who I had been talking to about the greenish-blue (assumedly vanadium) chrysoberyls. He told me he had given them to a friend to sell, at United Colour Stone Co. Ltd., and I headed over to that stall. Quite a nice selection here to be honest. A few of the less-heralded stones here: orthoclase, fibrolite, hackmanite, danburite, amblygonite etc. As usual, however, my eye was drawn to greens. In this case some interesting trillion cut idocrase. I like the less common stones, greens and trillion is my favourite cut. Also, unlike most of the idocrase I was seeing elsewhere, it was neither horrendously dark nor overly-sleepy. One in particular had a little bit of 'life' to it, so asked how much it was. Because I don't know how to pronounce 'Idocrase' (eye-dough? eee-dough? eye-doo? eee-do?) I said vesuvianite instead. Not only would this make miss-prounciation unlikely, but maybe showing off a bit would avoid the 'young tourist falang price'. The problem is, I have no idea what the 'right' price should be. However, as seems to be the norm for these lesser-known stones (sillimanite, clinohumite, enstatite etc.) it was in the $30-40 range, dependent on size. My 1.67ct stone came to spot on $50, and I bought it. Slightly concerned it might be a bit dark, without the glare of UCS's over-head lights, but I guess I'll know the truth when I get outside. This stand also had low-saturation green vanadium chrysoberyls - one of my favourites - $350 per carat for stones in the 3-4ct range. Doing a rough calculation in my head, I'd have to invest an entire two-month salary just to afford one of these. Ouch.

Another profound little observation - lots of that prehnite stuff around the event. Not quite sure of the appeal of a cabbed sub-translucent stone in a colour that would make even the world's cheapest peridot blush, but each to their own.

With half an hour up, I popped back to Freakingcat (I keep having to check the business card in my pocket for the name - always convinced it's Crazycat, but nevermind). The stall owner was talking to some young guy, so I moved onwards. However, I caught his glance, and was introduced to the lab director of AIGS. Ok, so 'some young guy' was the lab director of AIGS. He's more handsome and possibly even younger than I am, and answered the stall owner's question about gahnospinel. Unless I got the wrong end of the stick, it seems that gahnite is ZnAlOxide and gahnospinel is the transitional mineral between this and spinel - assumedly (Mg,Zn)AlOxide. So I learned something today. These two fellas were clearly deep in important discussion prior to my arrival, so I thanked them and went on my way. Not before saying I'd pick up one of these gahnospinels later (which I never did, because I forgot).

As a big fan of cat's eye stones (much more so than stars), one quest of mine was to find a nice cat's eye tourmaline. Other than obviously chrysoberyl, a lot of the cat's eye stones seem to be a bit too cheap. Whether they are sillimanites, kornerupines or scopolites - all of which have great sharp eyes - none of those gem species have any kind of 'name'. A nice cat's eye tourmaline would therefore be ideal, but I have never seen one that didn't look like it had been repeatedly scored with a blunt razor blade perpendicular to the eye effect. Unlike the before-mentioned examples, where the phenomena-causing inclusions are too fine to be visable, this sadly seldom seems to be the case for tourmalines. Predictably this was also the case in the one stall here where I found them, as they were all flawed in some way. Either the lines made them ugly or, predictably, those without such lines had a very limited chatoyant effect. One was agonisingly close to being 'perfect', with a nice green colour, a sharp eye and barely-visable horizontal lines most of the way down the gem. However, right at the bottom of the cab, there were indeed some unsightly dark lines which spoiled the whole stone.

Went to Multicolour's stall (via a trip to the bathroom, where the mirror reminded me that my visitor's pass was till hanging down my back, and thus I'd looked like a fool for the last hour-or-so). They have the clearest set-up, with each gem species arranged in defined colour groupings. The American there, presumedly the owner of this empire, wandered over as I looked at the light green tourmalines. They looked a lot like the Mozambique tourmalines I had seen elsewhere, and I asked something about Mozambique/copper, to which the quick reply had an air of "I don't care really" about it.

Strolled over to GIT's stall, to enquire about finally taking my FGA practical in January. I don't need to be an FGA yet, to be honest, but it's getting to the point where I may as well finish the thing off. Not convinced these qualifications actually help people to get jobs in the industry, as everyone seems to have a GG, FGA or an AG.

Stalls were packing long before the advertised 5pm finishing time, and the amount of visitors had dwindled greatly. I had caught ear of a big event starting shortly in Hong Kong, and many exibitors seemed to be getting their wares together for a flight up there this evening. I picked up a box of 13 tiny little 'spinel ruby'(?!) from real-estate company, manned by some not-so-charming American fellas - 300 baht. That's less than $10. They were arranged in the box in a nice little red pyramid formation, but I've just ruined it by opening the case. They're so small and fiddley that it will be hell to arrange them nicely again.

At this point I left the show, via McDonald's, where I purchased their new 'double Big Mac'. This burger, from my second most hated company on the planet, had no less than four burgers in it, and was literally too big to get my mouth around. A middle-aged Thai guy chuckled as I was forced to remove two burgers just to make the thing edible.

After earning myself a likely future heart attack, I finally got back out into daylight. Removing myself from the long shadow of the hulking Challenger Arena, I viewed the Idocrase in the fast-dimishing daylight. It's quite a nice stone to be honest. The colour is very similar to those Tashmarine Diopsides - a kind of foresty-green. There had been some 4-5ct stones there too, also trillion cut. I would have picked up one if I wasn't a skint Bangkok school science teacher. Although, that could have been said for hundreds of stones at the event.


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PostPosted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 11:23 am 
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Wonderful reporting! Much nicer than the usual dry, dull report :D . Sounds as if you had a great time regardless, and picked up a nice gemstone.

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PostPosted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 2:22 pm 
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Hi

I realy enjoyed your report on the gem fair , you have a way with word that makes me feel like i went with you :lol:

Tim may have some competition on his writing about traveling :wink:

I enjoyed it very much , thank you for taking the time to write and share it with us :smt038


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PostPosted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 4:09 am 
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BANGKOK: -- Three days after jewellery worth Bt65 million was stolen in Bangkok, police yesterday arrested three men - two Mexicans and a Peruvian- in connection with the theft.

The rubies and emeralds were stolen on Saturday at the Bangkok Gems and Jewellery Fair at Muang Thong Thani's exhibition complex in what Bangkok police say was the largest jewel heist in recent memory.

Named as Raul Armando Carranza, 32, Oscar Alexis Martinez Aguirre, 39, and Jaime Ballesteros Castaneda, 53, the three suspects were arrested in Chon Buri and are in Pattaya police custody.

The senior investigator in charge of the case, Pol Lt-General Chalong Sonjai, said CCTV footage proved that two more suspects, now thought to be on the run, operated as part of the gang. Chalong said one of the three men in custody is suspected of having stolen jewellery at the same fair last year. He said police suspected the jewels were still in Thailand.

Police are trying to determine whether Aguirre was the same person who recently snatched valuables in Bangkok's Pathum Wan police jurisdiction.

Police say the five suspects planned the theft in their home country and were based in Pattaya both before and after the heist. They travelled between Bangkok and Pattaya in a rental car.

The Nation.


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PostPosted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 11:28 am 
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[quote="Lemmiwinks"]

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