Hello friends,

My name is Daniel C.A, I live and study in Prague Czech Republic, I would like to venture into semi precious stone trade in Europe and I need professional advice and comments, though I have done a couple of research online and visited a few local mines while in Nigeria but I'm pretty much a rookie.


I was quick to realize that the risk in the precious stone industry is very high especially when one has no adequate knowledge about stones and how they are valued. Due to my lack of experience I'm looking at the possibility starting with inexpensive stones that are relatively abundant (White Topaz and violet Amethyst Precisely) in order to minimize risk.

I know some miners in Nigeria that can furnish me with these stones but I have no idea on how to locate the buyers or where to sell them within Europe as rough stones.


From your experience which of these stones (White Topaz, violet Amethyst) will likely be in demand as rough gems in a place like Europe if one is to be importing them from Africa. In nutshell I want to deal on relatively abundant stones that can easily be sourced for in Nigeria, and on the other hand it will yield fast returns in European market.

Your experience are highly appreciated in advance and I'm open to new suggestions.

Thanks.

I won't comment much on the risk of getting into the trade if you don't know anything. I think you already have some awareness that it is likely not the best idea, at least without doing your homework and learning the basics before going whole hog. Some things you have to learn by experience but others you'd do a lot better to pick up before losing your money.
To answer your question, I'd avoid white topaz. Barring extremely large sizes it's just not worth much of anything. Nigeria does produce some other colors of topaz but there's not much money in it--the browns may fade, the blues face competition from indistinguishable treated stones, the natural yellows are just undervalued. If you had yellows or browns for sale at a good price I'd be interested, but that's because I'm a topaz freak--my friend who's tried to sell some fine cut examples of the yellow has had little luck. And he's a great salesman with lots of high-quality contacts.
There's always demand for some nice amethyst, but it's also undervalued thanks to competition from convincing undisclosed synthetics which have flooded the market, so the market isn't as hot as it should be by all rights. You'd have to be sure you had really clean material with some natural crystal faces to show it wasn't synthetic with really great color to be sure you could sell it for reasonable prices, and even then you might not do so great.
Note I'm American so I can really only speak to the market here--there are definite differences between the US and Europe but I think these will carry across both.
I've talked some with a guy who buys some really high quality facet rough of various sorts from Nigeria, and he's had to establish really high quality contacts since some of the mining areas are really dangerous.
I said I wouldn't go into it too much, so I will be brief in saying that quality facet rough has gotten so expensive and in demand that there is a lot of serious competition for the good stuff and there will always be plenty of fakes on sale too.

Daniel, welcome to GO.

Maybe you will first visit the wellknown Mineral Fair in Munich (the Munich Show 28.-30.10.2016) Germany or Sainte Marie aux Mines 23–26.06.2016 in France for example. There you will see what commodity is asked offered, what qualities and what prices.

In addition to Stephen's posting I would suggest in reading the CIBJO rules (CIBJO The Blue Book) how to declare minerals and stones in the right way.

thanks a lot, I appreciate the comments so far. expecting more..

Well, here's one. Forget it! lol

what he said...

Yep, what they said

We'll never see him again, of course.