Saturday, October 20, 2007

Trade Compliments All That Glitters on Quality and Price!

The holiday season is upon us and All That Glitters has been visiting retail stores. A pair of wonderfully matched Blue Sapphire had been sold to a store on the North Shore of Massachusetts. The store owner visited Boston to see a company who might have a matching center stone. (All That Glitters would have a match for him, but he had other business to attend to in Boston and never thought of initially contacting us!). The gemstone company in Boston, has also been in business for decades just like All That Glitters. He commented on the fine color and match of the Sapphires - he thought they were truly a wonderful color and match. There were no fine quality Sapphires in their inventory to match the color of the pair - this particular color is very fine and not often seen. Matching the color will typically be difficult even for us, but we do have a few center stones that would work as we are known for the finer quality/higher end gemstones. We were happy to hear a competitors honest compliments - it doesn't always work that way....

At another store, we learned that a gemstone salesman from Sri Lanka had been in the store the previous day. Still having a few matched pairs of the fine Blue Sapphire, we showed the owner this material and quoted him a price. He was impressed with the color and also noted that the price was VERY good. This also pleased us, as this material is from our associate in Sri Lanka whose family has been in the gemstone business for generations. Their gemstones are mined on property that they own. They are very careful not to abuse the land and insure that the property is not destroyed but left in better condition after they have removed the gem material than when they started their work. Though the store owner did not say so, I believe that our price was better than the lighter matched pair of oval Sapphires he had just purchased from the gemstone dealer the previous day. Ovals are more common than rounds and we have been very blessed to have a number of rounds and trilliants in 4.0, 4.5, 5.0 and 5.5mm. Of course, we have kept requesting of our associate to facet matched pairs for us, over the past several years. He knows that we are very particular of the color, the size and the design in cutting - all must match for us to give the thumbs up! Many earrings one sees out there are not really true matches, as the cutting design, the color or the size usually varies. Our goal is to be able to have these matched pairs on the side of a center stone where all these 3 variables must be equivalent between both stones or the eye can see this - it is a different story when there is a foot separation as when they are worn as earrings. If the 3 variables mentioned do not match on both stones, we would typically reject them in case one of our on-line customers or stores wishes to use them in a ring vs. a set of earrings.