In our newsletter this month:

• New Features at GemSelect
• New and Interesting Gemstones
• Rare and Unusual Gems
• Customer Questions

New Features at GemSelect

This month you'll notice some extensive remodeling of our website. This is not something we do very often, since we want our website to be as familiar and dependable as an old friend. But we're always trying to improve, and we listen carefully to the questions and suggestions we receive from our visitors. So from time to time we get out the tools and do a few renovations.

Some of the recent changes are designed to make it easier for first-time visitors to find information on site. But many of the new features are intended to help our regular customers quickly find the gems they need in our vast inventory.

Here is a short list of new features that we think you'll find useful:

* Our gem type pages now display more gems per page, making for less paging as you browse our inventory. And the thumbnail photos are now larger, making it easier to see the details of a gem without clicking through to the detail page for the item.

* Our gem detail pages now show all the similar or matching items, so you don't have to search around if you need more than 1 piece in a particular color and size. We've also added links to show you gems which are "Larger in this shape and color," "Smaller in this shape and color," "Same shape and size in different colors" or "All gems of this type."

* If you have items in your shopping cart, we now show you the complete list of cart items on every page, in a box near the top right of the page. This makes it easy to view any item in your cart, and edit your shopping cart simply by clicking on the links in the shopping cart. This can be a real time saver that avoids having to click back and forth from the cart page.

* The left column of our home page, gem pages and most of our information pages now include links to all the gem varieties we stock.

* We've adopted larger fonts and titles to make our pages easier to read, as in this newsletter.

* We have one of the largest collections of gemstone information you'll find anywhere on the internet. But it has not always been easy to find all this information on our site. We've now created a Gemstone Information Center page that provides a directory to more than 450 pages of original articles on gemstones.

Your comments on the recent changes are welcome and appreciated. You can send us your comments from our contact page.

Rare and Unusual Gems
Each month we feature a rare and unusual gem from our inventory. This month we feature a fine large emerald from Colombia.

High quality emeralds in very large sizes are uncommon, and we rarely find one as fine as this 14.03 ct specimen from Colombia. It is a bright, slightly bluish, green, with very good color consistency. It's particularly well cut, with nearly square proportions (14.53 x 14.25 mm) and generous depth (11 mm) to maximize color.

Customer Questions
Every month we answer questions of general interest from our customers. Please feel free to send your questions to help@gemselect.com.

Happy gem hunting,