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Newsletter
May 2013 Newsletter: Gems for Gents
• Precious stones make excellent jewelry and fashion accessories. In the past, colored stones were mostly for women, but nowadays, the world of colored gems are becoming more and more popular in mens jewelry. Traditional gent's gems include onyx, agate, nacre and mooonstone, but bolder colored stones are being used like lapis, garnet and spinel. Read more to see what gems are trending this decade in the mens jewelry industry
April 2013 Newsletter: Eastern & Western Gemstone Elements
• Gemstones are a part of all cultures, both East and West. Learn about Chinese and Asian traditions and compare them to Western tradition. Surprisingly, there are many commonalities including elemental powers and gemstones.
March 2013 GemSelect Newsletter: Gemstone Shape vs Cut Confusion
• Gemstone shapes and cuts are often very confusing and seperating the two meanings requires a little extra knowledge. Read GemSelect's new article that will hopefully help everyone understand the differences between these two terms.
February 2013 Newsletter: Malaya Garnet Popularity
• Malaya Garnet is becoming one of the most popular gem types and for good reason. Gemselect has a large selection of Malaya Garnet. Excellent durability, Brilliance and Fire are alll properties of this remarkable gemstone.
January 2013 Newsletter:Treated or Untreated Gemstones
• GemSelect Newsletter for January 2013: Buying Treated or Untreated Gemstones. Which should you buy? Learn about factors that may help and influence your next gemstone purchase.
December 2012 Newsletter from GemSelect
• GemSelect's yearly holiday newsletter edition. This month we present interesting holiday gemstone gift ideas and also provide you with interesting fun gemstone facts. Also, we have industry news topics, Questions and Answers and our Rare and Unusual Gemstone discussion.
November 2012 Newsletter: Gems for Collectors
• Gems for Collectors: Rare, Unusual and Affordable Stones. Collector stones are not always the most expensive, but they are certainly special. Find out what gem types are sought after by collectors. Watch our video on Spalerite.
October 2012 Newsletter
• October 2012 Newsletter: The Science of Gemstone Classification
September 2012 Newsletter: Colored Gemstone Inclusions
• September 2012 Newsletter: discusses the various types of inclusions found in precious color
August 2012 Newsletter: India's Gemstone History
• Since beyond recorded history, India has been a leading source for precious gems, producing some of the finest gemstones we see on the market today.
July 2012 Newsletter: What's Hot Today - Top Gemstone Sellers of 2012
• Summer is at its peak and there is no better way to show a little style, than by showing off your colored gemstone jewelry. Colorful jewelry and accessories will give you the extra sparkle and edge you'll need to stand out from the crowd and dazzle your friends and loved ones.
June 2012 Newsletter: The Queen of Gems - A Brief History of Pearls - Facts and Stories of Pearls
• The pearl has been a part of cultures both far and wide. Pearls today are known as "The Queen of Gems" and rightfully so, as they symbolize an unblemished perfection, modesty, and purity.
May 2012 Newsletter: The Flame Queen - One of the World's Most Famous Opals
• Perhaps the most famous opal across of the world, the Flame Queen is the finest example of an "eye-of-opal", a magnificent opal with an eye like effect which is caused when the stone in-fills a cavity.
April 2012 Newsletter: Love Gems - The Connection of Love and Gemstones
• Every gemstone stone is unique, each one believed to hold a different healing power, type of energy, or presenting a different form of luck, but certain gemstones are thought to be love stones
March 2012 Newsletter: The Fascinating Story of Delhi Purple Sapphire
• The fascinating story of the Delhi Purple Sapphire is one that was virtually unknown until fairly recently.
February 2012 Newsletter: Peridot the Gemstone from the Earths Core
• An amazing fact about Peridot is that it is also a gemstone from outer space! It has been found in meteors that have fallen to earth from deep space.
January 2012 Newsletter: Gemstone Fairy Tales and Fables
• Gemstones are mentioned in many old fables and fairy stories. It is not surprising then that we associate gemstones with myths and magical stories.
December 2011 Newsletter: A list of our best selling gemstones in 2011
• GemSelect have more than 130 gemstone types to choose from so we offer a huge choice and these figures represent an accurate picture of what is being purchased. We sell to jewelers small and large and private customers so it seems these gemstones are the ones most in demand.
November 2011 Newsletter: Witches and Gemstone Magic
• Gemstones hold power and energy and can be used for a variety of purposes such as healing, protection and to ward of evil. Some are even used to aid communication with the Spirit world.
October 2011 Newsletter: Fossilized Baltic Amber
• Ordinary amber is priced according to its clarity and size. However, the exception to the rule is if it happens to include an insect. In these cases the gem is worth a lot more, and it will depend on how clearly the insect is visible and how near the centre of the gem stone it is located.
September 2011 Newsletter: Is Keith Richards the New Mark Anthony?
• Mark Anthony, Keith Richards, Johnny Depp and David Beckham are very famous for very different reasons, however, they do have some things in common. One is an appreciation of the good gems in life.
August 2011 Newsletter: Ethiopian Opals
• The opal is a rare gemstone and has a diverse brilliance of color that encompasses the whole of the color spectrum. The Ethiopian opal is one of the most beautiful ever found.
July 2011 Newsletter: Are your gemstones protected?
• As a buyer of gemstones, you might ponder the question, "how protected are my gemstones, and what can I do if they get lost or stolen?"
June 2011 Newsletter: Sapphires are Forever
• Diamonds are forever-and now sapphires too! The whole world tuned in to the marriage of Kate Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, and Prince William, now the Duke of Cambridge.
May 2011 Newsletter: Demantoid Garnet from Namibia
• Garnet has been a popular gem for many centuries, since it is a durable stone with very good brilliance. But because the deep red garnets are abundant and inexpensive, garnet has gained the popular reputation of being a rather common gem.
April 2011 Newsletter: Kyanite from Nepal
• Some rare and wonderful gemstones have been found in the region of the world's highest mountains, from the Himalayas to the Hindu Kush. The most famous include the legendary blue sapphires from Kashmir and the balas rubies (spinels) of Badakshan in Afghanistan.
March 2011 Newsletter: Emeralds from Afghanistan
• In the gemstone world, Afghanistan is most famous as the as the source of the world's finest lapis lazuli. Lapis come from the Badakhshan province of northern Afghanistan.
February 2011 Newsletter: Tsavorite Garnet from Tanzania
• Certain gems were once classified as "precious" based on their rarity, value, color and superior gemological characteristics. But these days a number of rare "semi-precious" stones such as alexandrite, demantoid garnet , tsavorite garnet and tanzanite can be just as expensive as ruby, sapphire and emerald.
January 2011 Newsletter: The Year in Gems
• In an economy that is improving only slowly, 2010 was tough going for the gem and jewelry business. The price of gold remained stubbornly high, rising more than 24% over the year to nearly US $1,400 a troy ounce.
December 2010 Newsletter: Best Buys for the Holiday Season
• Each year at this time we share our advice on the best buys in colored gemstones, based on the interesting gems we've collected over the past year. This year we were very active buyers-- in fact we doubled the size of our inventory to more than 30,000 gemstones.
November 2010 Newsletter: New Features on GemSelect
• 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.
October 2010 Newsletter: Gems of Central Asia
• In the last 10 years the main source of colored gemstones has shifted from southeast Asia -- especially Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand -- to Africa. About half of our inventory is now African gems, with nearly 60 different gem varieties represented.
September 2010 Newsletter: Unheated Sapphire from Tanzania
• In the last year we've been listing some unheated sapphire from Tanzania at very attractive prices. Since unheated sapphire is hard to find -- not to mention rather expensive -- these Tanzanian sapphires have proven to be very popular.
August 2010 Newsletter: African Spessartite Garnet
• The gemstone varieties that have been most valued over the centuries are those that combine vivid color with superior hardness and brilliance. It's why ruby, sapphire and emerald were called precious gemstones.
July 2010 Newsletter: Huge Gemstones
• Very large gemstones have long been treasured by collectors, usually for their rarity but sometimes simply for their curiosity. Some huge gems have been well known for centuries.
June 2010 Newsletter: The Joy of Gemstone Cabochons
• Before the art of faceting was developed, most gemstones were fashioned as cabochons, though some were intricately carved as well. The cabochon is the most traditional of all gemstone forms.
May 2010 Newsletter: Conflict-Free Gemstones
• Are colored gemstones conflict-free? Is someone buying a sapphire rather than a diamond more likely to get a conflict-free stone?
April 2010 Newsletter: Gemstones for Collectors
• We're always on the lookout for rare and unusual gem varieties. Since we stock more than 115 different types of colored gems, the rare species on our shopping list are, as you can imagine, rather difficult to find.
March 2010 Newsletter: Sapphire Capital of the World
• Our home of Chanthaburi, Thailand is one of the main centers in the world for cutting colored gemstones. Traders bring rough stone here from mines all over the world, and we see nearly every kind of colored stone that reaches the market.
February 2010 Newsletter: GemSelect Search Engine
• As our website has grown to include over 20,000 gemstones and more than 500 pages of gemstone information, we want to make it easier for you to find what you're looking for.
January 2010 Newsletter: The Year in Gems
• 2009 was a tough year for many in the gem and jewelry business. Industry analysts report that in the USA alone, more than 750 retail jewelry stores closed their doors, and many others barely survived.
December 2009 Newsletter: Gift Ideas for the Holiday Season
• At this time of the year we receive many requests for gift suggestions. So we've collected some of our best ideas for this month's newsletter, based on the interesting gems we've collected in 2009.
November 2009 Newsletter: Color-Change Gemstones
• The optical phenomena displayed by phenomenal gems include asterism (the star effect), chatoyancy (the cat's eye effect), adularescence (shimmering light), iridescence (the rainbow effect) and play-of-color (as in precious opal).
October 2009 Newsletter: Gem Certification from AIGS
• Since we sell more than 110 different gem varieties and many kinds of untreated stones, we found ourselves sending more and more gems to Bangkok for testing. After trying a number of different labs, we found a lab that could reliably certify virtually every kind of stone: the Asian Institute of Gemological Sciences, widely known as AIGS.
September 2009 Newsletter: New Tools for Finding Gems
• We want it to be easy to find simple things, such as all the 6 mm round blue sapphires. But it should be just as easy to find all the spessartite garnet cabochons between 2 and 2.5 carats, or all the violet gems over 5 carats with at least VVS clarity.
August 2009 Newsletter: The Green Garnets
• When most people think of garnet, they think of the common red garnets like almandine and pyrope. But the garnet family is actually remarkably diverse. Garnets can occur in nearly any color, from brown to yellow to orange, red and purple.
July 2009 Newsletter: Finding Matching Gems
• We've been increasing our inventory this year, as we find more opportunities to buy new and interesting gems. We now have about 12,000 items in stock
June 2009 Newsletter: Gemstone Prices During Recession
• The high price of gold has certainly cut into jewelry sales, even leading some consumers to cash in their gold jewelry. Sales of luxury items like jewelry are always slow during economic downturns, but the high price of precious metals has made times even tougher for many jewelers and jewelry designers.
May 2009 Newsletter: Gems and Jewelry in Thailand
• Chanthaburi has probably the lowest prices in the world for loose gemstones. But not all of the city's production is exported directly; many gems are set into jewelry by factories in Bangkok.
April 2009 Newsletter: Gems for Collectors
• Many of our customers are gemstone collectors, so we get numerous requests for rare and unusual stones. Finding these gems is far from easy, even given our location in Thailand and the extensive contacts we've established over the years.
March 2009 Newsletter: The Gemstone Situation in Madagascar
• Madagascar, the huge island off the coast of Mozambique, is believed to have some of the richest untapped gemstone reserves in the world. With a population of about 20 million, it is also one of the poorest countries in the world.
February 2009 Newsletter: Pink Gemstones
• So what are your choices in pink gemstones? The rarest are pink diamonds, usually selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars per carat. Fine pink sapphire is much less expensive, though pink is actually one of the rarest sapphire colors. Pink sapphire is usually found only in smaller sizes and finding a clean stone can be difficult.
January 2009 Newsletter: Unheated Sapphire
• It's a fact of life in the gemstone industry that many gems are enhanced or treated. The most common form of treatment is heat treatment, which is applied routinely to ruby and sapphire, and to other gems such as tanzanite, blue zircon and blue apatite.
December 2008 Newsletter: Gift Ideas for the Holiday Season
• At this time of year we take special care to make sure our customers receive their orders promptly and reliably. We've shipped gemstones to more than 90 countries and we've become experts at international shipping.
November 2008 Newsletter: GemSelect Gemstone Videos
• Our high quality gemstone photos have always been a distinguishing feature of our website. We photograph each and every gemstone we sell -- not a simple task when we have more than 10,000 gems in stock.
October 2008 Newsletter: Gemstone Certificates
• The gemstone business has traditionally been based on trust, where deals were sealed with a handshake and a dealer's word was his bond.
September 2008 Newsletter: The Ban on Burmese Gems
• We do fear that the small independent Burmese miners and gem traders will suffer, since they depend on trade with Thailand. If Thailand can no longer export Burmese ruby and jadeite, it will impact the independent Burmese businessmen, not the government.
August 2008 Newsletter: The Wide World of Gems
• Back in 1875, when the young George Frederick Kunz first approached Tiffany & Co. with the idea of selling semi-precious stones, the only colored gems Tiffany offered were ruby, sapphire and emerald.
July 2008 Newsletter: The Price of Gold
• On March 13th, 2008, the price of gold reached a record US $1,000 a troy ounce for the first time. Though the price has fallen a bit since then, gold is still trading at over $910 an ounce in late June.
June 2008 Newsletter: Burmese Gemstone Tragedy
• The situation in Burma is indeed tragic, and it is hard to see much cause for hope in the latest catastrophe. But sometimes tragic events have positive outcomes.
May 2008 Newsletter: Our Home in Chanthaburi, Thailand
• With its flourishing gem grade and its fruit and seafood industries, Chanthaburi is a prosperous town, probably one of the wealthiest in Thailand.
April 2008 Newsletter: A New Source for Spinel
• The spinel from Burma has always been highly regarded by gem dealers, but the supply has never been sufficient to make spinel marketable in jewelry stores.
March 2008 Newsletter: Tanzanian Zircon
• We know that many gemstone buyers are well acquainted with the attractions of zircon. We also know that some people have never heard of it, or confuse it with the diamond simulant cubic zirconia.
February 2008 Newsletter: Buy It While You Can
• Colored stones, unlike diamonds, are mostly mined by independent, small-scale miners, working in remote locations in far away places such as Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Tanzania, Burma, Afghanistan, Colombia and Bolivia. Mining is carried out with pick and shovel, and only rarely with heavy equipment.
January 2008 Newsletter: Zircon and Zirconology
• If you're interested in a truly ancient mineral, look at zircon. The oldest known zircon samples, from Western Australia, are more than 4.4 billion years old.
December 2007 Newsletter: Gift Ideas for the Holiday Season
• If you're looking for a very special gift, a good place to start is with our Top Grade Gems. Our staff selects the finest pieces from our inventory for this group, so if you want our personal recommendations, you'll find them here.
November 2007 Newsletter: A Day in the Chanthaburi Gem Market
• This small city of about 50,000 people is the major processing and trading center for colored gemstones in southeast Asia. It is estimated that 80% of the world's supply of ruby and sapphire passes through Chanthaburi.
October 2007 Newsletter: Understanding Gemstone Heat Treatment
• The heating of gemstones to enhance their color and clarity goes back centuries, probably beginning with the lucky fellow who accidentally dropped his valuable gem in the fire, only to discover the next day that the color had improved
September 2007 Newsletter: Understanding Gem Treatments
• If you're new to buying colored gemstones, one of the first things you'll learn is that many gems have been treated or enhanced in some way -- heated or fracture-filled or irradiated or dyed, to mention just some of the common treatments.
August 2007 Newsletter: The Science of Gemology
• The systematic study of gemstones has come a long way since the days when any attractive red stone was called a ruby. Today gemologists have to be able to identify over 200 different varieties of gemstones.
July 2007 Newsletter: Rare Garnet Gems
• The popular image of garnet is that of an inexpensive dark red gem, often with a distinct brownish tone. But while much garnet certainly falls in that category, there are some rarer varieties of garnet that have stunning colors and are highly sought after by collectors.
June 2007 Newsletter: Gem Mining in Madagascar
• A lot of the excitement in the international gem trade in the last 10 years has come from Madagascar. The size and scope of gem deposits there is still not well understood, but experts believe that Madagascar has some of the richest untapped gemstone resources in the world
May 2007 Newsletter: Gemstones - What You See Vs. What You Get
• So how much confidence can you have in gemstone photos? And what steps can you take to make sure you won't be disappointed when the gems are delivered?
April 2007 Newsletter: The Man Who Popularized Colored Gemstones
• It is rare when we can attribute the creation of a new market to one person. But in the case of gemstones, an American named George Frederick Kunz can fairly be said to have created the modern market for colored stones.
March 2007 Newsletter: How Tourmaline Led the Modern Colored Stone Market
• Tourmaline is in many respects the quintessential colored gemstone. It combines good hardness (7 to 7.5 on the Mohs scale) with excellent durability (it has no cleavage).
February 2007 Newsletter: The Future of Gemstones
• Many of the world's colored gemstone mines are in troubled places -- Burma, Pakistan, Kenya, Afghanistan, Columbia -- and this affects the rate at which supplies are depleted. In addition, in the developing world most mining is still "artisanal."
January 2007 Newsletter: What's in a Gem's Name?
• It's a well-known fact in the jewelry industry that gemstones with difficult or confusing or obscure names are a hard sell to the average consumer. That's not a problem for our customers, who delight in the rare and unusual.
December 2006 Newsletter: Spinel - Best Kept Secret in the Gems World
• Here at GemSelect we are lucky to be located close to the source of the finest spinel in Burma, and Chanthaburi is the first stop for uncut spinel coming out of Burma. Spinel is still a secret to many people, but it's a secret we like to share with our customers.
November 2006 Newsletter: Making Sense of Gemstone Prices
• Why does a reasonably nice 1 carat heated VS ruby sell for $500 while a fine untreated 6 carat VVS tourmaline goes for $200? Why is a clean untreated 10 carat amethyst only $30? In this month's feature we try to make sense of gemstone prices.
October 2006 Newsletter: Chanthaburi: Colored Gemstone Capital of the World
• It never ceases to amToday Chanthaburi is processing and trading stones from new foreign sources, especially Africa and Madagascar. Virtually every variety of colored gem can be found here, and rough stone is brought from every mining location in the world to be cut and traded in Chanthaburi.
September 2006 Newsletter: New Enhancements to Gemselect
• Chanthaburi may be a small city, but it happens to be the center of the world as far as colored gemstones are concerned. It's estimated that up to 80% of the world's supply of ruby and sapphire passes through Chanthaburi. In the last few years, the trade in semi-precious stones here has increased dramatically, especially with African stones that are cut here in Thailand .
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Customer Reviews
Site gem stones that can be reliable and trustworthy, gem stones are ordered in accordance with the goods sent. to this day I still order the gems in this online shopping site. I highly recommend this gem site
arbond84, September, 2012
Source: ReviewCenter
I think Gem Select has good quality gemstones and that they should provide free shipping to their customers who purchase more than one item as a courtesy to their repeat loyal customers. It's just the American way here in the ... The Aquamarine octagon emerald cut gemstone was the best color that I have seen, it met my expectations. I was alittle disappointed with the Chrysoprase cabochons though they were too light in color and small. The Amethyst was ...
Chas, December, 2012
Source: Bizrate
Outstanding website and service.
Online Shopper, April, 2013
Source: Bizrate
Nice selection of stones! I am hoping what I purchased will fit the setting I have, lost my original tsavorite!
Online Shopper, April, 2013
Source: Bizrate
I recently received 3 stones from you. One of them was an alexandrite. I recently went to the jeweler because I had found a setting to put the stone into and when the jeweler asked what price I put down for the two for his insurance coverage, I had said the total and he said. I can't put that down and instantly doubled the price! I was thrilled. I will be shopping next for my daughters! Wanted to also say, you are very timely on shipping. Thanks! Amy from USA
AmyfromUSA, October, 2012
Source: ReviewCenter
Love me GemSelect
Online Shopper, January, 2013
Source: Bizrate
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