May Newsletter 2023

While our Songkran is over there are other festivities around the world. Mother's Day is upon us, in the middle of May for America and Australia, and later in the month for many other countries. I can highly recommend our Gemstones for Mothers article if you need some ideas for presents or a gift for your beloved mother. As usual, we have some exciting new gems being added to our web shop this month:

Huge Black Opals

Black opals is one of the many varieties found in this intriguing and fantastic looking gemstone family. Black opals are one of the more well known varieties and, generally speaking, are the most valuable of them all. Black opal is a slightly inaccurate name as a totally black opal would be pretty much worthless. The black refers to the material known as potch upon which the precious and colorful opal is formed. With a contrasting deep dark background, the play-of-color phenomenon and its kaleidoscopic rainbow of colors can really stand out. We have managed to get our hands on some truly stunning black opals with weights of up to over 30 carats!

Rare Tsavorite Garnets

Many of you have requested us to add more tsavorite garnet to our stock; you asked, we listened! We have some gorgeous, high quality gems in various shapes such as round, diamond-cut, oval and more. This green garnet was discovered in 1967 by British geologist Campbell Bridges in the bush along the frontier between Kenya and Tanzania. Tsavorite garnet is named after its discovery near the famous Tsavo National Park in Kenya. The colors of tsavorite garnet range from pale green to deep forest green and often rival high quality emeralds. With a hardness of 6.5-7.5 on the Mohs scale, tsavorite garnet is a perfect gemstone for any type of settings with rings and earrings being the most popular choices.

Spectrolite - unusual type of Labradorite

We featured labradorite gems in our March newsletter so you might be familiar with the stunning 'play-of-color' phenomenon that is displayed in these gems. The color display can be seen when light hits the stone from particular angles. Most typically, the color play is violet, blue and green. Some rare specimens of labradorite display a full spectrum of colors, not only violet, blue and green; but also yellow, orange and red. These rare specimens have been given the name spectrolite. The name was introduced by the Finnish geologist Aarne Laitakari (1890-1975), former director of the Geological Survey of Finland. Laitakari's son, Pekka, discovered the first spectrolite deposit in South-Eastern Finland near the Russian border while building the Salpa Line fortifications there in 1940. To date, the rare variety called spectrolite has only been found in Finland and the name has been reserved for uniquely colorful spectrolite from this region. You can find our newly listed Spectrolite gems here.

May Birthstone

The birthstone for the month of May is the beautiful and vibrant emerald. The emerald gemstone is a symbol of love and rebirth, making it a perfect gift for those born in May. We have a huge selection of emerald gems in all shapes, sizes and price ranges so everyone should be able to find something!

Customer Questions and Answers:

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Happy Gemstone Hunting!

Team GemSelect