Madagascar gem stones are among the very best in the
world. I think all of us who function in the gem world are aware of this fact.
Madagascar gem stones... cut stones, faceted gems, have been
outside the realm of our Madagascar Gems website until now.
We are going to begin selling cut gems... to you.
Yes, we know that you are gem cutters looking for quality
rough, but the high-end ruby and sapphire rough is now selling at prices that
just will not allow you to buy the rough, cut a stone, and sell it at a profit.
This is especially true in the USA because of the value of the dollar on the
world market.
So how would you like to buy cornflower blue, VVS
sapphires and other gems at a price lower than the rough sells for these days?
How low will the price be? Pretty low. These stones will not be given
away, but you will get to Make An Offer to buy gems you can resell at a
profit.
The best way to tell you how this will work is to reprint
the information from a recent Bulletin and some additional information I wrote
for my wife's website. She publishes a monthly newsletter for her azgem.com site
where she sells loose gems and jewelry.
From the December 9, 2007 Madagascar Gems Bulletin:
We are in discussions with a
young lady who wants to sell a variety of colored
stones she inherited. Here are the circumstances as
she relates them...
Her Grandfather operated a
lapidary business in Thailand for a number of
years. He willed the stones to her when he passed
away last year. The stones are now in her possession
in the USA, along with a computer file of
descriptions and photos.
She prefers to
receive the proceeds from the sale of these stones on
a monthly basis, rather than liquidating the entire
inventory immediately. This was her Grandfather's
wish.
The origins of the
stones are said to be primarily Madagascar, Kenya,
Tanzania, Cambodia, and Brazil.
Our discussions
have resulted in a tentative agreement as follows...
She will send
several individual stones or parcels of melee to
our USA office each month
She will also
provide the descriptions and photos. and her
minimum prices
She will
establish the minimum prices with the knowledge we
are marketing to wholesale customers
We will offer
these stones to our customers on a
Make An
Offer basis
through emails
Madagascar
Gems will be
compensated by receiving 12% of the sale price, plus $5 for
shipping
With the time
required to do this along with our other activities,
we may have to use my wife, Carolyn, and our son
David to send these email proposals.
So if you receive
emails from them, please respond to them, if you
care to make an offer. Each of us will complete the
sale of stones we propose to you, and each of us has
a PayPal account to receive payments.
We will send
these email proposals to other mailing lists that we
have developed. We will only send these email
proposals to mailing lists that we have developed.
Assuming we reach
final agreement with the seller, the program could
start by (or even before) the first of next
year.
And from the January, 2008 AZGem Gems newsletter:
On December 9 (2 weeks ago) I
introduced a cut stone opportunity to the customers of Madagascar Gems.
Since that time, two significant things
have happened.
1. We have finalized an arrangement with Ami, the owner of
these gems.
2. We have been contacted by a person interested in a
similar arrangement. He wants to provide gems from Sri Lanka.
The only significant change in the initial
proposal is that we will receive 10% of the sales price for our
services, plus a flat $5 handling and shipping fee. For
example - if you offer $100 for a gorgeous blue sapphire, you
pay $105. We receive $10 of the sale price, plus the $5
handling fee.
Both providers understand that you can buy gems at wholesale
prices as you need them, so the minimum prices they set must be
lower.
From the descriptions and photos I have seen, these gems
range from very good to fine quality. I believe this is
a great opportunity to acquire some beautiful gems at bargain
prices. Here are some example photos that were emailed to me.
The pictured gems are: Canary sapphire from Sri Lanka, ruby
from Madagascar, blue sapphire from Madagascar, rare green
apatite from Madagascar, and pink sapphire from Madagascar.
It now seems possible that we will offer gems from more
than one source (owner), but the guidelines should not
change.
1. We will propose gems to you via email
2. You can make an offer by replying to that email
3. After 48 hours we will sell the gem to you,
assuming yours is the highest offer (that meets the minimum)
4. You pay through PayPal, and we ship the gem
to you
5. If your gem is not as we describe it, you can return it
for a refund of the purchase price
I have received the first set of gems to be sold, and I
hope to send out the first Make An Offer email before 2008 arrives. I am
scheduled to receive more gems each month for a while... depending on how well
you respond to this opportunity.
There are a number of gems to be sold, so please tell
other cutters about it, and invite them to join our mailing list and help this
program succeed.
To provide some history for the Make An
Offer program, we will occasionally post information regarding one of the
gems here.
To get it started, here is information
regarding a great gem to be proposed in the initial Make An Offer email:
This gem features a highly desirable color, quality, shape, and
weight.
Our first featured gem is a Cornflower Blue
Sapphire, VVS quality, 9.7 x 4.8 mm, in a marquise shape. This gem weighs
1.27 carats. The origin is Madagascar.
For those on our mailing list, you will have the opportunity to Make An Offer
on this gem soon. I will post the results here after the sale.
Update 01/02/2008...
The fine blue sapphire above sold for
$220.
The other two gems proposed in this
first Make An Offer email also were sold... the pink tourmaline for $10,
and the pair of orange-red sapphire accent stones sold for $4.
The Make An Offer
program will continue to evolve in response to your feedback. To keep you
updated on this program, I will post the text from relevant Offer emails here.
Update 01/02/2008...
This
is our third Make An Offer invitation email, and we continue to tweak
the program in response to your feedback.
I
have received several requests to disclose the owners' minimum price. I
believe doing so would have the effect of setting the price for each
featured gem... but we are going to try it! I have discussed the idea
with the owners, and they agreed to test this method of selling their
gems. They each asked me to point out that if you really desire a
particular stone, you may offer more than the ridiculously low minimum
price in an effort to enhance your chances of making the winning
offer.
I
have also received several other requests:
First
request... To cease using contractions in my text, such as
"you've" in place of "you have". It seems that some translation
software has difficulty translating these combination words into other
languages.
I
will do that, beginning with this email. We did follow that practice
when writing the website text.
Second
request... Feature some gems other than sapphire and ruby.
I
think we have been doing that. However, sapphire and ruby are popular -
and these gems seem to make up a good portion of the inventories we are
selling.
Third request...
Propose some parcels of accent stones and possibly some cabochons, for
the jewelry designers among us.
Accent
stones will be offered soon. Ami (one of the owners of these gems) will
ship a few parcels of colored stone melee to me for future invitation
emails.
As
for the cabochons, the owners will look through their inventories, and
send any good cabochons they have to me.
Fourth request...
Offer some diamonds.
This
one may be more difficult. I will talk with a couple of diamond dealer
friends and see what they say.
Update 02/16/08...
It
has been several days since our last Make An Offer mailing. One of the
owners took some time out to make changes to the available inventory. I
thought this was good timing, since it came as we were preparing to
visit the Tucson Gem Shows.
To
follow up on an item discussed in the last mailing... your feedback on
posting minimum acceptable Offer amounts has been mixed. I have
exchanged emails with several of you on this subject. Some of
you do not want to see any guidance on Offer amounts, reasoning
that you should feel free to make any Offer you please. But
many others do want to see Offer guidance, at least on the higher
end gems.
The
result is... we will experiment with providing a notice when the minimum
acceptable Offer amount exceeds $100.00.
The
only other request I have received is to "propose more than three
gems per e-mail, at least five per e-mail". That
is an easy request to fill. So today we will propose five items.
Make
An Offer and buy gems at a very low price!
Madagascar
Gems
Membre: Chambre de Commerce,
d'Industrie, d'Artisanat et d'Agriculture
