Most gems are downright cheap!  The only exceptions in my opinion are Diamonds and Tanzanite.  The supply in Tanzanite and Diamonds is extraordinary yet the price remains high. That’s not the case for nearly every other precious and semi-precious gem in the market.  We spend so much time concerned about getting finished gems for the lowest cost, we often forget about what it takes to bring these beauties to your shop or home.  Take a little trip with me down the path of the average faceted gem and you’ll be shocked they aren’t way more expensive.

One thing we almost never consider is that every natural gem must be discovered or found.  This cost to you is basically zero but we all know this is not reality. It is sometimes just dumb luck that a gem locality is discovered. Most of the time, however, the discovery is due to a combination of geological knowledge, field research and sampling. If the effort is successful, normal American business practices would expect compensation for these costs. If the effort fails any company would expect to recover their expenses with future successes.  Let’s call the price of education, research and sampling “discovery costs”. It’s hard to put an average dollar amount to this factor, but it could be significant.

The next part of the process we’ll call “retrieval”.  Let’s consider the costs of buying the shovels, picks, bulldozers, separating equipment and labor.  Those costs can be astronomical. And although we don’t expect to pay for it, the industry is pushing hard to require all mining operations to restore the land to it’s original state. Those costs are oftentimes higher than the recovery costs. Rockhounds are well aware of the discovery and retrieval costs and there’s not more than one or two really lucky ones that can say their costs have been recovered.  That is, of course, not considering the value you put on joy and satisfaction.  We’re just talking cash here.

Separation, sorting and grading the rough can be difficult and time-consuming as well. Some gems require sophisticated and expensive equipment for this step. Most just require an amazing amount of time and labor. In many cases miners must process a football field of earth to recover a handful of useful rough. Large mining companies have automated equipment and tractors do a lot of the work but you’d be surprised how much of the rough is processed by hand.

All this just to get to the point where Optima Gem steps into the picture!  After the rough is sorted there is a cost of packaging and delivery to get it in the hands of the cutter.  Let’s pause to reflect on the costs so far.  For a kilo of common gem rough that we may pay $1000, we have an unbelievable amount of labor and expenses. Deduct the cost of the equipment, land lease, shipping and delivery, I don’t know how they make any money.  It would seem optimistic to expect $200 to get back to the actual laborers that probably worked for a month to produce the kilo we just bought. This is proof that our American expectations of value are contributing to the poverty of many countries.

We’ll continue with more about WHAT IT TAKES next newsletter.