[Jewelry making - Article 00239] - Re: [Orchid] Synthetic & Simulant Gem Nomenclature

[Daniel Spirer]

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Richard,

>     And I ask you how many natural alexandrites have you sold 

    Well actually I have sold some over the years. I have one customer
    who's bought five of them from me ranging in price from $5000 to
    $17,000. There are customers for the natural material, particularly
    if you establish yourself as someone who handles goods like these.
    And I might point out, most of my clients are in the middle to upper
    middle class range. When you spend time educating people they can be
    convinced to buy the real thing. 

>     If you want to be honest and ethical, you better have some damn
>     good education backing you up if you are buying and selling, or
>     identifying what others bought somewhere else, like Hans's story. 

    Well, you're right here. You do need some good education backing you
    up. And if you don't you'd better make sure that you are dealing with
    reputable suppliers because if you resell something as a real stone
    and it turns out to be glass, it doesn't matter what your supplier
    told you. You're legally responsible. 

>     And I don't tell the whole truth, it generates animosity that I do
>     not deserve, they do not what to pay me for my expertise, they want
>     it free. 

    I'm not sure if you meant what you actually typed here but if you
    did, then by not telling the "whole" truth you are lying (it's like
    saying you are a little bit pregnant) and you are perpetuating a lot
    of myths and misinformation that the rest of us have to spend a lot
    of our time correcting. As for the second half of the statement, only
    you can give away your expertise. I don't offer any free opinions
    because that would just make people believe I don't value my own
    expertise. 

>     But in the case of alexandrite, when the public as a whole believes
>     that the simulant is alexandrite, yes I can educate them, but in 18
>     years of retail I have sold hundreds of simulants, after explaining
>     and explaining and explaining.... 

    I didn't say you had to sell them a natural, just that if they ask
    for an alexandrite, regardless of their misconceptions, you have to
    first show them what a real one is. If they then choose to buy a
    synthetic CORUNDUM than you have to tell them that is exactly what
    they are getting. If we simply sold people based on their
    misconceptions then I would have to run around killing a pigeon
    every couple of days so that I could show people the color of
    pigeon's blood so that they could understand that it has no more
    relation to the color of a ruby than their own blood does. And we
    would have to sell them H color diamonds as top color stones, because
    that's what one of my customer thought was the case just yesterday.
    And we would have to sell them "semi precious" topaz for far less
    than it's worth because how could you possibly call a $5000 stone
    "semi" precious? 

Daniel R. Spirer, G.G.
Daniel R. Spirer Jewelers, LLC
1780 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02140
daniel AT spirerjewelers.com
www.spirerjewelers.com

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