Buying rough in the UK

[paul Stansfield]

Hi all,

I trawl the web fairly often and to be honest have not bought any rough for ages.......

I have used overseas suppliers such as TZgems (before they went all 10kg only orders ), Mark Licinni before he sadly passed away and H Bosch in South africa with mixed results.

The thing that kills me is the cost of accepting the goods (bloody VAT) and the cost of returning by the likes of Fedex if the stuff is no good.

I've been to a few of the gem shows but have always been sadly disapointed by the lack of rough material on offer......

So where do you guys get your rough from? - UK, US, other? and is there any interest in intra UK swaps and buys etc.

I myself would like a reasonable suppier of fancy corundum and nice 'different' garnet, and have loads of tourmaline and quartz sat in what I call 'life time' bags in the garage (it will take a lifetime to cut!!)

Let me know your thoughts and suppliers

Cheers all

paul

[Brad Amos]

I have purchased rough on eBay with mixed results. Among US dealers Jeff Graham and The Rock Peddlar and Creative Gems (Seagoville, Texas) have served me well. I have purchased interesting synthetics (high index glasses from China) from Creative and built up some kind of relationship there. I have bought a kilo of CZ from Morion Company and a similar amount from Ceres, carrying the goods back in my suitcase after they had been received by a friend in the US. Other interesting synthetics have come from Paul Kessler (Osprey Trading UK, who is well known at the Rock n' Gem shows). The best quality natural rough (top grade in amethyst, peridot, heliodor and others) I have obtained was from a dealer called Cullman in Idar Oberstein. I found Cullman's name on a list of traders, but would not have been able to visit him without a german friend who blagged us into the Edelstein Bourse there (my UKFCG card was waved and I had to give up my passport to the guard before he would let me into the heavily-fortified building.
But the cheapest way to get good natural gemstones is to buy cut stones, e.g. from Thailand. For example, blue zircons from Vietnam are quite cheap, but little or no rough gets out and it is not usually of good quality.
I would be interested in splitting with others in the UK the cost of rough parcels from abroad, so that we can split the risk and find reliable sources.