Chinese push up tourmaline prices colored gemstones will become the next collection of hot spots

When the diamond wave was blown into China in 2000, various jewellery counters in various shopping malls were full of diamonds and platinum; after a jade storm came, the jewellery counter became a green again; this year, the color of the jewellery counter again You will find a lot of rings, earrings and necklaces, all of which are occupied by a variety of brilliant colors. The colored gemstones are occupying the diamond and jade market share little by little.

In fact, the development of international jewellery also followed the path from gold (1773.50, 1.40, 0.08%), platinum, diamonds, and colored gems. In China, however, color gems, whether they are jewelry consumption or investment collections, are just starting. Among them, the tourmaline has already led the multicolored market. Its price has increased 8 times in five years. However, the huge family of Caibao still vacated a lot of potential plates, such as aquamarine, tanzanite, opal, opal, and so on. So far, few people appreciate it.

Special Guest

Hou Yuyu (National Registered Jewelry Appraiser, Senior Senior Engineer, Chairman and General Manager of Guangdi Jewellery Company, Guangdong Geological Bureau)

Zhigang Li (Deputy Director, Guangdong Province Quality Supervision Jewelry Precious Metal Products Inspection Station, National Registered Jewelry Inspector, Appraiser, Senior Engineer)

Zhao Min (Panyu Color Gemstone Professional Committee Member, Director of Guangzhou Ruijing Gemstone Factory)

Chinese push up global tourmaline prices

Reporter: High-quality colored gemstones have been highly sought after in recent Chinese auctions. For example, in the spring auction of Hong Kong Sotheby's in April this year, a Bvlgari produced 27.67 carat natural Burmese egg noodles with ruby ​​diamonds. Ring, took a high price of 17.4 million Hong Kong dollars. However, under the auction market, colored gemstones have low awareness in the Chinese retail market. Not only are sales volumes low, but their price increases are far behind those of Jade and Hetian jade. Many people saw the market potential of colored gemstones, but the popularity and promotion of the market in this sector has always been weak. Many people do not even understand what colored gemstones are.

Li Zhigang: In the big family of gems, diamonds are the most familiar type of people. Colored stones are highly sought after in foreign countries, but they have just been known to the general public in China. There are too many family members of colored gemstones, among which rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and emeralds are among the world's top five rare gemstones along with diamonds, as well as aquamarine, tourmaline, tanzanite, opal, and opal. Topaz, demantoid, spinel, crystal, olivine, garnet, etc. are very rich in species.

Zhao Wei: In the past, there was a concept of “precious stones”, such as peridot and tourmaline, which were commonly referred to as semi-precious stones because they had more production and lower prices and were different from the traditional five major stones. However, in recent years, with the rising prices of these semi-precious stones, especially tourmaline, foreign countries have incorporated it into the ranks of colored gems. In China, the concept of semi-precious stones has become increasingly blurred, and it has been rarely mentioned.

Reporter: With so many colored gems, it seems that in China, only Tourmaline is known to everybody. How far is China's color gems market from foreign countries?

Hou Yuyu: The color gem market in foreign countries has a long history and profound cultural heritage. The market is much better than domestic ones. Guangdi jewelery introduced color jewellery earlier in the country since the 1990s, but for so many years, the best selling thing was tourmaline, whose price has risen at least 5-6 times in the last five years.

Zhao Wei: The price of tourmaline is pushed up by the Chinese, and foreigners are not very fond of it. I went abroad to buy raw materials four years ago. At that time, the price of 1 carat tourmaline on the raw material market was a few hundred bucks, and the quality was very good. The raw material of the tourmaline, which is now 1 carat, has risen to 1,200-1,500 yuan at least, and things are not as good as they once were. Prices have risen at least three times.

Hou Yuyu: Why is only tourmaline playing a market in China in color gems? Because jewelry's awareness and sales are proportional. The tourmaline can get up and more or less relates to the story of Cixi. Cixi is said to have a pair of watermelon tourmalines, tribute from Fanbang, the value is 5 million two silver, Cixi is very fond of, has been placed in a jewelry room in the Summer Palace, by a group of three pro-trust eunuchs in turn to watch. Although tourmaline has a variety of colors, the main colors are red and green, which is exactly the traditional color that the Chinese love. Other colored gemstones such as aquamarine are comparable to tourmaline in terms of value and price, but sales in China are far less than that of tourmaline, because the Chinese do not like the cool color of blue. Foreigners, on the other hand, love the calm and steady colors of aquamarine. So different cultures give birth to the different value judgments of precious stones.

There is another reason why Chinese people like to have tourmaline. In Cantonese, tourmalines and homophobia are homophonic, so there are more people who like tourmaline in Guangdong. And compared to diamonds, red sapphires, emeralds and other jewelry, Tourmaline's "heads" are indeed larger, and they are used as luxury jewelry.

â–  colored stones will become the next hot jewelry

Reporter: Some time ago I deliberately noticed the jewellery counters in many major cities in China. I discovered that many rings, earrings, and necklaces this year. The number of colored gems suddenly increased. It was either a diamond or jade and Hetian jade. Does this mean that this colored gemstone has started its market in China?

Hou Yuyu: The beauty of diamond lies in its hardness, clearness and brightness. The beauty of colored stones lies in its gorgeousness. The beauty of jade lies in its delicateness, warmth, subtle elegance. However, Chinese people have always been doing business. When the diamond wave hit China in 2000, all of the shopping malls' jewelry counters were full of diamonds and platinum. Later, the price of jadeite came up, and the jewelry counter went on to become A green one. The area of ​​colored gemstones is now increasing, indicating that the Chinese colored gem market is starting to take off.

I think colored stones should be the next jewellery hotspot. In business and business, when any one thing heats up to a certain extent, the market will gradually become calm, and another consumption hot spot will emerge at this time. The current emerald is the way before the diamond, and now the price of jade and Hetian jade is too high. In contrast, the price of many colored stones is much lower, and it is easy to form a kind of consumption expectation. And there are many types of colored gemstones, and the prices have opened up many levels. Economically strong ones can buy red and blue sapphire, and economic strength can be generally chosen from crystals and grape and stone. There is plenty of room for choice.

Compared with diamonds, the advantages of colored stones are also obvious. The color of diamonds is relatively single, and the rich colors of colored stones leave designers plenty of design space. The degree of personalization is much higher than that of diamonds, and it meets the personalized needs of more and more people. The most important thing is that the trajectory of China's jewellery consumption is basically the same as that of foreign countries. In addition to the sudden emergence of jade, it is basically in line with the prevalence of foreign gold-platinum-diamonds, and the next upsurge after foreign diamonds is colored gems.

Zhao Wei: China's color gem market has indeed started to take off in recent years. In the past, colored gems processed by our factories were exported, and now some of them are sold to the domestic market. Except that the prices of tourmalines have risen particularly sharply, the prices of other colored gemstones have also increased in recent years. For example, the cheapest vitreous stone has the best quality ten years ago. The price of one carat is less than one hundred yuan. , now get the fair, at least sold to 1,000 yuan.

Moreover, Chinese people now have money, jewelry consumption is rapidly developing in China, different colors of clothes, pay attention to match with different colors of jewelry, so the future market potential of colored gem is certainly great.

Hou Yuyu: But Jade and Hetian jade can reach a market height, which is inseparable from their deep-rooted cultural identity in China. The reason why diamonds can swept the Chinese market in just a few years, making China the world’s second largest consumer of diamonds after the United States, is related to the efforts of the De Beers, the predators who operate the diamond market. In the early years, De Beers' promotion cost in the Chinese market reached 18 million U.S. dollars a year, spreading the values ​​of "diamonds are long-lasting, one forever". The colored gemstones currently have no specialized companies or institutions to systematically package and publicize them. There are too many members of this family, and there is a lot of knowledge that needs to be popularized. There is no story in China, so colored gemstones are in the Chinese market. It is difficult to reach such heights as jade and Hetian jade.

â–  Frequent counterfeiting cracks consumer confidence

Reporter: The domestic awareness of colored gemstones is not high. The Yangcheng Evening News often receives complaints from consumers, reflecting that the colored gemstones purchased are not natural, but are manually processed. Too much of this kind of thing has affected the confidence of many people in buying colored gemstones.

Li Zhigang: Colored gemstones entering the Chinese market are actually not things in recent years. As early as the 1990s, coloured gemstones have already entered the Chinese market at the same time as diamonds. Why did the color gems on the Chinese market become less and less, and it only took people's attention again in recent years? It is because there are too many colored gems to be falsified. They are synthetic, dyed, and diffused. They are also sold at the price of natural gemstones. They are sent to the inspection agency for testing after purchase. This is true or false. This slowly hurts consumer confidence.

Hou Yuyu: It seems that most of the natural tourmalines have different degrees of fissures and are often used to make ring tones. The necklaces and bracelets that are generally sold in the market are all cracked. This is the structural feature of the tourmaline, but it affects the beauty and durability of the tourmaline. Because the tourmaline is easily cracked and broken during processing, in order to increase the yield and improve the beauty and durability of the tourmaline, the cracks in the tourmaline raw materials are generally filled and consolidated with glass-filled fillers before processing. Avoid raw material cracking. Therefore, there are more or less full-filled tourmalines on the market, but high-quality tourmalines, such as the abstaining class, are basically not filled.

With regard to the phenomenon of processing the tourmaline filling, "killing one stick" and "let alone" are undesirable and should be treated differently depending on the degree of filling. For tourmalines with a relatively large degree of filling, the testing agency should indicate “filled tourmaline” on the certificate and clearly tell consumers.

Li Zhigang: In recent years, China's color gemstone market has been standardized a lot. Is it natural gemstone? Although businesses will not explicitly say, but generally only a natural test certificate, the optimized treatment will be no certificate. But this has caused another kind of consumption misunderstanding.

Many people in Guangzhou travel abroad and will purchase locally produced gems. They take Chinese thinking and consumption patterns to buy things abroad. They believe that having a certificate is a natural gem. Actually, foreign countries and China are not the same, natural and optimized. Jewels will be issued certificates. Only the English jewelry test certificate is a lot of technical terms, and ordinary consumers can't read it. For example, “Synthetic Emerald”, the Chinese translation is “synthetic emerald”. People have already told you in black and white that the emerald is synthetic, so the latter period of rights protection Basically difficult to win.

In fact, although the best-quality color stones are all abroad, China is also a big producer of many colored stones. Such as Xinjiang, Yunnan, Inner Mongolia and other places are producing tourmaline, Xinjiang's tourmaline particles are large, the variety and quality are very good. Around the year 2000, China’s entire color gem market was mixed and the market is now slowly moving toward mid-to-high end. Low-end products will gradually be eliminated and gradually form a benign market.

â–  Color gemstones have large investment potential and narrow realization channels

Reporter: The consumer market for colored gemstone jewelry in China has started to take off, but investment and the collection market seem to have little movement. Collection-level colored gems are highly sought after in overseas and Hong Kong auctions, but in recent domestic auctions, very colorful treasure jewellery has been taken. If it is used as an investment collection, how to choose colored stones? Is the color important or important?

Hou Yuyu: Although colored stones do not have internationally accepted 4C standards to judge their value and quality, it is also the color, grain, clarity, and cutting that determine the value of color stones. Among them, color and grain are the most important. The particles are of course larger and rarer, and the knowledge of color is greater, because each colored gemstone has a variety of colors, and the value of different colors is very different. For example, the blue tourmaline is the most expensive, followed by red, again. It is green; the greener, purer and more colorful the emerald, the better and more expensive the nature.

Zhao Wei: Although the price of different color stones is very different, but each mineral has its best, collection of rare things to choose on the line. The threshold for diamond investment is 1 carat, but if it is to invest in ruby, it will cost at least 3 carats, depending on the price of the color is also very far. If it is rose red ruby, the price is definitely far worse than the blood. Now 3 carats of red rose ruby, the price is about four or five million. If the economic strength does not allow to buy rubies, there are a lot of colored stones to choose from.

Tanzanite is also worth noting. It is an alternative to sapphire, but it is more colorful and cheaper than sapphire. Generally 1-2 carats of sapphire have been considered larger, but the ordinary tanzanite has more than ten carats, and the top one has thirty to forty carats.

The cheapest is the grape stone, although it is full of moisture, good colors, and large particles, but because the output is too large, the price is very low. For investment collection, you must choose grape orchard with more than 5 carats, and the quality requirements should also be more stringent. Now, this kind of grape stone is also a few thousand dollars.

Hou Yuyu: Therefore, investing in the collection of colored gems requires a lot of homework. It is necessary to learn to grasp the different rarities of each variety. Like a cat's eye, it needs to grasp its cat's eye effect instead of focusing on its clarity. Collection crystal will have to pay attention to its color, amethyst, topaz price is very cheap, but if it is red crystal, the price of 1 carat will be opened hundreds of times.

In addition, attention should be paid to serialization when collecting. For example, tourmaline, its color is the most colorful of all gems, the single red series has positive red, pink, purple, brown, etc., in addition to green, blue, black, colorless and so on. Collection of tourmaline pursuit is to collect a variety of colors, while paying attention to complete sets and matching. Why the jewelry on the auction is mostly bead chain, because the most difficult to match the bead chain, find the same material, the same grade of material is not easy, the value is certainly higher. The price of the pairing or bead chain is not a simple accumulation of the price of a single grain, but must be several times the price of the single grain, as the case may be.

Reporter: But investing in colored gems faces the common constraints of all jewellery investments — it is difficult to realize. Only the top jewellery won the auction, and the middle-to-high-end jewels may be difficult to change hands.

Hou Yuyu: The realizing channel of jewelry is indeed narrow. At present, there are only three main channels for auctions, pawns, and sales to experts. As you said, only the top jewellery got on the auction; the price of going to the pawnshop would be pushed down very low, perhaps only one-third of its actual value; the connoisseurs will only accept high-end things. The secondary trading platform for the establishment of jewelry has been said for many years. Chantaburi in Thailand has such an open market platform. However, in the current situation where China’s current secondary trading market for jewelry is blank, it is better to invest in jewelry with caution.

colorful gems

Colored gemstones are the general name of all the gemstones except the diamonds in the gemstone family. Among them, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and emeralds are among the world's top five precious stones. In addition there are aquamarine, tourmaline, tanzanite, grapevine, opal, topaz, demantoid, spinel, crystal, olivine, garnet, etc., are very rich in species.

Red spinel

For a long period of time in history, people have always mistaken red spinel as ruby, and large-grain rubies are rare. Large-grain spinels are relatively easy to obtain, so people in history have intentionally or unintentionally made spinel. Ruby's stand-in. The result is an increase in the impact of ruby, but also buried the reputation of spinel. The world’s most famous spinel is “Black Prince's Ruby”, which is about 170 carats in the crown of the British king. It was inlaid on the crown as ruby ​​as far back as 1960, until modern times. It is red spinel. In China's Qing Dynasty, the so-called ruby ​​top used by the royal family and the Minister of the Imperial Family was almost entirely made of red spinel.