We buy uncut stones, direct from the people who dig them.

Send photographs and weights. We look at every parcel properly and tell you plainly what we think — including when the answer is no, and including when we think you would do better selling it to someone else.

Every stone we buy · How to photograph rough

What we buy

Rough, above all. Once a stone is cut the price has already been decided by whoever cut it, and there is nothing left for us to be useful about.

We buy worldwide and we are not fussy about the passport — if it comes out of the ground and it is worth cutting, show us. The list below is what we see most, not what we are limited to.

• Corundum — sapphire in every colour it comes in, and ruby. Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Tanzania, Australia, Nigeria, Mozambique.
• Spinel — the reds, hot pinks, greys and cobalt blues. Tanzania, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan.
• Chrysoberyl including alexandrite and anything showing an eye. Brazil, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Madagascar.
• Garnet — tsavorite, demantoid, spessartine, rhodolite. Kenya, Tanzania, Namibia, Nigeria, Russia.
• Beryl — emerald, aquamarine, morganite, heliodor. Colombia, Zambia, Brazil, Afghanistan, Mozambique.
• Tourmaline — rubellite, indicolite, chrome, and cuprian from any of the three sources that produce it.
• Zircon, tanzanite, topaz, peridot, opal, moonstone and the rest of the working trade.
• The rare things, and these are the ones to call us about. Taaffeite, musgravite, grandidierite, jeremejevite, benitoite, red beryl, serendibite, sinhalite, poudretteite. If you have been told something is unusual and cannot place it, that is a good reason to show us rather than not — the pieces that get thrown back on the heap are the ones nobody recognised.

Single pieces and working parcels both. Size matters less than colour and clarity — a clean small piece is more use to us than a large dark one.

Where from

Anywhere. We keep a working reference on the species and habits of every producing country we deal with, because a parcel out of Nigeria does not arrive sorted into somebody else's vocabulary — and a buyer who only knows one country's material will undervalue everything from the rest.

Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Madagascar, Mozambique, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, Brazil, Colombia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Australia, Ethiopia, Russia, the United States — and if your country is not on that list it is an omission rather than a refusal. Ask.

Sri Lanka is where we are set up best: our partner there is a licensed Sri Lankan gem dealer who receives material locally, in person, in the market you already work in. You do not export anything, you do not post a parcel overseas, and the purchase is a domestic one made by someone licensed to make it. Elsewhere we do not yet have a local partner everywhere, so we will tell you honestly at the start whether we have a workable way to buy from where you are — rather than looking at your stones for a week and then discovering we cannot.

How it works

1. Send photographs and weights

   A phone is fine. Daylight, on a plain white surface, and — this matters more than anything else you can do — wet and dry. Rough seen dry is frosted and reads far paler and greyer than the same stone wet, and a parcel photographed dry has cost its owner money more times than we can count. Tell us where it is from, roughly what is in the parcel, and what you are hoping for.

2. We look at all of it

   Every parcel gets read properly — not skimmed. We will tell you what we think the material is, where the photographs do not agree with what you have told us, and what we cannot judge from a photograph at all.

3. We come back with a range, or with a straight no

   A range from photographs is indicative and we will say how we got there rather than just giving you a number. If it is not something we can use we will say so plainly. Rough cannot be finally priced until it is in hand.

4. Hand it over locally

   In Sri Lanka, to our partner, in person. Elsewhere we will work out the practicalities with you before anything moves. The firm offer is made against material in hand, and it can go up as well as down once a piece is seen properly.

5. Paid by bank transfer

   Once the offer is accepted. We do not deal in cash or cryptocurrency for any transaction of any size — that is a position on our side, not a comment on anyone, and it means every payment we make is traceable and receipted.

What we will not buy

Heat-treated material is a different matter — we do buy it, and geuda in particular. We just need to be told, because a parcel sold as unheated that turns out not to be is a problem for whoever owns it next, and that is eventually us.

How we price

Rough is priced on what a cutter can get out of it, so the questions are colour, clarity, shape and how a piece will orient — not weight on its own. What a piece cuts is a function of how it is oriented, and that is the cutter's judgement.

We will tell you how we arrived at a number rather than just handing you one. If we are wrong about a piece, say so — you have had it in your hand and we have looked at a photograph.

What we need from you

• Photo identification and proof of address before any purchase settles.
• A straight account of where the material came from — which mine or which gravel, on whose land, and under what licence.
• Your NGJA dealer licence number if you hold one. It makes everything faster.

That middle one is not paperwork for its own sake. A clean chain of ownership is exactly what makes a stone worth something to whoever owns it next, and in Sri Lanka a purchase made outside the rules is an offence for the buyer as much as the seller. Our partner is licensed and buys accordingly, which protects you as well as us.

Who we are

A small buyer, and we do not pretend otherwise. We buy what we can sell, and we would rather build a standing relationship with a few people than make one large purchase and disappear. The stones we buy are cut in Sri Lanka, by cutters there, and finished stones are what leave the country — the cutting value stays where the stone came from.

We are based in Australia. If you would rather start small to see how we deal, say so — a single piece is a perfectly good way to find out, and it is how most standing relationships in this trade actually start.