JTV Blog: Notes from Brazil: Where there's Dendritic Quartz....

June 18, 2009

Notes from Brazil: Where there's Dendritic Quartz....

Hello, everyone!

George and I heard of a local miner who had just hit a big vein of dendritic quartz. So we visited his house where we saw several hundred kilos of this newly dug rough. We considered purchasing all of it but settled on a smaller sample that we will preform and cut to estimate our yield--how many carats of beautiful, calibrated dendritic quartz will X Kilos cut?

Spectacular Dendritic Quartz Rough

This is an especially interesting find because there will be other pockets of unique gemstones that will be found among this quartz vein. We expect to see spessartite, morganite and maybe some rutilated quartz, too!

George checks out the lot of dendritic quartz

We also bought some very fine Brazilian fire opal in calibrated sizes. There's a percentage of some super color that we negotiated for over four hours before we got our price--but we did get our price!

George (left) and Jay doing what they do best

We will be seeing another Brazilian dealer that is actually mining in Mozambique and Madagascar. Many of the Brazilians have experience in mining and rough buying and have established operations in Africa. So strangely enough, we may be buying some gemstones from Africa in Brazil!

Wow. Just wow.

After this, we are off to Teofilo Otoni, another mining town area for more of the what I am now calling "The Great Brazilian Gemstone Adventure." For me, it is truly that!

- Jay

p.s. Hey, it's me--Dana, Community Manager for JTV.com. I thought you would get a kick out of these pics from Brazil. Enjoy!