Russian Chrome Diopside Market Update from Jewelry Television, August 2011
Jewelry Television and JTV celebrate Chrome Diopside loose gemstones, Chrome Diopside jewelry, and Chrome Diopside jewelry-making supplies all weekend long in JTV's first ever Chrome Diopside Event, Friday, August 12 thru Sunday, August 14! Why all the fuss? Our customers have made chrome diopside one of the most popular gemstones at JTV! (Hint: shop the links above now for the best selection.)
And as part of our promise to you as the world's largest retailer of loose gemstones, we at JTV do our best to inform you of the latest news about your favorite gems, including the latest mining conditions.
Choi (pictured above), one of our expert buyers stationed in Bangkok, recently filed the following report on Chrome Diopside. From Choi:
Chrome diopside mining takes place for only 2 to 3 months per year during the summer, usually beginning in June and ending at some point in August.
In today’s chrome diopside marketplace, when cutting factories buy chrome diopside, they often have to buy the entire mine run. Since the factories aren’t able to ‘pick and choose’ only the finer quality rough, the quality of material being seen on the market currently is lower than that seen in the past: the material is more included and the colors are darker green to yellowish.
Yields of larger chrome diopside gemstones (10x8mm and up) from the original rough can be 3%--or less! And these special stones sizes have been purchased for JTV's Chrome Diopside celebration!
In the past few years, all of the major cutting factories in northern China have changed from cutting peridot and moved to cutting chrome diopside. Therefore this has created a HUGE demand for facet-grade material, which has driven rough prices up in the past few months.
Our vendors can no longer guarantee that they can supply us with product of the same quality, quantity and size as we saw when we first began carrying this gem.
Smaller sizes of chrome diopside are still available in the market but larger stones of good quality stones are in short supply. It takes months to collect enough rough that is larger enough to yield the larger stone sizes. Right now, we’re focusing on the larger sizes in good quality….no small stones on our shopping list currently!
All of these marketing conditions were substantiated at the Las Vegas trade show in early June, 2011. Our buyers saw lots of included gems. The fine quality gems were nowhere to be found!
- Choi, JTV Gemstone Buyer - Bangkok
