Colored Gem Supply and Market Update

Dudley Blauwet
Dudley Blauwet Gems
Interview with Dudley Blauwet, Dudley Blauwet Gems
Dudley Blauwet, a colored gemstone dealer from Colorado, has been traveling throughout Asia and parts of Africa for three decades, hunting down good, saleable gem material. He has witnessed firsthand the dramatic constriction in availability as global market forces have made their impact. If Blauwet’s lengthy, wide-ranging exclusive interview with GIA at the 2013 Tucson Gem Show had to be reduced to one word, that word would be: China.

As the interview moves over the map from Thailand to Pakistan to Afghanistan to Sri Lanka to Kenya, it always comes back to China. As the interview touches on an array of gems from tourmaline to topaz to sapphire to spinel to morganite and zoisite, availability always comes back to China.  According to Blauwet, everywhere you go looking for gemstones you find the Chinese have either gotten there first or with more hard cash to corner the various markets.

Other factors do come in to play in creating scarcity in the world gem market for what Blauwet describes as “bread and butter” dealers like him who make their living off the stones rather than amass fortunes. Among them are energy costs to run the drilling equipment, tribal battles over digging sites, and reduction of source material to prohibitive depths and locations.

Mr. Blauwet is a colored gemstone dealer with decades of experience. His journeys to buy colored gemstones take him to deposits all over the world, including South East Asia, Central Asia, Africa and other localities. Join Mr. Blauwet as he describes his latest travels and the world’s supply of colored gemstones.