Jungle-Gems.com August Newsletter
JGems Newsletter August 2002
Hello from Rondonia, and Minas Gerais, Brasil. This month’s newsletter of gemtrade-related news, gossip, and confirmed rumors brings you all the news from both of these mineral rich Brasilian States. If you have any questions or would like more information on any topic covered in our newsletter, please contact us through the website.
Headline of the Month: Jungle Gems unveils new stone from The Amazon Jungle, deep golden-yellow colored Amber/Copal. We intend to bring this stone to market as “Amazon Amber” in the very near future. Traipsing through the jungle has some advantages at times. Near our Amazon Opal Mine we found a sizable deposit of this new material. It has a hardness adequate for cabochons, which we have produced in limited numbers so far, and accepts a dazzling polish. We plan to produce a line of top designer grade as well as calibrated cabochons for jewelry. Many pieces have a variety of insects, which we have yet to name scientifically. We can identify what appear to be ants, termites, bees, wasps, gnats, eggs of some kind, and other so far unidentifiable “things”. In the coming weeks we will be attempting “inclusion photographs” to allow the insect-included pieces to be put up on this website. We have yet to complete a thorough lab analysis to determine the age of our amber/copal, and we have discovered that there is a major worldwide controversy among amber/copal dealers as to whether or not a stone is “amber” (very old resin) or “copal” (not so old resin). We hope to avoid this controversy with further testing, but for now we will call our new product “Amazon Amber/Copal”. See photos below…
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Update of last month’s New Find: If you read last months newsletter you might be waiting for news of our gorgeous red/purple stone we called simply “something new”. See photo below if you missed it last month. This is truly an exciting find. The stone is a red/pink with purple zones. We had many guesses, but were surprised to find that it is merely quartz. But, what a quartz! We have never seen anything like it in our almost 20 years in the Brasilian gemtrade. So far, we have yet to track down it’s origin. The person who brought it in has been dis-allowed access to the site by the landowner, but has supplied us with all the info he has and we are now searching for the landowner hoping to persuade him that mining this material might be more lucrative than planting coffee. We fear that some of our competition might have already gotten to the site ahead of us, but we will persist in trying to locate the source of this truly unbelievable quartz.
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Our topaz sales have continued to grow. We even had a personal visit by our client based in Hong Kong, a rare event here in the Amazon region. Our 100% sawn clean topaz should remain available as production levels remain high. Pros in the trade know this material as “Rondonian Topaz” from the Brasilian State of Rondonia, but a recently opened mine is operating north of Porto Velho in the State of Amazonas, supplying many large stones over 20gr each. We have obtained a few very nice bi-terminated topaz crystals for you mineral specimen collectors, and we keep our eyes open for natural blue pieces which are hard to come by.
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Rumors confirmed: If you have been following our newsletters over the past months we have relayed the rumors of aquamarine and tourmaline that we were hearing so much about yet never seeing in our hands. We had pretty much concluded that it was only rumors… until this past month. We have now seen black schorl tourmaline, and some nice green tourmaline in quartz matrix. Maybe more exciting is the very nice facet grade aquamarine, along with some heliodors. We also have seen cab-grade opaque aquamarine in viable commercial quantities. All these goods came into our Ariquemes office from various sources, most local mine operators. The surprising part was the number of samples we saw. At this time, only the cab-grade aquamarine is available in quantity. Contact us for more info on price etc. See photos below for confirmation of previous rumors.
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Amethyst has a long history in this area of the Amazon, and production continues. Pros in the trade know the very nice color, but also the very included nature of this material. Nothing new to report on this. However, for cab/bead-grade material we have found some production of nice color at very reasonable prices. Quantities are available for less than US$5/kg. Most of this production is now going to Germany, but much remains unsold. Our neighbors in Bolivia are also still producing. Contact us for more info, see photos below.
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Diamond rough is still a very big issue in our region. Some producing sites are situated on legal claims, but most sites remain on disputed claims. Most of this is Indian land, and the controversies, arrests, and deaths continue to plague the diamond miners. The goods are of very high quality, and large sized rough is not rare. This adds to the overall conflict and confusion. The issue is prominent amongst the various gubernatorial candidates for this falls election, with the leading candidate claiming he will open up these areas for legal exploitation. Stay tuned to Jungle Gems for any changes in this area.
We saw some nice rutilated quartz this past month in very limited supply. The miner intends to extract more, as we have informed him of its viable marketability. The color ranges from copper to golden with clean white quartz matrix. Sizes over 20gr/pc.
Rumors continued: We are still awaiting samples of Amazon Petrified wood, but we have not yet launched an expedition to the area rumored to have this material. The newest rumors include sapphire and alexandrite. We admit to high skepticism for these goods, but we were skeptical about the beryls and tourmaline too. Stay tuned to the Jungle Gems newsletter. One never knows…
In Teofilo Otoni, my partner Jeff Gale continues to see fine gemstones in abundance. The highlight of the month is a fine supply of top quality dendrite quartz. This is truly a beautiful parcel. Fantastic, colorful, natural dendrite designs on clean quartz. This material is available in a variety of sizes and cuts, at great prices.
Some miscellaneous photos below show just a glimpse of the dendrites and a peek at what else Jeff is seeing in the office…. Huge 5,000ct tourmaline lot at US$2/ct, fine red/pink rubelites from US$35 to US$100/ct, andalucites, apatites, aquamarines, amethyst… etc., etc…
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Click Pictures To Enlarge
Regards from Brasil ~ Kirk “Tomas” Bond, pres. Jungle Gems
