To start off I can mention what we learned so far about the Grandidierite market. Perhaps this will provide a context for your collecting.
Some of the best, gemmy material available. You can see yellow coming through on the sides.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/373612376989
A good way to introduce yourself to Grandidierite quality is to think of Emeralds. Grandidierite grades in a similar way to the famous green stone, and similar inclusions, color, and clarity variation. So while a faceted Grandidierite gemstone is very rare in clean form, like Emerald, there are fairly large amounts of opaque, low grade material around, which vendors will push as “super rare.”
This example is a 0.5ct. A size where you will find the highest quality and best price.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/373446419450
Two main discoveries of facetable Gradidierite material, 2003 and 2014-15, both in Madagascar. We are selling mostly 2015 material – which brought a new variety of collectable gems to market only recently – with the ocasional 2003 piece mixed in when we can find them. Discoveries in New York, USA and Sri Lanka have also been reported. I might have seen a Sri Lankan one or two. Nice color but fairly opaque. And I have not seen any from New York. Not much information about that find.
https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/winter-2015-gemnews-grandidierite-madagascar
It’s a funny how things happen, but we chose Grandidierite to sell because it was our favorite. No other reason initially. Who knows what would have happened otherwise with the business. Jypsy Jewels Juneau was able to get our foot in the door in a big gem market, by at first specializing in collectable-quality Grandidierite, which is truly available from very few online sources. Only a handful of vendors with this Thailand source and we are proud to be among them. We price grade all of our gemstones are we feel it result in the best value for our customers, even if they don’t own a loupe. We have identified 4 basic grades within the Grandidierite we sell 3 of those grades.
A Good Grandidierite Gemstone. This is the top quality offered by most vendors.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/373612148699
You will see a $10 – $40 dollar grade range with many varieties of colors from greens to blues. All mostly translucent to clear and often with reflective inclusions. Color will tend toward steel blue and darker greens in normal light, and show bright blues in sunlight, which we try to capture in some of the videos with a pen light. This grade is quite collectable and offers a great place for anyone to start collecting.
Then there is the next grade of $40 – $100 where the majority of our current Grandidierite selection lies. These are harder-to-find quality with colors ranging from baby blue to deep, aqua blue with flashes of yellow and green under bright light. Sizes are 0.60 to 0.85 usually as due to the way Grandidierite crystals form we don’t see crystals larger than that with any clarity. So to build a quality collection you would focus on the variety found within this range, and not be too concerned with sticking to 1 carat sizes and above, which is not a bad rule of thumb, but not really possible for this gemstone. Particularly good examples in this grade will show a small yellow flash or two in the still photos at the top of the gemstone.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/373599811471
Then there is the $100+ range which includes Grandidierites sizes of up to around 1.15 and ocassionally even a 1.95 although it will be more included. This grade has a variety of high clarity baby blues to deep saturated blue-greens with higher saturation and clarity. The better your Grandidierite gets, the more trichroic – showing three colors – the material will be. This range reaches what we call “jewel grade” or “museum grade” with examples that begin to reach 1 in 10,000 rarity levels. Theses stones are very clear (still with some small inclusions always) and have even richer aqua blue green color and show bright yellow flashes at certain angles. No baby blues here. These are always a rich mix of green blue and yellow. Yellow will always show even in the still photos. The upper level of this grade that we have been able to stock goes for around 500 per carat and examples will be 0.5 carat or smaller.
Above those three grades you move into fully clean gemstones of 1, 2, and 3, carats which jump to a thousand or multiple thousands per carat, even for very small examples. We have not yet reached that level for inventory. The number of cut gems of this quality is probably a few thousand total, ever. Pieces of clean rough material do exists in limited quanitity, but a 3 carat clean rough Grandidierite piece might sell for 1500+ Always good to keep in mind when confronted with the sea of opaque, colorless material that vendors will ask way too high of prices for.
A fun time to be collecting because as far as we can tell not many gemstores, even the more experienced, have a good a picture of the market as described here. We’ve been able to bust a lot of myths, including the one that quality Grandidierite is not available to the typical gem collector in 2021. We also love to help spread good information, because it is probably one of the most faked gems around, particularly on Ebay.
Above is a photo example of some Grandidierite suggestions that are all fakes. So even if you consider buying one that is not from us, we are always happy to take a peek and give our opinion. A good rule of thumb is that clean Grandidierites over 1 carat do not exist for sale, and do not exist perfectly clean, even under one carat. There are always at least a few gemmy inclusions. The current “real” Grandidierite supply seems to be holding OK for now, but we have already noticed certain varieties and cuts beginning to disappear. No one knows for sure how long any of the grades will be around.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/jypsyjewelsjuneau/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=
Cheers and Happy Collecting,
Kerin and Joel @ Jypsy Jewels