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Somebody's Gotta Buy This Stone!

If those are the same stones in the hand photo as in the ebay links the difference is huge and disappointing. Not that they arent nice stones, just that the photos are a large departure from how they look in real life.

dementoid.jpg

dementoidd.jpg

dementoids.jpg
 
In person I think the small one looks slightly worse and the large one looks slightly better. However, the cut on the little one is exceptional and the price was more than fair, so I kept it. And the big one is has an exceptional cut as well, and the color is very nice afaic. I have bought three stones total from Jeff and have felt good about all of them.
 
minousbijoux|1353695865|3313421 said:
OTL: aren't those both the ones you bought, or just the bluish green elongated cushion?
Click to expand...

Just the elongated cushion one
 
My turn at Intergem today. For once, Vance Gems was there. Finally! :appl: :appl: Of course I had a great time looking at everything.

This is a Stone Alert for a blue sapphire.

Elke has a blue Sri Lankan sapphire, 1.86 ct, loupe clean, heat only, round that was very pretty and well priced - much better than so many of the prices quoted here lately for heated blue sapphires. I would say it is medium toned, strong saturation, good luster. It is well cut with a high table. I know its probably meaningless to do so, but I would describe it as cornflower in color. Under the lights of their booth, it caught my eye as one of their better sapphires - a rich blue with sparkle. Stepping away in the aisle with high overhead lights, probably CFLs, it was even better - slightly lighter and even sparklier (I did not get to see this stone in daylight). There is no downside to this stone, so please someone contact them or go to Intergem this weekend. :bigsmile:
 
Do you mind sharing the price of Vance's sapphire?
 
Jeff Davies' stones seem to be hit or miss in terms of colour accuracy from what I've observed and read on PS by buyers and owners of his stones. Understanding that capturing the true colour of gems in a picture or video is challenging, it still matters to the potential buyer in order to avoid the hassle and cost of returns.

Minou,
Is Gems Earth a reputable vendor? The store name is very familiar.
 
That's a good question, Chrono. Bad: Gem-Earth is another that uses SLP and they are the ones who sold me the padparadscha as heat only. The good: the other stones I bought in that same batch all checked out at GIA, and they made me whole on the padparascha, reimbursing me for the stone, the shipping and the lab report. I would not buy corundum or any other often treated stones from them, but I would be comfortable buying spinel from them, particularly if it was a good price.
 
jeffdvs101|1353636734|3313125 said:
HI all,

I am not sure of what I am allowed to say do here, but having read this and other posts on this forum, there seems to a lot of uncertainty regarding photos/videos. I apologise in advance if I am over stepping what I am allowed to do here, but I feel a response is needed to perhaps help clarify.

Photos and videos are taken using cold daylight fluorecents, one overhead strip and 2 small side lights( I can post a photo of the set up if anyone wants to see?), photo enhancement is minimal, removal of dust and slight tweaking of over or under exposure. Camera equipment is sophisticated and expensive and will not be replicated with an iphone! A 180mm macro lens gives an image that is hugely magnified, it is of course going to look different in real life,because in reality it is smaller and your eyes are not as powerful as the lens, the videos are there for that purpose, taken from a larger distance to try and give some perspective. It is bad business to deceive by over enhancing photos and a practice that I have no part in, that said, try and understand the difficulties in producing accurate photos that everyone will accept, they will always look different depending on screen resolution etc.

I have the original unedited files of most of my photos, anyone want to see? am I allowed to post them?

cheers

Jeff.
Click to expand...

Somehow I missed this before. Thanks for your clarification.
 
Minou,
I'm probably all right with other coloured spinels from GE but not red spinels; the new flux red spinels are notoriously natural looking and difficult to differentiate from the natural ones. If inexpensive, might be worth the risk but not if it costs $$$.
 
Thank you for letting folks know - agreed.
 
jeffdvs101|1353636734|3313125 said:
HI all,

I am not sure of what I am allowed to say do here, but having read this and other posts on this forum, there seems to a lot of uncertainty regarding photos/videos. I apologise in advance if I am over stepping what I am allowed to do here, but I feel a response is needed to perhaps help clarify.

Photos and videos are taken using cold daylight fluorecents, one overhead strip and 2 small side lights( I can post a photo of the set up if anyone wants to see?), photo enhancement is minimal, removal of dust and slight tweaking of over or under exposure. Camera equipment is sophisticated and expensive and will not be replicated with an iphone! A 180mm macro lens gives an image that is hugely magnified, it is of course going to look different in real life,because in reality it is smaller and your eyes are not as powerful as the lens, the videos are there for that purpose, taken from a larger distance to try and give some perspective. It is bad business to deceive by over enhancing photos and a practice that I have no part in, that said, try and understand the difficulties in producing accurate photos that everyone will accept, they will always look different depending on screen resolution etc.

I have the original unedited files of most of my photos, anyone want to see? am I allowed to post them?

cheers

Jeff.
Click to expand...

Jeff, there is something to be said for not having a photo setup that is TOO advanced - the pictures you're getting are very unlike what we see in real life with our eyes. That would not stop me from buying from you, but in the future when I do so I will have to communicate with you before buying something since I know from experience that what I see in the stone I get is very different from your pictures. The stone I bought from you that I had issues with was still a nice stone, but it wasn't at all what I thought I was buying. I CAN make it look like your pictures, but only at about 3 pm, in diffuse sunlight, with another side light source. 99% of the time the stone appears much less saturated. I believe that there is no manipulation of the taken photos, but if the light source is incredibly unrealistic as to what the wearer of the stone will encounter, does it matter? If you included hand shots in regular indoor lighting or some description of the color of the stone in the listing, that would be extremely helpful. But as it is, your listings don't currently contain enough information for me to feel comfortable buying stones without further communication about their attributes.

To be clear, I do not believe Jeff is intentionally trying to mislead anyone, and I do believe he sells a lot of quality stones. He is in my saved ebay sellers and I check his site as much as any other to see if there's anything I'm interested in, but it's hard for me to buy because I know I need to get more info before I do... and let's be real... I'm mostly shopping for stones at like 2 am when I'm stressed out and want to buy stuff, so I don't want to have to talk to anyone to make a purchase.

eta: I feel weird about having posted this. But I'm not going to delete it because I think maybe it could be helpful.
 
There are some valid points which I understand though do not agree with, rather than hijacking this thread, I will write an article of some sort in the next few days, with a full explanation on how things work, and post it in a new thread, hopefully this will be informative and helpful to most people on here.

have a great week-end

cheers

Jeff.
 
Probably no need to say this, but pictures of gems are tough. I just sold a stone in preloved that ended up being returned. I took a picture outside with my blackberry, and the stone looked exactly like the picture when held outside at that time of day, but it doesn't have that saturation in all lighting. I don't have any kind of a picture setup, but my DSLR with the standard lens takes terrible pictures of stones in any lighting. I may start taking pictures with both cameras and post both??

I have seen videos where the vendor shows the stone in fluorescent, natural daylight, and incandescent, those are really helpful, but still there is a gap between what you see on the computer and what you see in real life.
 
jeffdvs101|1353749013|3313887 said:
There are some valid points which I understand though do not agree with, rather than hijacking this thread, I will write an article of some sort in the next few days, with a full explanation on how things work, and post it in a new thread, hopefully this will be informative and helpful to most people on here.

have a great week-end

cheers

Jeff.
Click to expand...


Jeff - there was a thread somewhere where a number of sellers shared their lighting/set ups. The clear winner for accuracy was, if I recall correctly, Gene of Precision Cut Gems.

If you don't mind, I'd like to give a little feedback on your photos/videos. Firstly thank you for providing both as it's always helpful. However, the reason I don't buy your stones is the photos. Every stone looks artificial in the photos and despite the videos, it always makes me wary. I'm not trying to be rude or insuating anything at all because clearly you represent your stones in the way you feel best shows them. There is a stone in your inventory that I've ummmmed and aaaaahed about for a while and would love to pull the trigger BUT the photo stops me.

I'm sure you frequent this forum so will know that there are a large number of coloured stone junkies here and we are pretty good at reading photos and knowing when something doesn't look quite right. Having said that, I don't know one end of a camera from another so I don't know what has been done, all I know is that something has (talking in general now). If I see that, I don't buy and I suspect hard core junkies are similar to me!

I hope you don't mind me speaking up - and it's with absolutely no disrespect at all but I wondered if it may be helpful? I love the idea of seeing unedited photos of the gemstones and wonder if you could perhaps set up a thread to show an unedited photo with the same edited photo of the gem. In order to comply with the rules you would have to show a stone that has been sold - although I'm not sure if that would still be breaking rules. Perhaps you could check with the mods?
 
I would agree with what LD said and would add that I am more likely to think something has been photoshopped - most of the time meaning the saturation and contrast has been tweaked - when it is a high contrast photo, which in turn happens when the stone has been flooded with strong light. So even if you haven't tweaked the photos - and I apologize for implying it - the high contrast makes them look that way, because stones just don't look like that in every day life.
 
Constructive critic is welcome and all points are noted, I will open a new thread and try and address them honestly and frankly, this will take some time, of which i do not have a lot, it will have to be done in stages, so please be patient.

cheers

Jeff.
 
Perhaps this isn't the best place for this, but since I know many people subscribe to this thread, I wanted to mention that Paraiba International is having a big Cyber Monday sale right now!
 
Thank you, Rosebloom. I think its well within the objectives of this thread to point out that a reputable vendor is having a sale. Yippee! :appl:
 
Rosebloom|1353885123|3315259 said:
Perhaps this isn't the best place for this, but since I know many people subscribe to this thread, I wanted to mention that Paraiba International is having a big Cyber Monday sale right now!
Click to expand...

I've been staring down that paraiba cab (the cheapest one) for a few days now... :devil:
 
justginger|1353921412|3315549 said:
Rosebloom|1353885123|3315259 said:
Perhaps this isn't the best place for this, but since I know many people subscribe to this thread, I wanted to mention that Paraiba International is having a big Cyber Monday sale right now!
Click to expand...

I've been staring down that paraiba cab (the cheapest one) for a few days now... :devil:
Click to expand...

Not a bad stone at all, but I bought and returned it. At the price it's at now I would've given it much more consideration.
 
Hi Blithesome and others - I know its a PITA, but it would be so much easier if you posted pics. That way, if the link doesn't work, people can still be informed as to what folks think are good stones. Thanks! :wavey:

Here's one I found, $200: http://mastercutgems.com/index.php?page=viewgem&id=6778

This tone, hue and location often results in those amazing multicolored sparks. I would definitely ask Dana about the dispersion and then i would buy it and make it the center stone of a ring with two trillion or trap diamond sides... :lickout:

vendor_-_dana_spinel_1_preview.jpg

vendor_-_dana_spinel_2_preview.jpg
 
Or Either of these big beauties from Cathy Dawson at rough2refined!

21-75ct-congo-neon-green-blue-torum-vvs-ec0014.jpg

21-75ct-congo-neon-green-blue-torum-vvs-ec0012.jpg

5-26ct-umba-blue-sapphire-jim-rentfrow0001.jpg

5-26ct-sapphire-jim-rentfrow0001_1.jpg
 
CM,
Those are some serious colours!
 
This tourmaline is lovely too, and a leetle closer to my price range.... Looks like Jim Rentfrow's been very busy!

bubble-gum-pink-tourm-jim-rentfrow0001.jpg

3-46ct-bubble-gum-tourm-jim-rentfrow0002.jpg
 
Chrono, that tourmaline is just amazing. I wonder if the Dawsons would accept my undying and heartfelt appreciation in lieu of a sack of money?
 
*gulp* Some gorgeous gems being posted lately :love:
 
minousbijoux|1354126107|3317503 said:
Hi Blithesome and others - I know its a PITA, but it would be so much easier if you posted pics. That way, if the link doesn't work, people can still be informed as to what folks think are good stones. Thanks! :wavey:

Here's one I found, $200: http://mastercutgems.com/index.php?page=viewgem&id=6778

This tone, hue and location often results in those amazing multicolored sparks. I would definitely ask Dana about the dispersion and then i would buy it and make it the center stone of a ring with two trillion or trap diamond sides... :lickout:
Click to expand...

I notice this has now been sold. If its a PSer, will you show us pics when you get it, pretty please? :bigsmile: :praise: :saint:
 
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