What Is Your Colored Gem Collection Worth?

[Lisa Loves Shiny]

Not in dollars and cents. But what does it mean to you, and why? For me colored stones have captured my imagination. I love diamonds as they shoot off colored sparks. But colored stones for me are all about mood, mystery and history. For instance, we had a huge storm last night with tornado warnings. After preparing for the storm with predicted 100 mph winds I and my family was awakened at 1 am to fierce winds and torrential rain. Today I chose to wear my light blue unheated sapphire ring that shifts to moody violet with a tinge of grey in low light. In sunlight it is as blue and bright as the noon sky. I wore it because it represented to me the changes in the weather. As the clouds cleared, my sapphire changed colors as well.

Do colored stones capture your imagination in this way? What do they mean to you? I wonder if I am just a romantic. lol

 

[FrekeChild]

It's a creative outlet. I find diamonds to be a tad boring, unless you're doing FCD, in which case they are just expensive.

But really, every colored stone is different, they have varying personalities, more variety in cut, and all of the colors of the rainbow. It's hard to find a match, much less a suite of stones, so it's a treasure hunt too. And then there is trying to figure out how to set it...

So, creative outlet, treasure hunt, puzzle.

 

[smitcompton]

Hi,

It started as an intellectual exercise. I wanted to learn something new. I knew nothing about gems or jewelry, so I started reading books to become more knowledgable. At the same time I watched the TV channels and began by buying for my 4 nieces, before I started buying for myself.

I have mixed feeling about my collection. I bought much of it before pricescope and so Im disappointed with some it. So each time i look at some of the pieces or stones it does nothing for me.

On the other hand I can't believe that I have such beautiful stuff. I have a first class over 2 carat tsovorite ring that takes my breath away. ,I have an emerald necklace ,earring, and ring set, all matching, that I love looking at even though it is not near top quality.

I have a few rubies, Id never trade. I keep most of the things i love in a Safe Deposit box so I look forward every few months to open it and being surprised all over again.

I am the type of person that does not need to wear something to be happy to own it. Its sort of a luxury to own something and not wear it. So often its a matter of the question, do i want to own it?, rather than where will I wear it.

Annette

 

[SB621]

I tend to buy colored stones/ jewelry to celebrate milestons in my life. I have gotten rid of the majority of my collection and stuck with more quality pieces/ classic pieces I will hand down to my children. So the few I have left mean a great deal to me. They symbolize my family and accomplishments in life.

 

[Circe]

What an interesting topic! I've been pondering something similar recently, because while on the one hand, my collection is immensely emotional - I collected almost all of my stones with my father, and spent many of my happiest times with him arranging them and discussing their merits and practicing my fledgeling skills on them - on the other hand, it's just such a waste for them to just live in the bank vault.

Growing up, my father was pretty opposed to my going into the jewelry business in any way, shape, or form: the way it was back then, he associated it with a pretty misogynist environment, and I think there was a bit of the Jewish-intellectual thing going on, where he really wanted me to be a white collar professional with an advanced degree. And it worked out pretty perfectly, because I'm lucky enough to have two passions: I love jewelry, and I love fairy tales, and happily, I had the option of making one my hobby and the other my profession. Now, I'm sorta see-sawing to a middle ground where I want to do BOTH, somehow: since I lessened my teaching load, I'd been making loads more jewelry, lots of it inspired by my subject matter (I just came up with some ideas based around "Snow White" and "The Snow Queen" that I'm really excited about). But I'm always going to associate my collection with my dad, with everything he's given me - intellectual curiousity, a firm grounding in the basics of gems and jewelry, and enough little gem boxes and briefkes to last a lifetime.

Ironically, though colored stones are by far the bulk of my collection, I haven't posted almost any of them here: the time when I found PS is the time when I could finally justify the expense of my own safety deposit box.

 

[kenny]

Great topic.

I also allow myself to get carried away by things like aromas and colors and lighting conditions outside.
It's like a day dream that's choreographed by the stimulus.

If I let myself go, this little pear takes me on a vacation to an uninhabited tropical island where I snorkel over a coral reef.

 

[JewelFreak]

Wonderful, Kenny.

I have loved sparkly things since my earliest memories: light glinting on snow, the glitter of silica dust in pavement, sun filtering through leaves. The colors of nature also reach me somewhere central inside. Colored stones are the essence of both these things. You can go anywhere, looking deep into them, as Kenny says. Staring through a microscope into one, you enter a completely new world.

They combine the best of nature & human skill when cut well; in a gem you see far into history in its mineral content(s) & the cutter's art and science in using angles with the individual stone's personality kind of awes me.

Having them to admire is a thrill to me; I don't care if I ever set them all, just picking them up & letting them talk to me is enough.

--- Laurie

 

[minousbijoux]

What an interesting topic! I've been pondering something similar recently, because while on the one hand, my collection is immensely emotional - I collected almost all of my stones with my father, and spent many of my happiest times with him arranging them and discussing their merits and practicing my fledgeling skills on them - on the other hand, it's just such a waste for them to just live in the bank vault.

Growing up, my father was pretty opposed to my going into the jewelry business in any way, shape, or form: the way it was back then, he associated it with a pretty misogynist environment, and I think there was a bit of the Jewish-intellectual thing going on, where he really wanted me to be a white collar professional with an advanced degree. And it worked out pretty perfectly, because I'm lucky enough to have two passions: I love jewelry, and I love fairy tales, and happily, I had the option of making one my hobby and the other my profession. Now, I'm sorta see-sawing to a middle ground where I want to do BOTH, somehow: since I lessened my teaching load, I'd been making loads more jewelry, lots of it inspired by my subject matter (I just came up with some ideas based around "Snow White" and "The Snow Queen" that I'm really excited about). But I'm always going to associate my collection with my dad, with everything he's given me - intellectual curiousity, a firm grounding in the basics of gems and jewelry, and enough little gem boxes and briefkes to last a lifetime.

Ironically, though colored stones are by far the bulk of my collection, I haven't posted almost any of them here: the time when I found PS is the time when I could finally justify the expense of my own safety deposit box.

Love this! When I was a kid, I would love the fairy tales that involved rewards of chests of silver, gold or precious gems. I would always be urging the characters to "pick the gems, pick the gems, pick the gems!" I loved Howard Pyle because there was typically some kind of moral (maybe that's true of all fairy tales?) but they also got rewarded in "riches."