Secrets of the Gem Trade: The Connoisseur's Guide to Precious Gemstones

Secrets of the Gem Trade: The Connoisseur's Guide to Precious Gemstones

Feel your palms sweat with your first glimpse of the pidgeon's blood on trek into Burma's Mogok Valley in search of the fabled Burma ruby. You could almost taste the searing heat of the Austrailian Outback on Wise's trip to opal country. How to look at stones, the effects of different lighting, how to save money when buying a diamond with no loss in beauty. Its all there! Read the sample chapters www.secretsofthegemtrade.com and bought it Great read!

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Secrets of the Gem Trade: The Connoisseur's Guide to Precious Gemstones

I have been in love with gems for years. I have always wanted to collect. The lack of information about quality has stymied me for years. Jewelers don't seem to know and the books that are available don't tell you much. Richard Wise tell it all. Now I feel much more confident about buying gemstones.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

The Bible for aficionados

Every book on gemstones contains much the same information. Physical properties, sources, lore and what the Greeks (Theophrastus) and the Romans (Pliny) had to say about the specific gemstone. If you are looking to find out how you judge gemstones, how you tell the difference between a fine sapphire and something mediocre, forget-about-it. Even the so-called "buyers guides" waffle around the subject. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, blah!, blah!, blah! I think if I hear that old saw one more time I'm going to spit up.

Richard Wise tells the truth. Secrets Of The Gem Trade is the Bible! Straight non-technical talk! The first part of the book concentrates on principles of connoisseurship. The author tells you how to look at a stone, what the critera for evaluation is in faceted stones, cabochons, stars, catseyes, pearls and opals. this is stuff dealers never tell. He even tells you how to evaluate the light your using to look at the stone. Part II contains individual essays of about 40 of the most important gems.

And oh the photographs: four of the world's most famous photographers, About 120 beautiful photographs including some of the world's most famous gemstones. True color! The Caplan Ruby, Rockefeller Sapphire, Hope, Hancock and Dresden Green Diamonds. This is the real stuff!

Secrets Of The Gem Trade really does tell all. It is the first and only book that tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I read an excerpt in Colored Stone Magazine (they are excerpting it in every issue for a year) and couldn't believe it. The truth at last. I bought it! I love it!

Anyone Can write a review

I note that a reviewer here sites turquoise as a good investment. Well anyone can write a review. 99% of all Turquoise is dyed blue and "stablilized" by filling it with plastic. Good investments. Well I do recall in Dustin Hoffman's classic The Graduate, that one word was "plastics"

Plastics may have been a good investment in the 60s but turquoise is not. I think that is the reason that Richard Wise left tourquoise out of Secrets of The Gem Trade along with akoya pearls from Japan that are, he tells us not pearls at all, merely highly processed beads that are bleached white then dyed pink.

Gems as investments, Wise warns us against that. Point is he gives us the real dope and does it in a highly readable and informative manner.

We're missing some precious precious here.

Didn't The Wall Street Journal run out and tell us to invest in diamonds and turquoise as smart precious gemstone buys? Yes it did. The word "turquoise" is tossed into this book twice only. Once in a footnote and once in a paragraph in the beginning. Maybe the author covers turquoise in another book but I think it's a shame it doesn't get the several pages it deserves in this book. Also, I was expecting more for $35.00 dollars-more like a coffee table tome. You can read this in two hours. It left me with a lot of unanswered questions. Back to Google sifting.

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