Gem-quality rubies keep getting pricier and harder to find. Dealers weigh in on why they don’t expect this situation to change.
Anyone in the industry who’s wondering why ruby prices continue to rise need look no further than rough-ruby auctions and the scarcity in overseas markets. Gemfields’ rough auction this past June garnered the mining firm’s highest per-carat sum to date — $317 — while dealers who routinely travel to Bangkok, Thailand, to source goods often come home disappointed.
“There’s a lot of demand and not enough supply,” says William Hakimi of New York-based ruby dealer A. Hakimi & Sons. “Anything over 3 carats [in gem quality] is not easy to find.”
Supply and demand
A large part of the problem is that ruby sources in the world are limited. While there’s continuous production of diamonds and sapphires, ruby mining happens only when pockets are found, dealers say. In the 1960s and ’70s, Thailand and Cambodia were major ruby sources, but eventually they dried up.
So did other locations like Kenya and Malawi. Extremely few goods come out of Burma (Myanmar), and Greenland Ruby recently shuttered its operations and put the business up for sale.
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