Ian Harebottle, who’s made his career from mining colored gemstones, has an emerald the size of a pineapple locked away in a safe. He’s not sold the unique bright-green rock because it’s so rare nobody really knows what it’s worth.
Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of colored gems, where abundance can mean higher prices and scarcity makes spectacular stones untradable. It’s a very different business from diamonds, the world’s most popular precious stone, traded in a liquid global market that makes pricing relatively transparent.
For colored stones, prices often increase with supply as jewelers acquire enough stock to justify marketing the gems to customers. Take regular emeralds: their value has appreciated 1,000 percent in five years as Harebottle’s Gemfields Plc and peers expanded mines, while marketing campaigns fronted by Hollywood star Mila Kunis gave demand a boost.
Now Harebottle wants to bring the same game to rubies. Gemfields’ Montepuez in Mozambique, estimated to contain as much as 40 percent of the world’s known supply of the deep-red stones, could triple output from the 8 million carats targeted for this year, according to the executive.