Sapphires with Record Breaking Presale Prices
It seems that every year new record breaking sapphire gemstones are found and announced to the public. These stones come from all over the world and the trend does not seem to be slowing down. One of the biggest catalysts for finding these incredible sapphire gemstones is the ever increasing demand for these gemstones. With more people than ever before demanding these stones, there is a bigger push to find new mining locations.
World Economies Change Gemstone Demand
The reason there is such a demand now for the sapphire and other gemstones is because of the stock market and world economies. Entire economies have been collapsing left and right over the last few years, and economic stability still seems pretty far off. This economic instability of entire governments has done nothing but increase the overall volatility in the stock market.
Wealthy investors have become wary of the stock markets as an investment tool and are most definitely cautions of bonds. As recently as a few years ago, the biggest fad for these wealthy investors was to invest in gold. Many people thought that the price would just continue to go up and up. Demand seemed to continue to increase and of course gold is a precious commodity and more money flowed to gold, but today that is even showing signs of strain.
All of these factors has now led many wealthy investors to turn to precious gemstones like the sapphire gemstone. The truly flawless sapphire gemstones are hard to find and carry a tremendous value. This increased demand has, in turn, led to a rapid increase in prospectors for this magnificently colored stone, which has created increased numbers of finds for record setting rocks. It is actually becoming somewhat frequent to find sapphire gemstones that are several hundred carats in size.
The Truth About Raw Stones
When it comes to actually finding these large stones, not everyone can be a prospector. It is a truly difficult job, and most people have minimal success. A vast majority of prospectors have zero success. Of course, this kind of news is never reported. Only the major finds are reported, like the person who found a 700 carat star sapphire gemstone, and then sold it for outrageous sums of money. The reality is that rarely ever happens, but these types of headlines have more prospectors running out to find their fortunes, which is leading to more finds of large sapphires.
If a person cannot get their hands on a raw sapphire gemstone, then their next option or investment opportunity is to purchase the sapphire gemstone from the person who found it. Most of the time, for these larger gemstones, a seller will sell their sapphire gemstone through a major auction house. This not only gets the gemstone in front of the most potential buyers but also attracts more publicity for the sale of the gemstone.
The interesting thing about all of this is that these sapphire gemstones can often be purchased at a presale price, which is the price that is established for the sapphire gemstone prior to the auction sale. It is a bit of a gamble for a person to chase a presale price because the actual auction price may be lower. Of course, there is a possibility that the auction price could be higher, as well. For the most part, bidders use the presale price as a gauge of when to jump into an auction and place their bid for the gemstone.
All of this has led to sapphires with record breaking presale prices being listed one after another. Eventually, this trend will die down like most other trends. For the foreseeable future, this appears to be a trend that is just in its beginning stages. People are running out of places to put their money so gemstones are becoming the place to put their money.
For any person who is looking to purchase sapphire gemstones through wholesale auctions, there are a few tips that can be followed that will help a person to ensure that they are getting exactly what they paid for. Just like with anything else, whenever there is an increased demand for something there is also an increased likelihood for counterfeiters. There are always people who will try to trick buyers into paying money for something that is completely worthless.
How to Buy a Stone
One thing that a person should always consider first when looking to purchase sapphire gemstones is to check out the trusted auction houses. For the most part, there are only a few large auction houses that auction of these record breaking sapphire gemstones. They built their reputation on being trusted, and they accomplished this by doing thorough background checks on all of their auctioned items to make sure that they only allow genuine items for sale.
If an auction house is not easily accessible, then the next option would be to purchase either direct or through a much smaller auction house. When a person does this, they may want to make sure that the seller has had it appraised and are able to present the appraisal certificate. What a buyer can do then is do a background check on the appraiser. The appraiser has to be licensed in order to be able to give a legal appraisal of a sapphire gemstone. If they have given bad appraisals in the past, then it is actually pretty easy to find this out and the buyer should be cautious in purchasing from that seller.
These are just a few of the tips for any person who may wish to invest their money into something like sapphire gemstones. More and more money is flowing into these types of commodities, and the best way to invest in anything is to first be well informed on the potential investment. For most people, it is not feasible or even practical to search for that next record breaking sapphire gemstone. Instead, a better option may be to just purchase a large gemstone at a wholesale price as an investment.
