Monthly Archives: March 2010

Ruby; Burma Days; Rangoon:

“So to compare it to a diamond seems to me to be a reasonable approach. I am much of the same mind as you, my lord. The ruby is one hundred times rarer; therefore, let that be the price.” The French Blue, p.357

Our Bagan guide Mr. "E" explains one of the finer points of temple archetecture to my wife Rebekah

Rangoon: The Scott Market. Built in the late 19th Century, the market houses a lively market buying and selling goods of all kinds. Photo: R. W. Wise

by Richard W. Wise, G.G.

After two weeks in Tucson, a week in Bangkok and a short time in the Rangoon market, I can say that fine quality unheated Burma ruby, is almost unobtainable and for what is available, source prices have risen dramatically. This means short supply coupled with dramatic price increases for the little bit of fine Burma ruby available in the U. S. market. Even with these increases, in smaller sizes, fine ruby remains relatively cheap compared to diamond. Today, a fine one carat ruby commands barely 60% of the price a D-Flawless diamond. At three carats ruby draws even and at five carats, fine Burma ruby surpasses diamond which, due to its availability in larger sizes, does not jump dramatically in price until it passes ten carats. Ten carat diamonds are available, a ten carat ruby of fine quality is a museum piece and a ten carat ruby will command ten times the per carat price of a diamond of the same weight.

: Rangoon; Scott Market. Together with my agent Lwin, I scour the market for ruby with little luck. Photo: Rebekah Wise

The international price has gradually risen because production began to peter out several years ago and most of what is now available in dealer’s inventories and picked over. The Burmese know the value of fine ruby and the better off dealers prefer gems to paper currency. My agent mentions a man I met over a bakery in 1994 (see SOGT pp. 159-161). “He is a big boss now” Lwin says, “he has ruby but the price is very expensive, so what is new?” We visit his jewelry store just outside of town and see some exceptional ruby set in traditional settings. The rich dealers don’t care if they sell. The generals have decided to allow elections, but the people are cynical, as my guide laughs, “it will be “a selection” he says in a clever play on the English words. Nothing much is expected to change.

So we rusticate in Bagan for a few days, visiting temples, shopping for lacquer ware along the hot dusty streets. Then its back to Rangoon for another day in the market with little luck.

Ruby; Burma Days!

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The view from a Bagan Temple: Photo: R. W. Wise

The view from the top of a temple showing some of the estimated four thousand temples and pagodas in the Burmese town of Bagan: Photo: R. W. Wise

by Richard W. Wise, G.G.

Its hot in Burma but the early morning in Bagan is cool and breezy. Just off our porch with its planked and varnished teak floors, a broad leaved Banana Palm nods sagely in the light breeze, a giant Acacia tree bends its ancient back, its knarled branches splayed like arthritic limbs form an umbrella over our villa’s roof. A manicured lawn lies between us and the wide Irrawaddy River. From the opposite bank, along a ridge of ragged hills, a glint of gold off a temple dome flickers through the dawn shroud of silvered white mist. The mist clings though the day, turning to blue as the morning wears on. It is the dry season and the Irrawaddy, the mother of rivers, has receded leaving a broad expanse of bare sandy shoulder exposed on either bank.

: Why is the Lord Buddha smiling? Temple of the Smiling Buddha, Bagan, Burma. Photo: R. W. Wise

Located in the central part of the country, ancient Bagan was the center of a city-state that flourished between the 10^th and 12^th Centuries until Kublai Khan’s Mongols ravaged the place in the mid 13^th Century. Today, the chief reason to visit is to see the 3,000 or so temples and pagodas that punctuate the parched countryside. As our guide tells us, a pagoda is solid; a temple is hollow like a church with golden statues of the Buddha inside. During the height of Bagan’s prosperity, kings constructed the largest temples as monuments to their power and perhaps more importantly, as a way to gain cosmic merit so that after their deaths they might be reborn as some higher level of being.

At The Ruby Mines:

It is tempting to believe that the lack of fine ruby in the world market is the result of the U. S. embargo, but it is not. Burma is flanked by India and China and both these emergent powers are far more important trading partners than is the United States. The Indians have always greatly valued ruby—in the 17th Century, French dealer Jean Baptiste Tavernier wrote of buying rubies in Europe and bringing them to India because he could get better prices from the Mogul nabobs— and China’s nouveau riche have developed a taste for luxury goods. No, it is simply that, after a thousand years, the ruby, at least the accessible ruby has been mined out. Certainly this is true of Mogok’s secondary deposits; every bit of alluvium in the mountain valley has been turned over not once, but a hundred times. Mogok village itself was once moved to get at the gemstones and the small lake at the valley’s floor is a flooded excavation. According to my Burmese agent, a Shan tribesman born in Mogok, there are still gems buried in the hardrock, but they are deeper and require blasting, heavy equipment and much more capital to mine. Investors, however, are rather reluctant to invest.

More to come…

Bangkok Soujourn Part I

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Bangkok's Chao Prya River

by Richard W. Wise, G.G.

Arrived in Bangkok on Tuesday. We had only a week and a day between returning home from Tucson and leaving again for Asia. I had agreed to give a talk at the 34th GIA Gathering on the 24th. Lecturing on jetlag. I don’t recommend it. Still our timing was good, two days after we left, the northeast was slammed with 18″ of snow.

The Gathering, hosted by Ken Scarrett, was well organized with about 100 people in attendance, good food, good wine and good talk and all books sold. It was great seeing old friends like Mark Smith, Richard Hughes and Gay and Joe Belmont. GIA has established a school here with hundreds of students coming from all over the world to study gemology in Bangkok, the colored gemstone capital of the world. It is particularly gratifying to meet and talk to this new generation of students. I find myself in awe, they come from such an interesting variety of places and backgrounds.

Ruby; The End of Burma?

Ruby production at Mong Hsu and Mogok has shut down. Production from Mogok has for years been little more than a trickle and now it appears that the “new mines” at Mong Hsu are at an end of their productive years. At any rate, according to a number of sources, both mining areas are now effectively closed.

There are few Burma rubies of any quality to be found in the Bangkok market. In many ways this resembles the situation in the late 1980s when Burma stones did not exist in the market and all that was available was mined in Thailand. Today the Thai deposits are mined out and Africa is ruby’s new hope! Compared with Mogok, a valley 20 miles long, the vast geology of East Africa’s Mozambique belt, a geologic formation stretching from from Ethiopia in the north all the way to Zanzibar possesses the greatest potential for gem production in the 21st Century.

We have had the opportunity to see a number of the newer rubies from Mozambique and Tanzania including a 16 carat piece of flattish alluvial rough from Mozambique that will likely cut an 8+ carat stone. In some cases, the color is quite marvelous, resembling the pure scarlet hues of the best of the old Thai gems.

: Very fine old Thai ruby with orange secondary hue. Some connoisseurs consider that the slight orange frames and adds saturation to the overall color. Courtesy: Richard W. Hughes:

The hue itself was often of a purer red than stones from Burma though the high iron content added a murkiness—sometimes adding an orangy secondary hue or a brownish mask that was not attractive. Both the Mozambique and Tanzanian material while geologically similar and iron bearing have measurably less iron in their composition and thus a higher degree of transparency. Much of the Mozambique resembles the old pinkish Lai Thai material that superficially resembles some Burmese. Due to the iron, the African material lacks the highly saturated ultraviolet punch of the best of Burma, though the best material is exceptionally beautiful in its own right.

More later, stay tuned!