Bangkok Thailand: otherwise known in Thai as Grung Thep Mahanakhon. Groong Thep is
the City of Angels. Mahanakhon: the great city. Actually it's in the Guinness Book
of World Records as the longest city name. It takes about 30 seconds to say
the whole thing, but everybody just calls a Groong Thep, so how about that fun fact
Welcome back everybody to Gemology for Schmucks. Today I want to talk about why
I've always been saying that Bangkok is the capital for color gemstones and
don't get me wrong there are other gemstone capitals. There's Rajasthan in
India. There's Shenzhen in China. There's I mean there's all sorts of places in
fact the biggest gem and mineral show in the world happens every year in Tucson
Arizona... How about that of all the places But why is it that Bangkok maintains
itself as the gemstone capital when the biggest show is in Tucson or their shows
in Europe and all of these things? Well those are some of the details I'd like
to get into into this video. (sluuurp) Scrumptious. Colored gemstones: this encompasses basically
everything except diamonds, but the primary focus point for Bangkok is
actually corundum so that's rubies and sapphires. For the past several hundred
years Burma or Myanmar has been the capital for the best rubies in the world
and rubies are the most expensive gemstones in the world, outpacing even
diamonds by weight and Burma or Myanmar as it's known now has had a bit of a
turbulent history and so sometimes that supply of rubies was not consistent
enough to keep up with international demand. In Thailand they actually found
they had their own domestic source of rubies a bit darker than the Burmese
rubies for sure, but still definitely enough to satisfy demand and they had
volume so when they got advanced mining techniques from the Australians, they
were able to go in and create a consistent regular supply of rubies for
the international markets and that's what major jewelry manufacturers
need. They need a consistent supply of dependable goods. So from that experience
the Thai dealers actually gained a lot of experience with corundum, so that's Ruby
and Sapphire. Different areas in Thailand also produce incredible sapphires.
so these Thai dealers that have experience with corundum sometimes they
had stones that weren't exactly saleable but they found ways to treat them using
historically accepted methods like heat treatment and then
advanced upon them with the developments of science in order to create some
stunningly gorgeous sapphires. So they combined some of these techniques that
they were learning and practicing and developing, which are very closely
guarded secrets at this point, so they used their experience dealing with their
own domestic sapphires as well as some of the supply that they would get from
places like Sri Lanka or Africa. They found that they could take unsalable
rubies and sapphires and bring them up to a level that appealed to the
aesthetic of the global market and at a price point that was muuuch more
appreciable than completely untreated gemstone. For investment level stones of
course untreated is what we're looking for, but if you're just looking for a
pretty sapphire, then a heated sapphire is gonna be much cheaper and much more
accessible than an (un)heated sapphire and just with the naked eye there's no way
to really distinguish them you need to use a microscope or advanced testing
techniques. So on a purely aesthetic level... they. can. be. the. same. But on a
price point level simply because of the rarity, they're of course not the same
thing. Everything of course has its price. Even
heated stones still sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars. If we're looking at
stones with the same color clarity and carat weight then of course the
untreated stone is gonna be a much higher price. So why is Bangkok the
capital of colored gemstones? Well they've got all of this experience that
I just described a moment ago. Importantly on top of that the
environment for the trade here is very stable
everybody knows generally what the government is going to expect of them
Nobody's worried about the man coming in and just snatching up their goods, but
geographically it's also advantageous. Thailand is very close to Myanmar. It's
also close to Sri Lanka. It's not that far from India. There are many people who
are from Jaipur India for example that have their own cutting facilities in
their own offices in Jaipur but they also have offices here and maybe in Hong
Kong and why would they do that? Because this is a nexus point. It's easy for
people to come from Jaipur and Burma and Africa and Sri Lanka and for them to
converge in one place that is stable Bangkok is the place. The supply has been
stable through here. So you've got people that know how to mine. You've got people
who know how to treat stones. You've got a lot of incredibly experienced cutters
You've got people from Russia, Ukraine the United States
Everybody kind of converges here because there's supply of stones and there's an
exchange of stones. Some people will stay here full-time and
have offices. Other people will come in for a few weeks on a buying trip. Take
their goods back to their country and sell that way. So because there is so
much of the trade right here, that's why I chose Bangkok to come in study
gemology. I studied at AIGS: which is the Asian Institute of Gemological Sciences
which I would say is one of the top three competitors for gemological
training. The other major brands of schools we can talk about in another
video They all are quite comparable. They have
some advantages over each other in different places and we'll talk about
the how and why of that in a different video. But really: what's not to like
about this? You got tropical fruit available all year round. You've got
gemstones flooding through the streets and you've got a wonderful cosmopolitan
environment where all sorts of people get to mix right next to each other
People from all nations, All faiths, all creeds, all walks of life are able to do
business here and mix under the banner of gemstones. I'd say that's a pretty
awesome thing all right thank you again for joining me on Gemology for Schmucks
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