When CZ first hit the market, Nordstrom was selling it for $100/c.
My little first storefront was six blocks from the mall N. was in.
I was cutting it and trying to sell it at $40/c. Nada.
That does take me back-- to 1976 in Europe and South Africa.
I was cutting YAG at the time and this new product made by a Swiss
company called Jevulite? ( I think) had come on the market. After much
negotiation I managed to obtain a small amount and indeed, after
cutting a few small pieces, ( and that was some serious
experimenting with angles and polishing compounds) it was clear that
it was much better than YAG.
Eventually, I managed to buy rough from an American supplier at
$1.23/ carat in 1978. I had to buy a large quantity to get that
price, but dang, I made a lot of money selling the cut material to
the trade.That material was stabilised with calcium oxide, and
apparently the Russian material, which was stabilised with yttrium
oxide, was a little whiter. (so I was told)
I had a cutting workshop at the time, and we were selling it at R60/
carat to the trade ( the dollar was weaker at that time to the rand–
one rand to 80 dollar cents, if I remember correctly) That was a
hefty profit, and allowed that (then) 22 year old big deal to eat out
every night and live the good life. In those days there were no
colours of CZ but I experimented, and I found that if you heat a cut
stone up just so, it would turn a sort of light citrine colour. (
that is, if it didn’t crack). These I sold at a premium, and they
made me good money. And then a guy called David Wolfe imported some
automatic cutting machines and collared the SA market. Sharp dude
too.
I was not to unhappy though.I had cut some 6000 CZ’s by then and I
was pretty burned out. So I became a jeweller.Much bigger field.
These days,the burn out is long gone and I still love cutting the
stuff. Easy to cut, easy to polish.Nice to experiment with, nice to
cut untried designs and see how they pan out.
Just for interest, I buy my rough from http://www.morioncompany.com/
Good guys to deal with.
And to the poster who mentioned that CZ is problematic to polish, my
sequence is 260 lap, 1200 diamond ( then 8000 on copper, if it is a
big stone), and then 50,000 on a Batt lap.
Just on a side note while on the subject of synthetics, I find it
quite sad that the moissanite crowd have not released thier product
in a more open and easy manner. The stone simply does not feature in
the wider market, ( for that reason, I think) and that is a pity. I
have never been able to obtain any rough, and to the best of my
knowledge it is not available generally. Love to get hold of some,
though
Cheers, Hans
http://www.meevis.com
http://hansmeevis.blogspot.com