Guest Blog - Hong Kong Fair: March 09

Recently I asked how others had had experience of recent gem shows. In this first guest blog Peter Groenenboom, a gemmologist from the Netherlands shares his personal view of the Hong Kong Fair in March.

"All the four days I was at the show it was clear that there were at least a 35 to 40 % less visitors, mainly Westerners had not come. Later I heard that most Americans had not come, there were some booths of American dealers which were empty, the dealers had stayed at home. Specially the diamond sector was hit. Every time I had to walk through that area there were hardly any visitors, in the booths I saw no clients or any activity and often you saw the dealers talking with each other. Most of the dealers there are the Indians and Belgians. From Antwerp I heard that indeed the dealers had a very bad time in HK.
A friend of mine who is dealing in coloured diamonds in HK, which are/were very popular with the HK rich, have dropped in price. Sometimes 25 to 35 %. But good stones above 1 ct. are stable in price.
It’s the same with coloured stones. Natural untreated ones are even more expensive than last year, and harder to get. I have seen reddish spinel, 4-5 ct good cut, for 5000 USD/ct. I wonder if you want to buy that stone if you have to pay that price, probably not. But spinel, spessartine, nice untreated blue sapphires, to name a few, are certainly not cheap.

In the small sizes and treated stones you can buy what you want, there was plenty and to my feeling lower prices than last year. Dealers wanted to get rid of their stock.

In the pearl business it was more or less the same. One of my freshwater pearl suppliers is a big producer/dealer with a big booth. But this time it was not the frenzy action as I know this booth, people had time to talk, it was nice, there were some customers, you didn’t had to work to get attention. They were doing OK, but it was clear they had a significant lower turnover than usual. The very high quality I look for had become higher in price for the coloured round/semi round 9,5-10 mm (40 USD), 11-11,5 mm (60 USD) and 11,5-12 mm (70 USD).
(I have to say that with high quality I mean really high, most people, even long time pearl dealers, have not seen this quality. They have a strong colour and a high or metallic lustre. They are the pearls Schoeffel uses in its high end jewellery, if you know that. I buy and sell those pearls loose.).
For 12 to 13 mm they asked 180 USD, I didn’t buy that. I offered 125 USD but they didn’t want to come down one dollar. That suprised me. And I’m a long time buyer from them.
White beaded pearls had become much cheaper. Most of those are baroque, but there were nice pearls in those lots, prices about 40-50 USD/piece. I didn’t buy those. Also I did not look for round white pearls.
Strands of good quality lavender, copper colour or with metallic lustre were not available or high in price : 9-10 mm 300-400 USD. Too high for me. Same with round and baroque white pearls. Multi-coloured strands of reasonable quality were plenty for lower prices, 8-9 mm 100 USD, used to be 150 USD.
One of my suppliers, who has many American clients and is dealing in high quality white freshwater strands had hardly any sales. They were not crying, but it looked close to that.
Everything in the lower and medium qualities were lower in price. Also here I had the feeling that dealers wanted to sell for any price.
Tahiti pearls above 12 mm are hard to get since August last year. My ‘Tahiti’ dealer don’t have good/high quality 12 mm round because they refused to pay the high prices the producers (=Robert Wan) asked. Also on the last auctions there were none or very few big pearls. The ones that were on auction went for very high prices.
I was lucky that three of my suppliers each had some nice Tahiti’s of 12 to 15 mm which I bought for last years prices. But I saw some of the big dealers (Tasaki, London Pearls) with really very nice Tahiti’s of 14 and 15 mm, but asking price 800-1000 USD !! That is really too much! But try to get that kind of pearls, that’s hard.
But everything below 12 mm was in abundance. 10 mm about 60-90 USD, depending on the quality. Same story for high quality South Sea cultured pearls. Above 12 mm very high prices.
My suppliers were very satisfied with the show, they had covered all their expenses! Which means that most dealers lost.

Some dealers (stones or pearls) told me that they were not going to the Basel Fair. What I have heard is that the Fair was bad. But this you better ask others who were there.

Also I heard from the dealers in HK that the Bangkok Fair was very bad, about 50 % less visitors it seems. I know of one dealer in Bangkok of which business had come nearly to a stand still. That seems to be the common situation.

At the GIT Conference (where were you ?) there were also not too many people, if you ask me. Plenty Westerners, but besides a few losers like me who had to pay for the attendance, all were speakers. And from the handful paying Westerners at least three or more were living in Bangkok.
By the way, a very good conference, the Thais are doing very well, gemmological speaking.

The hotel in Hong Kong as the one in Bangkok, both 3*, made the situation also clear : In all the years I come there at breakfast the restaurant is filled for at least a third, say 10-15 people. Now I was the only one or there were 2-4 other guests.
It seems that Thailand has about 50% less tourists now, a big problem for many people.

This report has become larger than I planned, I hope it has some info you can use."