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Gemstone Trends - What Gemstones Are Popular Right Now

Gemstone Trends focuses on Gem Rock Auctions ‘Best Sales’ on a monthly basis. This review is an important source for sellers and buyers to analyse which gemstones are currently best to invest on.

The gemstone industry is affected by many macro and micro conditions that are due to normal supply and demand factors, government interventions and embargoes. Many gemstone mining fields do not have constant supply, and now we see  weather such as wet monsoonal to drought conditions have a major effect on production. Chinese buying patterns can also increase or decrease the gemstone price if it is considered in fashion or not.

We monitor gemstone trends from google analytics, items sold on Gem Rock Auctions and items that are being watch to help us provide our buyers a good indication of the most current gemstone trends.

Gemstone Trends January 2019

The gemstones sales for the month of January are predictably slower after the busy Christmas period. However this year, we experienced strong demand across all categories making this month our best on record.

Our Verified Sellers sold 7,916 gemstones for the month January compared to 5,727 for same period last year.

Gemstone purchases for this month were similar to our last quarterly report for the top 24 gemstones sold.

The $15 No Reserve Auctions are very popular with buyers who do not have the time to bid in the No Reserve gemstone auctions.

Top Gemstone sales were spread over many sellers as we now have over 200 verified sellers.

Gem Rock Auctions allow the buyer a huge advantage when selecting their item, by allowing gemstone comparisons from each seller. This allows the buyers to view the stones on an even level playing field.

Gemstone Trends Quarterly Report Oct - Dec 2018

Gem Rock Auctions broke sale records.

A record 21,599 gemstones were sold last quarter with the highest ever average price as buyers demanded quality gemstones.

The dollar value of sales was up 54% for the quarter compared to same quarter last year.

Top 24 categories for last quarter.

There are 1,300 different gemstone categories so the top categories can change significantly. Rare gemstones make up 30 of these categories. The top four categories were Paraiba, Sapphire, Spinel and Tanzanite.

Paraiba

Paraiba had several high-end sales to make it the number one category, experiencing high demand at $500 to $1,500 price points.

Diamonds

Searches are showing good demand for colored diamonds.

There are 1,300 colored diamonds listed accounting for 61% of all diamond sales (including white diamonds).

Many colored diamonds are sold in our No reserve category. We expect high growth in colored diamonds over next few years.

Buyers Age groups

General trend has been millennials aged 22-37 dominating purchases for most of quarter but in the last month 60 + year old’s purchased strongly in $1,000 and above.

Gemstone Trends December 2018

Gemstone sales saw strong demand this month resulting in 7,334 Gemstones sold in December up 53% on the same month last year.

Quality Certified gemstones priced between $1,000 to $3,500 had strong demand across many categories.

No reserve continues to gain in popularity as Gem Rock Auctions pre-screens sellers maintaining and allowing only reputable sellers with good products and accurate listings.

No Reserve gemstones account for over 30% of sales and $15 minimum bid adds an extra 7% in sales. Over 1,000 gems are now listed end December in these categories.

Seller Trends

Many sellers now work on 3 X 3 system in No Reserve sales. 

• One-third gems sell below cost or at cost
• One-third sellers at cost or just above cost
• One-third sells at good profit margins

B2B buyers are strong in this category as so many resellers and retailers bid in no reserve. Item watch attracts many re-sellers with a large number of items watched as gemstone prices vary for many reasons from supply to demand and buyer’s preference.

Buyer Trends

Product knowledge is important in the Gemstone category.   New buyers are recommended to use:

• Item watch and 
• Our search variant bar 

That can be set to time left or changed to most bids, high or low and most viewed.

Most viewed informs new buyers what gem is in demand and many have over 1,000 views in short 3-5-day listings.

Gemstone Trends November 2018

Gem Rock Auctions had a record month in November with a staggering 7,628 stunning gemstones sold worldwide.

In the last three months the sales have increased by a massive 54% in comparison to the  same period last year. The sales for November this year is up by 37% on last years figures. 

Top 10 Categories

Out of 1315 categories listed on Gem Rock Auctions, we have observed the top ten categories that showed a great demand.

1. Sapphires

2. Diamonds

3. Tourmaline

4. Spinel

5. Tanzanite

6. Zircon

7. Garnet

8. Emerald

9. Beryl

10. Mineral specimens

Certified Gemstones 

Currently we have a record of 6300 colored gemstones listed on Gem Rock Auctions and 450 gemstones were sold in the month of November.

No Reserve Auctions

No reserve auctions have greatly increased from 400 to 500 items to over 700 auctions in November. The new No Reserve category of $15 items has an average of 200 items listed which resulted in 25% of the items sold. We expect No reserve to keep increasing due to the increased usage of mobile phones.

Gem Rock Auction Mobile App

In 2019 our mobile app will greatly help these bidders and we expect the No Reserve to increase in popularity as buyers have the confidence in our verified sellers.

B2B- Business to Business

In Gem Rock Auctions, the B2B sales are increasing as our sellers have received hundreds of positive feedback from our buyers. Some of our sellers have over 100 feedback from sales in their store, while others have over 5,000 or even 10,000 feedbacks.

The range of our wonderful buyers such as online resellers, market stalls owners and retail shops have confidence buying from our verified sellers, so they can resell their gemstones with confidence.

We have exhibited a trend that our B2B buyers are heavy users of the function ‘Item watch’. For more information see this link. This tool helps our buyers trace market prices and also to follow their favourite seller. B2B are also heavy users of ‘Audit Requests’ as a result our Gemstone Sheriff program have had over 1,000 requests for November.

Our massive advantage on Gem Rock Auctions is that all our sellers are on the same level playing field and this helps buyers to compare all the stock from our in one convenient platform.

SHOP FOR GEMSTONES

Sapphire

Tanzanite

Diamonds

Tourmaline