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Most people when they think of buying gems in Thailand, think of the jewelry shops in Bangkok and Pattaya, windows full of sparkling sapphires, rubies and diamonds. But Chantaburi is where the serious buyer should go - especially for rubies and sapphires. This small town near Pattaya and approximately 250 Kl southeast of Bangkok is where the Thai gem dealers go to make their purchases. It is the major processing and trading centre in SE. Asia and it is estimated that 80% of the world’s rubies and sapphires pass through the town.
Chantaburi in the Last Century
Once famous for its ruby and sapphire mines and the rubies and sapphires that came in from Burma, this all changed in the 1960s and 1970s when the local mines began to produce less and less valuable stones and political events in Burma reduced the supply to a trickle. Fortunately, the gem business in Chantaburi didn’t die out because the factories had developed a technique for improving the colour and clarity of the famous red and blue stones. Soon traders were bringing in coloured gemstones from all over the world to be processed in Chantaburi and the trade was up and running again.
Gem Buyting as a Coittage Industry
The industry is very much a cottage industry as most of the work is done by small family owned businesses, a large proportion of the buying carried out on a freelance basis by women who often refer to themselves as housewives. A fascinating aspect of the place is that the buyers themselves operate at one remove from the gems.
Dealers are the pivot of the gem trade, , go-betweens needed by the sellers to market their gems and by the buyers to make the offers. The cut and thrust of Western-style bargaining is anathema to the Thais whose culture disproves of disputes and arguments. Therefore, to get around the awkwardness entailed in bargaining, both parties need a go-between. By Asian logic the bargaining is then at one remove from the protagonists.
The Gem Dealers abd Go-Betweens
Some of the dealers operate on a shoe-string, some are from large companies, and a few private individuals will be found there just looking for one brilliant stone, one fabulous gem, one big profit. More than half the dealers may be professionals, but a great many are non-professionals, men and women whose knowledge has been acquired over many years spent watching and listening. Still others are gem cutters from the nearby factories supplementing their income by acting as go-betweens.
There is a hierarchy of dealers, the bottom of the pyramid having a broad base of women and men who deal in the lower-priced gems. Most dealers start here, graduating year by year to the better stones until they reach the point at which they are entrusted with the most precious gems.
What all these go-betweens have in common is a reputation for honesty built up over many years. The seller has to entrust the negotiator with thousands of pounds worth of precious stones: in turn the buyer has to entrust him with his money.
Dealing is a time-consuming and protracted affair. With luck, three or four deals may be struck in one day, sometimes only one. Occasionally seven or eight trips may be necessary between buyer and seller before an agreement on price can be reached, a matter of hurrying from one office to another, or from one café table to another.
But finally a deal will be struck. Only then are the identities of the buyer and seller disclosed to one another. Face will have been saved and the sordid bargaining over gems and money can be safely ignored as the exchange is made.
The go-between will get a percentage of all that is sold, usually between 1% and 2%. If the sale is a spectacular one, he or she may be awarded an extra bonus. A very few make a lot of money, some still wait for the big stone that will yield a commission high enough to stake them to becoming dealers themselves, but the capital needed is so great that few ever make the change from negotiator to dealer.
The tiny Thai lady scurrying between buyer and seller in Chantaburi is a far cry from the business-suited dealer in Amsterdam or Antwerp, but they both serve the same purpose – to put a sparkle in the eye of all who behold a beautiful gem.
The gemstone market is open Friday, Saturday and Sunday
from approximately 11 a.m. until about 6 p.m. Look for
Gems Street and Thetsaban, a neighbourhood full of retail
shops for gems and equipment for testing them.
SOURCES:
Information for this article has been gleaned by the writer visiting Chantaburi over many week-ends, observing and asking questions of the traders.
Mari Nicholson - Award Winning travel writer and historian, member of British Guild of Travel Writers.Travelwriters.co.uk, and Society of Women Writers and ...
