Two of the three vendors who sell jade and jadeite were absent this time. The vendor who often designs necklaces made from jade and other beads, pearls had told me at the last show that business was slower and she might not be at this one. The only vendor who sold jade was a seller of gemstone beads strings used to make jewelry pieces. He is Chinese, and always brings some jade and jadeite small carvings, and sometimes jadeite pendants. This time he had only one lot of jadeite beads on the 15" strings and he was explaining to a woman the different between the jadeite and other gemstones that look like jadeite. The woman wanted jadeite, but compared to the aventurine, mawsitsit, and other stone that is often sold as jade, the color wasn't as pretty and vibrant. And the jadeite string was much higher priced. She was asking how you could tell the difference, and the seller was trying to keep it simple because there's so much drama around jade and natural-ness that most people really don't care to hear it all. He held the jadeite beads on the string to the light to show that you could see light through it, and the paleness of the jadeite had a soft grayish lavender hue. The other stones didn't have the translucence and the color didn't have the translucent quality. By "translucent" I don't mean transparent: I mean that you can see light through it.
The woman decided to buy the beads that looked like jadeite, but were not, and she was going to have her jewelry maker use them to make "jade" jewelry to sell. All the other people at the vendor's booth agreed that was a good idea, because it would be more pretty.
Why isn't jadeite more colorful? Jadeite that is being mined now is mostly gray and spotty, and that's why it doesn't sell well unless it's color treated so it's B or C grade. I don't know whether there really isn't good green jadeite, or if it's just not available to be mined because of government politics in Burma (Myanmar). Some jade business owners I know in China tell me that they get their best color jadeite from illegally stolen jadeite from the mines.
When the woman and other buyers left the Chinese bead seller, I looked at one of his jadeite carvings, and he noticed my jadeite bangle I was wearing, all white with a big vein of imperial green. He asked to look at it closer and I took it off for him. He held it to his light, "chimed" it, and told me that it was very rare to get that now and it was worth a great deal more than I paid for it. He told me I should put it away because of it's value, not wear it. I showed him it had a crack where I hit a counter top with it, and he said that crack damage didn't matter, it was still the quality of the jadeite stone that was so valuable.
He pulled out a jadeite pendant and showed it to me, and it had a wholesale price of $600. I told him I had a similar color jadeite pendant I bought quite a few years ago on the web site, and he suggested I keep it as it would increase in value. I could keep it all, but I'd rather sell it. Although I love having all the jade around me that's in my inventory, I bought it to resell it, and a drawer full is enough for my personal collection. It's pretty, and I would like to keep it, but it's still for sale on Jade Heaven.
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| "Pixiu Protects" Jadeite Pendant JHP75 |
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