We thought this would be a great post the week before Father’s Day. Often at Mardon Jewelers, we’re asked to perform an expert service by a client. Such was the case recently when we restored the ring that originally belonged to Robert M. Shipley, the founder of GIA. Early in his career, Mr. Shipley realized […]
A service we offer is finding rare gemstones. One of my “quests” at Tucson 2010 was for an unusual stone for a client who owns a stable of Tennessee Walking Horses. One of his horses is a World Grand Champion, so he was interested in a ring he could wear that would bring attention to […]
A couple of weeks ago, I did a gemological consultation for a young man who had purchased a diamond solitaire from a diamond merchant’s Ebay site. He was able to win a diamond auction and wanted my opinion of the stone. I looked over the stone first before asking him about the price paid, the […]
Last Fall, we were contacted by a long time customer whose daughter had a real problem. Her daughter, Kirstyn, was engaged to be married September 2010. Kirstyn and fiance Alastair, a British citizen, were working in the Cayman Islands where they had a local jeweler make a custom engagement ring using her one carat family […]
From an article by Nitin Kumar of Exotic India, “The Golden Fishes symbol consists of two fishes, which usually appear standing vertically with heads turned inwards towards each other. The pair of fishes originated as an ancient pre-Buddhist symbol of the two sacred rivers of India, Ganga and Yumana. Symbolically, these two rivers represent the […]
Shangri-La Sterling, Opal triplet, ball style, $75 Shangri-La is a romantic name that evokes a vision of a heavenly land where people live nearly immortal lives in total happiness. Our friend, Michael Schofield, discovered a jeweler's version of Shangri-La while visiting the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, nestled high in the Himalayas. Guided by his interest […]
As we mentioned in our recent blog, we're always excited to see the latest gem finds displayed at the upcoming Tucson gem shows. In recent decades Africa has been the biggest producer of wonderful new gemstones and gem materials. The heavily mineralized Great Rift valley along the eastern side of the continent was one of […]
Every year for the first two weeks in February, gem dealers and buyers from all over the world converge on the small desert city of Tucson, Arizona. The annual Tucson event has become the Mecca of colored stones, fossils and gem minerals where dealers display such sophisticated and extremely valuable gems like this matched suite […]
True Story- One of our local police officers stopped by early this week with this group of assorted gold items she owned and wanted to sell– jewelry she no longer wore, broken pieces, etc. We sat down, I examined her gold for karat content and weighed it up. Our offer for the lot that day […]
Yes, they are all garnets. The January birthstone is usually thought of as a dark red gemstone, but like the sapphire, garnet occurs in colors we don’t expect to see. In fact, garnets can be purple, red, orange, yellow, colorless or green, almost all the colors but true blue. There is even a garnet that […]
