- by Ahmed Shareek
How Crescent Gems Prices Loose Gemstones — Fair Prices, Direct From Source
- by Ahmed Shareek
New to Crescent Gems? Browse all our loose gemstones or read our Ultimate Sapphire Buying Guide to understand what you are looking at before you buy.
A question we receive regularly: how do you arrive at your prices?
It deserves a direct answer. Our price for a stone is what the stone cost us plus what it costs us to operate, and both of those are unusual for a gemstone seller: we buy the stones ourselves where they are traded, we cut a large share of them ourselves, and we have no shop. This article sets out that structure in full.
It also says plainly what we will not do, which is publish a percentage against anyone else’s prices. We went looking for a figure we could stand behind and we did not find one. The reasoning is in its own section below, and we would rather give you the reasoning than a number you have no way to check.
What Our Supply Chain Actually Is
We can describe our own chain precisely, because we are in it. We buy in Sri Lanka — in Ratnapura, Beruwala and Colombo, the three centers of the Ceylon gem trade — from miners and from first-level dealers we have worked with for years. We buy rough and semi-finished material as well as finished stones, and a large share of what we sell is cut in our own cutting facility in Sri Lanka rather than bought ready-cut from a supplier. The stone then goes from us to you.
What we are not is a buyer of finished parcels from an importer. We do not buy from a New York or Los Angeles gem wholesaler who bought from a Bangkok trader who bought from a Colombo exporter. That is a statement about our own purchasing, and it is the only kind of statement about purchasing we are in a position to make.
We are not going to tell you how many hands a stone in someone else’s display case passed through, or what each of them charged, because we do not know. Sellers differ. And the rough market in Sri Lanka is itself an intermediated market, with dealers and brokers in it. We buy inside that market, not outside it, and we would rather say so. What we can account for is our side: where we buy, who cuts, and what we do not spend money on.
For what the buying looks like at the source, see our Ratnapura gem market guide and our Ceylon sapphire guide.
What We Do, and What We Do Not Spend Money On
Crescent Gems was built around a single premise: be as close to the stone as we can get, and carry as little else as possible. In practice, that means:
- We buy the stones ourselves. Our proprietor Ahmed Shareek has over 25 years of relationships in the Ceylon gem trade — direct buying access in Ratnapura, Beruwala, and Colombo, the three centers of the Sri Lanka gem market. We buy from miners and from first-level dealers, not from international wholesalers. Most of our stones are Sri Lankan; not all of them are — our tsavorite garnet is Kenyan and part of the sapphire range is from Madagascar — and every listing states where the stone came from.
- No retail showroom. We have no physical store, no rent, no display cases and no walk-in staff, so none of that is in our prices.
- No importer or wholesaler ahead of us. We buy in the producing country ourselves and import our own stones. Nobody buys a parcel, marks it up and sells it on to us first.
- Cutting to our own specification. We operate our own cutting facility in Sri Lanka and cut a large share of our rough there, so the cutting labor is part of what the stone costs us rather than a margin added on top of a finished stone we bought in. Stones are cut for color and light performance rather than to retain the most carat weight.
- We sell one thing. We are a loose gemstone specialist, not a jewelry store that also sells loose stones as a side category. Our entire operation is optimized for sourcing, evaluating, and selling natural loose gemstones with full disclosure.
Why We Do Not Publish a Percentage
You will not find a discount percentage on this page. We do not publish a figure we cannot substantiate, and no single number would hold across colors, sizes and qualities in any case.
We did go looking for one. We compared our own stones against named sellers at matched specifications, loose stone against loose stone. The result differed from stone to stone, and on at least one specification we were not the cheaper of the two. There is no one percentage that is true across our range, and printing one anyway would mean asking you to trust an average of things that are not alike.
A quoted band is also only as good as the stones behind it, and we can only quote a price for a specification we actually hold. We hold no padparadscha at present, for instance, so there is no honest Crescent Gems price for one, and our padparadscha page says that we hold none rather than quoting a band for a stone we do not have. Our prices live on the listings, stone by stone, each with its weight, treatment, origin and laboratory beside it. Those are the prices we can vouch for.
So we will tell you what we are rather than what someone else is. We buy at the source, we cut a large share of our own stones, and we carry no shop. How that compares with what any particular seller charges is not something we can tell you, because we do not know what they pay — so we quote our own prices and leave the comparison to you. If you are weighing us against another dealer, ask us about a specific stone and set our number beside theirs. That is a comparison between two real figures, which is the only kind worth making.
For how per-carat prices are arrived at in the trade generally, see Sapphire Pricing Explained.
What Comes With Every Purchase
None of the structure above is a reason to accept less disclosure. Here is what every Crescent Gems purchase includes:
- Full treatment disclosure on every listing. Heated or unheated, clearly stated. No ambiguity. This is non-negotiable at Crescent Gems regardless of whether it affects the price up or down.
- Origin disclosure on every listing. Most of our stones are from Sri Lanka. We also carry Madagascar sapphire, Kenyan tsavorite garnet, and smaller numbers of stones from Tanzania, Vietnam and East Africa, plus a few whose origin is recorded as unknown — and those listings say unknown rather than guessing. Every listing states the origin we hold for that stone, and the listing, not this page, is the current answer.
- Laboratory documentation, stated as it is. Where a stone carries a laboratory report, the listing names the laboratory and the report number. Where it carries none, the listing says that too. Not every stone has one, including some above US$500: our certification programme sends stones above that price to GIA and we are still working through the catalog. If a report matters to you, ask us about the specific stone before you buy and we will tell you what that stone actually carries.
- 14-day returns on every order. If the stone does not meet your expectations in person, you return it. US shipping is free and US returns are free. Outside the US, shipping is a $60 flat rate and free above $499, and return postage is the buyer’s.
- Personal email response within one business day. Email crescentgems@gmail.com with any question about a specific stone, its documentation, its origin, or sourcing to specification. You get Ahmed personally, not a customer service department.
- Try-On program. Selected stones ship to you for in-hand evaluation before you commit. See our Try-On collection.
How to Check What We Say
We encourage skepticism, and everything on a listing is meant to be checkable. Here is how:
Look the report up yourself. Every GIA-documented stone we sell has a report number. Enter it at gia.edu/report-check and the database will show you that the report exists and what it records: species, weight, measurements, and what GIA printed about heating. Where a stone has an origin report, the origin line is the laboratory’s expert opinion rather than a measurement, and GIA prints that reservation on the report itself — “Any statement on geographic origin is an expert opinion based on a collection of observations and analytical data.” No seller can alter the database copy. For how to read the rest of a report, see How to Read a GIA Sapphire Report.
Price us against a specific stone, not against an average. If you are already buying elsewhere, send us a specification — weight, color, treatment, origin, laboratory — and ask what we would charge for the nearest thing we have. Two real numbers side by side will tell you more than any percentage either of us could print.
Ask us anything. Email crescentgems@gmail.com with any specific question about a stone — its sourcing, its documentation, its origin or its price. If we cannot answer a question clearly and specifically, that is information too.
What Direct Sourcing Actually Requires
Buying this way is not effortless. It requires actually being in the producing country, repeatedly, and knowing the people you buy from well enough to be told when a stone is not what it looks like.
Our sourcing in Sri Lanka reflects over 25 years of relationships in the Ratnapura and Beruwala gem markets — relationships with specific miners, specific cutters, and specific first-level dealers whose work and ethics we know personally. We visit Sri Lanka regularly to buy. We know the people who dig the stones out of the ground. That is what “direct source” means here. See our Ratnapura gem market guide for how rough changes hands at the source.
The Bottom Line
Our price for a stone is what that stone cost us, plus what it costs us to run a business with no showroom, no rent, no display cases and no walk-in staff, with the buying and a large part of the cutting done by us in Sri Lanka. That is the whole of it. It is a structure rather than a discount, and it is the only part of our pricing we can describe with any authority.
What that is worth on a particular stone depends on the stone, and the stone’s own listing is where that lives — with its weight, its treatment, its origin, its laboratory and its price. Ask us about any of it.
Browse all our loose gemstones, read our sapphire pricing guide, and email crescentgems@gmail.com with any questions. Free US shipping. 14-day returns on every order.
Explore Further
- Sapphire Pricing Explained — how per-carat prices are set in the market
- Ultimate Sapphire Buying Guide
- How to Read a GIA Sapphire Report
- What Is an Unheated Sapphire?
- Ceylon Sapphire Complete Guide
- The Ratnapura Gem Market — how sapphires are traded in Sri Lanka
- Pit Mining in Sri Lanka
- River Bed Mining in Sri Lanka
- How to Buy Natural Sapphires Online
- The Smart Way to Buy Loose Gemstones Online in 2026
- Browse all our loose gemstones
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Return to the Ultimate Sapphire Buying Guide for the full picture on colors, origins, shapes, certification, and pricing — everything you need to buy a natural loose gemstone with confidence.
Return to the Ultimate Sapphire Buying Guide for the full picture on colors, origins, shapes, certification, and pricing — everything you need to buy a natural loose gemstone with confidence.
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