Buying gems for family, friends or loved ones is such a treat for the one that opens the parcel.
They can become a cherished heirloom to be held in trust for the next generation, to be worn, or to be amongst a proud display of other gems and treasures.

Not only collectors enjoy owning a precious gemstone.
They are for all to enjoy.

On an adventure… We really regret it, but there will be a short delay with communication and postage of items. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

You may still purchase goods; there will just be a delay of 2 weeks for items to be posted.
Please don't hesitate to email us to see when items can be shipped.

We will be settled back into business as usual in the first week of November.

A lot of customers have been asking me to locate some nice Mozambique garnet and even more have been asking for good facetable tourmaline. Unfortunately the supply of good African rough has been patchy at best, but we have managed to secure some good pieces of rough to sell.

My contact in Tanzania is making trips to Nigeria regularly to locate decent rough for me and as a result has sent me some small parcels, along with some spessatine garnet. I have some individual pieces listed for sale in the rough category.

The stones pictured appear to be nice blocky clean pieces and I will be cutting them or selling them.
So keep in contact to see results. If you are interested in this type of rough or anything else, please contact me and I will do my best to help.

Our prices of the Mozambique garnet are still at the old prices but will be going up soon.

We still have a large selection of blue sapphire rough for sale, available to purchase online.
Good Cutting
From Lou

Recently the gemstone has been more popular ‘in the rough’ rather than the cut faceted gemstones. More so with the sapphire – this gives the cutters a chance to own a large genuine sapphire that they have had the pleasure of faceting themselves into desired shape or cut.

We offer only real genuine gemstone rough with no treatments so you can know that you are getting the best.
At present the sapphire rough sold from our mine has been so popular that we are selling to a waiting list rather than listing the sapphire as we find it.
So please don’t hesitate to email us to enquire about a particular colour / shape or weight in carats that you may be after.

If you do not cut gemstones yourself – please don’t hesitate to email us and ask for special cut or shape that you would like and we can try to produce the gemstone that you desire.
Not all our gemstones are listed on the website!

Colours of desired rough is still biased towards blue sapphire, although a strong demand for green’s has been very strong, both in rough and cut stones, my own personal preference is green followed by good parti coloured stone.
Good Cutting.

All items in the Gemhunters website are listed in Australian dollars. Now with the Australian dollar being worth around .64 cents to the US dollar, our United States buyers are saving a lot of money when purchasing from us.

With such favourable exchange rates, when buyers from the USA purchase an item listed for $100 all you are paying is $64 USD. That is almost 40% off the total price!
Extremely good value for your money since our prices are already set at discount level!

Buying now is most profitable as the Australian dollar (AUD) has a floating exchange rate; this means that the value can also rise any day, at the whim of the market.
So with the depreciation of our Australian dollar, now is the time to purchase that long wanted gold ring or gemstone, at the lowest prices for best quality.

One of the main questions we get through our site is “I am having trouble polishing my sapphires, what am I doing wrong?"

Fortunately or unfortunately if you ask 6 cutters how they cut and polish their sapphires you will get 6 different methods.

However talking to most of the cutters I know, one system seems to crop up more than most.

1. Cold dopping of stone (Tite-on etc) reason being that our stones have very hard planes and if using wax the heat build up causes problems - like shifting.
2. Cut sapphire with medium 600 grit
3. Pre polish with 1500/1800 grit (some cutters claim better results using copper laps for this stage)

4. Polish with either 50,000 or 100,000 - I personally use aluminium laps or bearing metal laps.

Heavily scored (100 grit sandpaper) and by far the best, and agreed by all the cutters - polish mix is diamond dust with a little machine oil, stir into an almost dry paste and apply sparingly. Too much or too wet doesn’t work.

As I said there are many different theories on how to polish sapphires, but this is the one that works for us at the moment.
I hope this helps anyone out there with problems, let me know how you go.

Blue sapphire rough is in very high demand, especially the blue with a light cross table; as we find them we are listing them on this website for sale. They sell very quickly. The intense bright blue sapphire is a particular favourite in the United States and is still the best selling sapphire!

At Gemhunters we try to leave our sapphires natural and untreated; that means no heat treatment!

Sapphires have been commercially mined in Australia since the late 1800’s making Australian mines a major producer of gem-quality sapphires worldwide.

We would also like to make everyone aware of the other sapphire that Gemhunters has on offer:
Green sapphires and bi color sapphires with the beautiful swirls of green and yellow, these gemstones are more popular in Australia and preferred by the folk on the sapphire gemfields.

This month we also have on offer three very large natural gold nuggets found in Queensland six years ago and only put up for sale now. All three nuggets are huge; between one and two ounces in weight.

Tanga Garnets, Hessonite garnet and Moambique rhodolite have been selling fast recently, it is good to see the faceters appreciating these excellent gems. They are absolutely magnificent when cut and getting very high valuations once faceted.

Gem Hunters source the best gemstone rough at affordable prices.

We cut all our gemstones with great care and attention to perfection.
We also set the gems into precious gold rings.

Our spectacular gold rings hold unique faceted works of art.
These gems and jewellery pieces are special since we quality cut each gem with many more facets than usually seen. These extra facets give the gemstone an amazing sparkle not normally achieved.

Gemhunters is committed to keeping our prices low and our quality high on these spectacular gemstones. We will continue offering our clients only the best, most beautiful gemstones available.

Our gemstone rough is sold around the world to cutters and gemstone enthusiasts.
The most popular items are the blue sapphires found here at our own mine in QLD Australia.

Minimum parcel size is 50 ct at only $25 per carat.
For single pieces of quality rough, price is $30 per carat.
100 gram parcels is $20 per carat Australian dollars.
Green Sapphire Rough is available. Email us for your requirements.
QLD Royal Blues with a green cross table available also.

Amethyst is one of the most popular of the semi precious stones. Easy to cut and reasonably priced. The African Amethyst Rough we have at the moment is an attractive purple with strong Red/Pink lashes throughout. Reminiscent of the Top Uruguayan rough, but a lot more affordable. There is a fair bit of colour zoning as with most amethyst, but if you put the colour in the pavilion when cutting the finished stones are extremely attractive.

Sizes are medium to large pieces. The stones I have cut are selling very well and customers who have bought rough to cut are very happy with the finished gemstone, if the sizes on our website are not to your requirements please email us.

Garnets: On a recent trip to Africa we were fortunate enough to bring back some absolutely gorgeous rough garnet. This stone is a wonderful colour change gem from pink to mauve in different lights.

News and Views
Sapphires are the September Birthstone. Blue is the colour most associated with sapphires. Fancy sapphires are now becoming very popular in a great range of colours including yellow, green, pink and the fabulous parti-colour (2 or more colours together). In the central Queensland Highlands where our mine is located most of the sapphires are dug from our mine and cut on site by the owner "Lou"

Footnote!
Sometimes you can be lucky. One of the Rough Garnets we bought back from Africa looked absolutely gorgeous so I decided to cut it for myself. The stone was so different I started to do some tests and so far we have a 9 carat facetted colour change pink to purple Sapphire with an extremely high fluorescence. The chromium content is very high and pending further testing it may prove to be ruby. Either way it is one of a kind and I will let you know the results, nice stone for a Garnet!

July 2006
Mozambique Rhodolite

On our trip to Africa last year, we managed to get a good parcel of garnet from Mozambique. The colour ranges from a pinky red to a peachy orange red. The sizes range from 5-50 carats and the clarity and colour saturation is excellent. On cutting the stones the results have been excellent, the more simple the cut the better the results.
A fair percentage of the stones are exhibiting a tendency to colour shift from pinky red to peach in different lighting.This is one of the better garnets I have been lucky enough to cut. The cost is economical. Get some of this material while you can, you won’t be disappointed. Feel free to ask for any information.
All the best from Lou