Absolutely random: and no, I'm not 'doing a Jess'. Hopping channels and there's a character on called Jasper. Do you think Gems would actually call him Jasper in the description?
Na, the only channel that seems to have a Jasper working for them is GC. He must be on commission though.Was it a jewellery channel? Perhaps his name was Jasper Carat?
They can't be trusted anymore.
I think Gem Collector is struggling. Emily's giggling and silly stories are irritating, and IMO some of the information she gives is inaccurate, and Jim isn't a good 'fit' with that channel at all. I think they've lost a lot of the customers that used to buy regularly when Alex presented, you don't hear the old names being mentioned or messaging in as they used to. It wouldn't surprise me if they cut the hours down even more, or the channel disappeared completely and any loose stones appeared on Gemporia.I don't know what's going on with Gem Collector these days.
Tuned in on YouTube (because their web feed is so bad, the page refuses to load any content on my main device - but that might just be me). Emily was on and she had scheduled an hour of anything with the word "quartz" - she said that, herself (when someone demo-requested a prasiolite).
I was surprised to see a Quartz hour. A little unusual, I thought. Perhaps it's whoppers or very fancy cuts. Not a bit of it. A couple of standard cut clear, otherwise mostly irradiated, really boring smokey, "Montezuma" or some dyed Lehrer.
Apart from bigging up the dyed Lehrer seahorse ("have you ever seen a blue quartz?" and the usual master carver spiel), which really really does look as if it was cut on a jigsaw, we were treated to a lecture about how SI clarity quartz was amazing and that she'd never seen a Type I quartz, speaking as if the GIA said that they didn't exist. Apart from the repeated shows on Gemporia with Optic Quartz jewellery, that has to be rubbish? I have plenty of cheap, flawless clear quartz (to show off a variety of fancy cuts). I felt a bit as if there was some gaslighting going on.
One Star Buy was a large-ish clear oval quartz - brilliant cut (oval brilliant is the worst so-called "cut", in my opinion - a guaranteed windowing cut) but somehow a Brilliant Cut is now "bespoke lapidary"? The smokey quartz was very, very average and even a price of £6.99 (not including P&P) was twice the market range for similar.
Hours don't start now until ten past - if you're lucky. Sometimes only 20 pieces. She managed to show 3 stones by 8.40 and one of those was a demo request. Not too long ago, the hour would have 40 - 50 stones and Emily would be powering through the requests and still run out of time, trying to keep up. Now we have overblown stories that fill the time. Previously regular customers who'd take the time to message in seem to have disappeared.
Sad. Maybe, with this month being the Gemporia Birthday marketing angle, we'll see some surprises.
This
.
everything changed at the same time as the move to the new studio. Whatever strategic decisions were made at that time, which probably precipitated Alex's decision to leave, have resulted in a GC that I don't recognise any longer. Video shorts of Jake Thompson talking up the "community" are as misplaced and sadly as outdated as the repeats of Rae Carpenter on "Jewellery has a legacy...".It's a pity, because like many others I suppose, I started with them years ago, buying common cheaper gemstones that you mention, such as white quartz, amethyst, rose quartz and smokey quartz, and collecting different cuts. Some of the cuts were really impressive and unusual, and I formed a nice collection of different and interesting cuts. The 'beginners' stones of the same kind on the GC turntable now are often cabuchons with little colour, badly-cut and certainly no unusual cuts and for the less common stones they are charging ridiculous prices, again for often poorly-cut stones with little colour. GC was a good start point for any loose gemstone collector, and the prices were very reasonable. When other companies can have the same or better stones for a lot less money, why would anyone bother with GC. So unless they change radically (which won't happen) I think their days are numbered.
