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Tuesday, 21st February 2006 (5713 views)

Colourful jewels are rising steeply in value in the wake of high prices for rarer gems, according to Wall Street Journal writer Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan.

Premium prices are more readily associated with precious stones such as diamonds and rubies, but recently semiprecious stones with names such as sodalite have been commanding top dollar.

Links of London has seen its range of jewellery that contains semiprecious stones rise from 10 per cent five years ago to 40 per cent today.

The popularity of such jewellery has led to prices rocketing. For example, a five-carat apatite is worth 50 per cent more at wholesale price today than it was five years ago.

The trend is reflected in designer houses such as Tiffany, which has released a $248,000 necklace with a Paraiba tourmaline pendant centrepiece.

However, shoppers are warned that semiprecious stones such as these are likely to lose their value more easily than emeralds and diamonds.

This view is held by Tobina Kahn of House of Kahn Estate Jewellers, according to azstarnet.com.

"I see a lot of people who have bought semiprecious stones and they're very, very disappointed because when they want to resell, they're only going to get 50 per cent or less of what they paid," he said.

 

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