The Jewellery Exhibition

I recently attended the Jewellery exhibition held at the BMICH. It was huge, with lots of beautiful pieces of jewellery. I bought a green "jade" bracelet from a Burmese stall. I doubt it was real jade though as it was really cheap. 400Rs! My only learning from attending the event was this: do not buy from jewellery exhibitions! There are way too many people clambering over each other. You don't even have enough peace of mind while dealing with all the jostling to be able to ask for a receipt! Some of the out of town "exhibitionists" (pun intended) you will never see again. What's to stop them making up some fake certificates?

As it is from what I know about gem stones, they are really not very good investments. Yes, the prices of gems have shot up recently, but still, from an investment stand point they are not the best. You are likely to get back a fraction of the price you paid for them if you were ever to sell them back. This is because the jeweller is selling to you at retail prices whereas he/she has bought it at whole sale prices. Therefore they would only buy it back at a much lower rate.

I had gone with a friend to the exhibition. At one point I was mentioning to her how gems were not good investments and the seller heartily agreed with me! He went on to say that diamonds are the only solid gem investment.