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SAME, SAME BUT DIFFERENT 
Aug 01, 2005 - Everyone who has traveled to Thailand has come across this very famous sentence - Same, Same but Different - so common amongst the merchants in the fascinating open markets. At first, it is difficult to grasp what they mean when they show you a green shirt with flowers on it instead of the pink shirt with stripes that you had asked for and say “Same, same but different”. Maybe meaning this is the same as what you asked for BUT different in color or pattern.

You never really know what they mean because, honest to god, nothing could be further from the “same” as what you asked for. Even after a while (30 years in my case) I could not grasp exactly what they meant. Sometimes it means that the buttons are the same and sometimes that it is the same manufacturer, and sometimes it means “you asked for a shirt, these are trousers that look similar...”. But recently I finally got it. Ok, you ask yourself, what has all this got to do with gems?

A few weeks ago, I crossed the street from my office to visit a friend in the Diamond Exchange. He used to deal in gemstones and now, they say, he is very strong in fancy color diamonds. And since we are working very hard to adapt the Gemewizard Color Assessment Module to the colors of diamonds using some consultants within the trade, I decided that I should try to convince such a knowledgeable person to join our team of consultants. So there I was, gazing at many colorful diamonds, from light yellow to vivid yellow, from pink to brownish orange to slightly violet, and a one-carat pinkish reddish diamond quite heavily included, proudly reigned in the center of the display. Suddenly it hit me. I have exactly the same colors in my fancy sapphire production. I asked him to bear with me for a while and rushed to my office to show him my beautiful new production and collection of fancy sapphires. Well, we took a beautiful vivid yellow diamond from his collection and matched it with exactly the same color as my natural yellow sapphires, I asked him how much his gem cost and he answered about $16,000 per carat where my gem cost $550 per carat.

Then we looked at one of his 2+ carat pinks and compared it to the same color 2+ carat gem deep pink sapphire (mind you, my sapphire was deeper and brighter than his diamond.) How much? I asked. He replied around $70,000 per carat. My sapphire was $1,200 per carat. But the big blow to me was his reddish, heavily included diamond. I have the same color beautiful red sapphire in 4 carats and mine is gem clean. People urged me to define it as a ruby but I insist it is a sapphire. Anyway, he asked me how much I want for my 4 carat sapphire and I proudly replied $3,000 per carat. He asked if I would accept $2,500 since he wanted to give it to his wife to celebrate their 12th wedding anniversary. How could I refuse such a request, especially when a husband and wife's relationship was at stake? I accepted.

I asked him how much he wanted for his heavily included ugly reddish diamond. He became thoughtful and said: “Ugly you call it? Well, from you, I want only three hundred for my included red.” I was so glad one of my sapphires was more valuable than his diamond of the same color even though mine was free of inclusions. I decided on the spot to buy it just in order to show it to my customers and prove to them that the same color sapphires may be more attractive than a diamond and more valuable. So I said: will you accept $275. He became serious and asked me how I would pay and I said: “The same way you’ll pay - cash!” He suddenly realized that I had not understood him and said: “I meant three hundred thousand per carat, yes?” and told me a one carat diamond like the sapphire he had just bought from me was sold for $900,000-plus several years ago.

I packed my beautiful sapphires and as I walked back to my office, I kept thinking: “Same, same but different!".

Regards

The GemEwizard

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