Regardless of the sales pitch you hear from jewelry shows on TV you will not be paying wholesale pricing for gemstones. This is true of all products not just gemstones for sale. Real wholesale companies do not sell to the general public and if they do their prices are higher to protect the retail merchants. Wholesale companies make money by buying and selling in large volumes at low markup. They generally have no interest in selling one stone here and there. That business is left up to the retailers.
When you buy from jewelry shows or online you generally will be paying retail or low retail prices. Like every other company gemstone dealers need to make a profit in order to stay in business. The biggest advantage of buying from an online gemstone dealer is that they tend to have better quality gemstones than the television shows. They also generally have lower prices for the same quality stone because they have lower overhead than either the retail jewelry stores or the television shows. The reason the TV jewelry shows appear to have great bargains is because the gemstones are often of inferior quality.
How do you find a quality gemstone dealer? You can start with EBay and there are a few good sellers there but it can be risky. A better place to find good gemstone dealers is to search directorygemstones.org. Most of the serious online dealers have their own website although a few also sell on EBay. Many of the dealers shy away from EBay because they have a hard time selling quality stones at a fair price. They believe many of the customers are simply looking for unrealistic bargains rather than searching for high quality gemstones.
