Purranha
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2015
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Reporting from the Taiwan Jewellery & Gem Fair (hosted by UBM)! Thanks to Icy_Jade, I learned that UBM started hosting the Fair in Taipei (this is only the 3rd year!). Coincidentally (I swear!) I'm in Taipei this week to visit family, so I arm-twisted my mom to check it out with me today. Unfortunately I didn't take many pics since my mom has bad knees so I had to be her crutch through the show.
I know the HK Fair is only accessible to industry folks, not sure what's the set-up in Singapore. The Taiwan Fair is free for industry people, and $12 for the public. The Fair is muuuuuuch smaller thank HK & Singapore and the set-up looks very similar. There are probably ~250 vendors, inclusive of gemstones, diamonds, pearls, semi-precious, jade, corals, etc.
I was very disappointed by the pearl vendors. I did not see any of the chinese pearls vendors I've seen in blogs, Hinata and Golay (Icy's favs) were not there either. The only one P-Gers have visited is Eiko, and even then their selection was TINY. They probably had 5-7 strands of GSSP, 7-10 strands of WSSP, and a handful of Tahitians, and that's representative of the other pearls stands, too. And interestingly almost all selections were the "traditional" uniform color, no crazy overtones, no variation in color type of strands. I was dying to get my hands on one of the Wave strands, or Ombre, or Harvest strand. But nada. *cry*
The ONLY highlight is on the diamond front. One of the oldest premier jeweler in Taipei is Ferri. They launched a new initiative "Diamond Bank" which is a collaboration between direct diamond suppliers and cutters. So they have effectively cut out all the middle men inbetween and they "claimed" that their prices are 15% lower than anywhere else, guaranteed. (Honestly I have no clue, can not attest to it). I saw a ton of jaw dropping D-IF Triple Excellent diamonds, including one 55.88 DIF cushion cut diamond!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I also got to try on a few 10+ carats rings. Oh well one can dream.
Not sure if Diamond Bank will attend the HK or Singapore Fair, but keep an eye out if you're interested!
I know the HK Fair is only accessible to industry folks, not sure what's the set-up in Singapore. The Taiwan Fair is free for industry people, and $12 for the public. The Fair is muuuuuuch smaller thank HK & Singapore and the set-up looks very similar. There are probably ~250 vendors, inclusive of gemstones, diamonds, pearls, semi-precious, jade, corals, etc.
I was very disappointed by the pearl vendors. I did not see any of the chinese pearls vendors I've seen in blogs, Hinata and Golay (Icy's favs) were not there either. The only one P-Gers have visited is Eiko, and even then their selection was TINY. They probably had 5-7 strands of GSSP, 7-10 strands of WSSP, and a handful of Tahitians, and that's representative of the other pearls stands, too. And interestingly almost all selections were the "traditional" uniform color, no crazy overtones, no variation in color type of strands. I was dying to get my hands on one of the Wave strands, or Ombre, or Harvest strand. But nada. *cry*
The ONLY highlight is on the diamond front. One of the oldest premier jeweler in Taipei is Ferri. They launched a new initiative "Diamond Bank" which is a collaboration between direct diamond suppliers and cutters. So they have effectively cut out all the middle men inbetween and they "claimed" that their prices are 15% lower than anywhere else, guaranteed. (Honestly I have no clue, can not attest to it). I saw a ton of jaw dropping D-IF Triple Excellent diamonds, including one 55.88 DIF cushion cut diamond!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I also got to try on a few 10+ carats rings. Oh well one can dream.
Not sure if Diamond Bank will attend the HK or Singapore Fair, but keep an eye out if you're interested!
