Investing

I was on eBay the other day looking for a profitable way to use a $5 coupon the online auction house had been gracious enough to give me.  As I was browsing through the rough jade listings, I made a shocking discovery.  Much to my dismay, I found that one of my favorite rough jade dealers – Paul’s Rok Shop, located in Lake Arthur, Louisiana – was closing.

This gentleman was a dealer in all of sorts of lapidary slabs, but seemed to specialize in Central American jade, aka Guatemalan jadeite jade.  This was quite fortuitous, as I believe that rough jade blocks and slabs are an intriguing tangible investment alternative to precious metals.  And out of all the world’s jades, I find those from the Americas – jadeites from Central America and nephrites from the Pacific Northwest and California – to be the most intriguing from an investment perspective.

These North American-sourced jades are rarely subjected to the same harsh enhancements that are commonly applied to Burmese, Chinese and (occasionally) Russian jades.  So when you buy North American jades, you are almost assured of getting fully untreated, completely natural stones – a tremendous advantage in a world dominated by polymer impregnation, artificial dyes and other scummy gemstone treatments.

But you won’t be getting them from Paul’s Rok Shop, at least not according to the poignant message he left in his last listings:

“After 13 years on eBay, I am shutting down my rough rock sales here.  [It’s] just not worth my time to be here [on eBay] anymore.  I will not be relisting any rough rock at all after May 31st [2019].  I suggest that you get what you may be interested in before the end of the month.  If things turn around in [the] next couple years, you may see me again.  To those of you who have followed and bought from me over the years, I am grateful.”

If you have any interest in purchasing rough Central American jade, I urge you to stop by Paul’s Rok Shop before it closes for good.  He has been aggressively marking down prices in an attempt to move his remaining inventory and there are great deals to be had.  Unfortunately, if you are reading this any article any later than June 2019, I doubt he will have any active eBay listings left.

Out of this sad event springs two topics that I want to discuss.

The first is Central American jade.  Jade is a gemstone that has been revered in many cultures for thousands of years, but curiously not in the West.  The ancient Chinese loved it.  The Pre-Columbian civilizations of the Olmec, Maya and Aztec loved it.  The indigenous Maori people of New Zealand loved it.  But we Westerners tend to shrug our shoulders at the green wonder stone.

Why is that?

I believe it is largely a question of exposure.  High quality jade deposits are not found in Europe, meaning that ancient European civilizations never saw the stone at its best.  In contrast, East Asian, Meso-American and New Zealand peoples had ready access to fine jade which left an indelible mark on their respective cultures.  This reverence for the beauty and utilitarian value of jade eventually elevated the gem to ceremonial and even monetary status, but only in those societies that had access to it.

Jade was so important to these ancient civilizations that I believe archeologists and historians should make room for a “Jade Age” sandwiched in-between the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods.

Furthermore, many modern-day Europeans and Americans have simply never seen good quality jade before, much less held a fine rough jade specimen in their hands.  Most Westerners’ experience with this legendary material has been via poor-to-mediocre quality jade jewelry that has undoubtedly been treated to within an inch of its life.  And that’s assuming they’ve beheld real jade at all, and not some inferior imitation or simulant, like serpentine, aventurine quartz, maw-sit-sit, etc.

When jade is treated, the properties of the stone often fundamentally change.  Acid or alkali baths leach out stains and impurities, but also render jade brittle and susceptible to discoloring over time.  The dyes, polymers and paraffins injected back into the treated stones in an attempt to make them salable might render these treated jades superficially attractive, but don’t restore the superlative properties of true, untreated jade.

On the other hand, genuine untreated Central American jade is a marvelous thing to behold.  At a distance, it appears as if it might be some impossibly soft material – satin…moss…even Jell-O.  But the truth is that real jade is both harder and tougher than steel.  It is an extraordinary gem created under the tremendous geological pressures found almost exclusively at tectonic plate boundaries.

In spite of its toughness, handling jade is an intimately tactile experience.  The stone persistently whispers for you to gently caress it.  And when you do, real Central American jade rewards you with a heft, solidity and glass-like smoothness that seems otherworldly.  It is almost as if some super-advanced material from the distant future was transported back in time to amaze and astonish us in the present day.

As the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius once stated quite perceptively, jade possesses “perfect compactness”.  This is due, no doubt, to the gemstone’s unique, interlocking micro-crystalline structure.

And the colors!  Central American jade comes in a range of attractive shades, including “Maya mint” green, “Olmec” blue-green and mottled deep-green “jaguar jade”, just to name a few.

Simply put, you have to actually see and hold a piece of real Central American jade to truly understand its allure.  Mere words, regardless of how poetic they are, cannot hope to do that transcendent moment justice.  Jade’s appeal is very similar to that of gold and silver.  Once you place a piece in the palm of your hand, you immediately and viscerally appreciate how valuable and desirable this precious material truly is.

And this leads me to the second thing I wanted to talk about: the loss of yet another small business.

I have written before about the troubles facing physical antique stores.  I have also written about the decline of American retail, with an emphasis on the closing of mom-and-pop shops.  I would like to say that these trends are unrelated to each other.

Unfortunately, I cannot.

Ever since the 2008 Financial Crisis, the United States (and most of the world for that matter) has been experiencing a soft depression.  These unrelenting economic travails have robbed middle class households of much of their discretionary spending power.  Money that would have been spent on art, jewelry and antiques simply never made its way into the hands of the middle class.

As a result, the many small businesses serving these industries have suffered.  The loss of Paul’s Rok Shop is just the latest in a long parade of such business closures.

There is one silver lining to this dark cloud, albeit with strings attached.  As art, antique and gem dealers liquidate, they often heavily discount their inventory.  This is a tremendous opportunity for disciplined connoisseurs and investors to buy quality tangible assets at reduced prices.

But it is important to keep in mind that prices are always lowest right before the lights go out.  And it takes much, much higher prices to induce a future entrepreneur to turn the lights back on.  In other words, enjoy the bittersweet deals on art, antiques and other tangible investments while you can.  Once they’re gone, they will only reappear when there is far greater profit to be had.

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