Category Archives: Rangoon (Yangon) Market

Ruby; Burma Days; Rangoon:

“So to compare it to a diamond seems to me to be a reasonable approach.  I am much of the same mind as you, my lord.  The ruby is one hundred times rarer; therefore, let that be the price.”  The French Blue, p.357
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Our Bagan guide Mr. "E" explains one of the finer points of temple archetecture to my wife Rebekah

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Rangoon: The Scott Market. Built in the late 19th Century, the market houses a lively market buying and selling goods of all kinds. Photo: R. W. Wise

by Richard W. Wise, G.G.

©2010

After two weeks in Tucson, a week in Bangkok and a short time in the Rangoon market, I can say that fine quality unheated Burma ruby, is almost unobtainable and for what is available, source prices have risen dramatically.  This means short supply coupled with dramatic price increases for the little bit of fine Burma ruby available in the U. S. market.  Even with these increases, in smaller sizes, fine ruby remains relatively cheap compared to diamond.  Today, a fine one carat ruby commands barely 60% of the price a D-Flawless diamond.  At three carats ruby draws even and at five carats, fine Burma ruby surpasses diamond which, due to its availability in larger sizes, does not jump dramatically in price until it passes ten carats.  Ten carat diamonds are available, a ten carat ruby of fine quality is a museum piece and a ten carat ruby will command ten times the per carat price of a diamond of the same weight.

Rangoon; Scott Market.  Together with my agent Lwin, I scour the market for ruby with little luck.  Photo: Rebekah Wise
Rangoon; Scott Market. Together with my agent Lwin, I scour the market for ruby with little luck. Photo: Rebekah Wise

The international price has gradually risen because production began to peter out several years ago and most of what is now available in dealer’s inventories and picked over.  The Burmese know the value of fine ruby and the better off dealers prefer gems to paper currency.  My agent mentions a man I met over a bakery in 1994 (see SOGT pp. 159-161).  “He is a big boss now” Lwin says, “he has ruby but the price is very expensive, so what is new?” We visit his jewelry store just outside of town and see some exceptional ruby set in traditional settings.  The rich dealers don’t care if they sell.  The generals have decided to allow elections, but the people are cynical, as my guide laughs, “it will be “a selection” he says in a clever play on the English words.  Nothing much is expected to change.

So we rusticate in Bagan for a few days, visiting temples, shopping for lacquer ware along the hot dusty streets.  Then its back to Rangoon for another day in the market with little luck.

Ruby; Burma Days!

The view from a Bagan Temple:  Photo:  R. W. Wise

The view from the top of a temple showing some of the estimated four thousand temples and pagodas in the Burmese town of Bagan: Photo: R. W. Wise

by Richard W. Wise, G.G.

©2010

Its hot in Burma but the early morning in Bagan is cool and breezy.  Just off our porch with its planked and varnished teak floors, a broad leaved Banana Palm nods sagely in the light breeze, a giant Acacia tree bends its ancient back, its knarled branches splayed like arthritic limbs form an umbrella over our villa’s roof.  A manicured lawn lies between us and the wide Irrawaddy River.   From the opposite bank, along a ridge of ragged hills, a glint of gold off a temple dome flickers through the dawn shroud of silvered white mist.  The mist clings though the day, turning to blue as the morning wears on.  It is the dry season and the Irrawaddy, the mother of rivers, has receded leaving a broad expanse of bare sandy shoulder exposed on either bank.

Why is the Lord Buddha smiling?
Why is the Lord Buddha smiling?  Temple of the Smiling Buddha, Bagan, Burma.  Photo:  R. W. Wise

Located in the central part of the country, ancient Bagan was the center of a city-state that flourished between the 10th and 12th Centuries until Kublai Khan’s Mongols ravaged the place in the mid 13th Century.  Today, the chief reason to visit is to see the 3,000 or so temples and pagodas that punctuate the parched countryside.   As our guide tells us, a pagoda is solid; a temple is hollow like a church with golden statues of the Buddha inside.   During the height of Bagan’s prosperity, kings constructed the largest temples as monuments to their power and perhaps more importantly, as a way to gain cosmic merit so that after their deaths they might be reborn as some higher level of being.

At The Ruby Mines:

It is tempting to believe that the lack of fine ruby in the world market is the result of the U. S. embargo, but it is not.  Burma is flanked by India and China and both these emergent powers are far more important trading partners than is the United States.  The Indians have always greatly valued ruby—in the 17th Century, French dealer Jean Baptiste Tavernier wrote of buying rubies in Europe and bringing them to India because he could get better prices from the Mogul nabobs— and China’s nouveau riche have developed a taste for luxury goods.  No, it is simply that, after a thousand years, the ruby, at least the accessible ruby has been mined out.   Certainly this is true of Mogok’s secondary deposits; every bit of alluvium in the mountain valley has been turned over not once, but a hundred times.  Mogok village itself was once moved to get at the gemstones and the small lake at the valley’s floor is a flooded excavation.   According to my Burmese agent, a Shan tribesman born in Mogok, there are still gems buried in the hardrock, but they are deeper and require blasting, heavy equipment and much more capital to mine.  Investors, however, are rather reluctant to invest.

More to come…