THAILAND should ask for more for her dwindling rubies and sapphires because they’re getting rare, advises Steve Reynolds, managing director of Gem Exhibition Management Service in Bangkok.

          Quoting gemstone author Jules Roger Sauer “gemstone mining is a one-time harvest.” Reynolds said desperate farmers in the once corundum-rich riverbeds and open fields of Chanthaburi province have abandoned gem digging for prawn farming.

          “The changing of that lifestyle that for generations formed the backbone of that province’s mining industry illustrates the scarcity of both rubies and sapphires,” Reynolds said in an interview’

          For decades, farmers there did not grow crops in the fertile riverbeds but instead opted to dig holes in hopes that one big ruby would pay for a daughter’s wedding, a house o a car.

          “Hoping against all hope, the miners have in the last decade or so have come to the realization that they’re turning up old dirt and the big ones are gone,” he said.

          Underaged and elderly Thai miners also continue to risk life and limb in a Kampuchean (Cambodia) war zone to find blood-colored rubies and that could appear on the world market.

          Six decades of mining have depleted the supply of gems in eastern Thailand so thousands of miners cross the mountainous border into Kampuchea where they are caught in the decade-long war between Kampuchean guerrillas and Vietnamese occupation troops.

          Hundreds of miners who made the trek since it became popular in 1980 are missing and presumed dead. Some miners return with limbs mangled or blown off by booby traps and landmines.

          “Thailand really should get the most for her natural resources which nature has limited.” he said.

          Reynolds, who stages four Bangkok auctions a year, said dealers do not fully understand the event and often associate it with bankruptcy.

          “The potential of auction is not understood, which is putting the finest pieces up for higher prices,” he said, noting the highest prices ever paid for gems were those bought at auctions.

          “Why let someone bargain down prices? One should start with a price they would normally settle on after much haggling and then find out who will pay the most amongst a large group of interested buyers,” he said.

          The traditional sales method is “the game, the excitement, the matching of the wits, the watching the eyes that’s fun, traditional and expected,” explained the 39-year-old American from Grand Rapids, Michigan.        The third of four auctions this year begins September 16 at the Department of export Promotion’s Exhibition Hall and coincides with the Bangkok Gem and Jewelry Fair.

          Since last September approximately 700 lots worth some 250 million baht (10 million U.S. dollars) were offered, according to GEMS.

          The gem and jewelry auction in Bangkok not only tries to make money but also strives to promote Thailand and “the colored atone capital of the world,” said Reynolds.

          “I want people to know its’ cheaper to buy good quality rubies and sapphires at my auction .. we don’t sell fabulous pieces but very nice stones to people who look for more reasonable prices than in Geneva or New York,” he said.

          “The small retail man should buy from Bangkok rather than through New York and sit and work with Thai designers,” he said.

          Reynolds also offers to find stones not found at his auctions through private showings and other arrangements including introducing foreign buyers to first-rate manufacturers. His services are, in his words, “discreet, confidential and showing the best of Bangkok.”