Is crystal raw stone still unearthed locally in Donghai? The total reserves of crystal in Donghai County are about 300,000 tons, and the reserves of quartz are about 300 million tons. The reserves and quality rank first in the country. This is what the government promotes, but no one knows exactly how much is left! However, mining has been banned long ago!! At the crystal fair, local materials (privately dug by farmers) can still be encountered occasionally, but they are much more expensive than materials from Brazil and Africa.
These farmers who are hired to dig stones are all honest farmers from Quanyang local area and nearby villages such as Machang and Maobei. I know several of them, and they have all received corresponding punishments. Usually, no one cares if you go to the field with a hoe and a pitchfork. But it is extremely excessive to have organized large-scale excavators enter and destroy farmland and mine in a high-profile manner. Where do the crystal raw materials in Donghai come from? Many years ago, considering safety and protecting underground resources, the Donghai government closed the mining areas within the county and banned mining. Without the supply of local crystal raw stones and the source of raw materials, the people of Donghai who are engaged in crystal business did not sit and wait. Instead, they went out and bought materials from mining areas around the world. The people of Donghai were among the earliest in the country to go abroad to buy materials from mining areas around the world. Most of the mining areas are in South America and Africa. Personal safety is simply not guaranteed. Therefore, many people from Donghai who are engaged in crystal business died in foreign countries (a relative of our family was shot and killed in a mining area in Brazil). In recent years, South Africa, as the most developed country in Africa, is in turmoil. You can imagine what the situation was like in countries such as Brazil, Madagascar, and Sri Lanka more than ten years ago. Black people who are poorly fed and clothed. No one knows what they will do. It is this group of brave Donghai people who risk their lives to buy materials in the mining areas. These crystal and other colored gemstone raw materials are continuously sent back to China. The good materials are sent back to Donghai for making carved pieces, and the slightly inferior materials are sent to Guangzhou for making beads. Are there many fake Donghai crystals in the desolate Brazilian mining area? Many people say that the crystal and colored gemstone market has been ruined by people from Donghai. I think this statement is relatively one-sided. It mainly depends on market choices. As for any businessman, no one wants to sell fakes, not just in the crystal industry. Bosses who have operated the e-commerce platform of ‘one knife cut’ will definitely understand what I mean. Whether there are many fakes depends on whether you understand the goods. As long as you can do a little research online and do some homework, you will not be deceived. What I mean by being deceived here refers to buying fakes, not the situation of suffering a loss by spending 10,000 yuan to buy goods worth 1,000 yuan. This kind of high-priced selling is the ability of merchants.In today’s market, counterfeit products are less common, and many craft shops display signs at their entrances stating that all items are handmade crafts. In fact, it’s not difficult to discern the authenticity of crystals, but I won’t elaborate here; please see the following text for details.
Where to get the best deals on purchases, is it through live streaming rooms, WeChat business, or by visiting the Donghai Crystal Jewelry City in person? Each of these purchasing channels has its pros and cons, ultimately testing your discernment and intelligence. The emerging live streaming platform dydy has done quite well in the jewelry sector. The platform has established live streaming bases in Donghai and Guangzhou, among other places, where merchants are only responsible for selling, and the rest of the work involves delivering the goods to the base. The base is responsible for inspecting the goods, issuing official certificates, packaging, and logistics. This has safeguarded consumer rights to a certain extent. However, the operational costs on dy are very high, with certificate fees and logistics costs being expensive, and promotional traffic fees even more so. There is also a 5% deduction from sales, regardless of whether the buyer returns the goods or not. Most jewelry merchants have a return rate of over 40%, which means that dy is quite exploitative, and these costs are ultimately borne by consumers. Traditional e-commerce platforms: Taobao/JD.com/Pinduoduo. Taobao closed many jewelry flagship stores a couple of years ago, which had annual sales of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions. These stores all had one thing in common: upon entering the store’s home page, you would find no effective product links, only links dedicated to live streaming. Yes, they had no graphic designers, no operations, and no product listings; it was all about live streaming sales. Now, the owners of these stores are busy making soles and sewing machines. I believe that e-commerce platforms bear an inescapable responsibility for the rampant spread of counterfeit goods. Each store’s daily traffic costs amount to over ten thousand yuan, not including deductions and other expenses. It can be said that the platforms are also making a fortune, so they turn a blind eye to consumer complaints about these stores. JD.com has relatively fewer counterfeits and provides better after-sales service guarantees, but the cost-performance ratio of its products is not high. As for Pinduoduo, it’s hard to say, with fakes being the norm and genuine products being quite rare. WeChat Business has been out of the limelight for many years. However, the most powerful customers are often found in the bosses’ WeChat contacts. Why is that? Because these customers are either knowledgeable veterans with high repurchase rates or wealthy patrons who spend money freely. These customers are as important as family, and adding them to WeChat makes it convenient to check in on them regularly. Additionally, high-end goods are generally not placed in live streaming rooms because the sales risks and after-sales costs are too high, and there are too few big fish in the live streaming rooms to handle high-end products.Who are the bosses of the crystal stalls when you shop on-site at the Jewelry City? They are shrewd, discerning customers by their accents and a few conversations, understanding whether you are knowledgeable about the goods. For those who are not familiar with the products, the price for something that would normally sell for ten can be boldly asked for a hundred. After all, foreigners may only visit once in a millennium and are not regular customers, so taking advantage when possible is the norm. Of course, with so many stalls in the market, you can compare goods from different vendors, but for the stall owners, foreigners are like lambs to wolves, with all wolves having the same intentions, differing only in the extent of their aggressiveness. Is crystal a precious gemstone? To start with the conclusion: Definitely not. Gemstones have three main attributes: beauty, durability, and rarity. Crystal has a hardness of 7, which is quite durable. If judged solely from an aesthetic perspective, crystal might be the most beautiful gemstone in the world, with its rich colors and various inclusions. However, crystal is not considered a precious gemstone because it lacks the rarity attribute of gemstones; its production is too abundant. At 00:07, people from Donghai return from the mining areas with stones, filling entire containers (Donghai Agate Street, where there are many material shops, and almost every day there are materials sent from abroad, transported by semi-truck from the port). Therefore, crystal is generally not considered rare, although there are rare and expensive crystal varieties such as Pupa Dog, Monkey, and Pink Fire, but their market recognition is very low, and their prices are not too high, still not comparable to the top five gemstones. Are there any rare and expensive crystal varieties like Medusa in Guangdong? As mentioned earlier, Donghai crystal people buy materials from all over the world, sending the best materials back to Donghai for carving, and the slightly inferior ones to Guangzhou for bead making. Why send them to Guangzhou for bead making? Because Guangzhou has a mature bead-making industry, with labor from Yunnan and Guizhou, which is relatively cheaper than the local labor in Donghai. Capital follows profit, moving to where labor is cheaper. However, as an individual buyer, purchasing in Guangzhou will not be cheaper than in Donghai, because the suppliers there deal in volume and do not cater to individual customers. Of course, there are retailers in Guangzhou, but their prices are not cheaper than in Donghai, because the cost of goods is not as low as that of the Donghai people. It might be a bit confusing: why don’t the local retailers in Guangzhou have the same advantage as the Donghai people in terms of lower prices? Firstly, because when Donghai people go to Guangzhou to purchase goods, they buy in large quantities, at least in the range of six figures, and more often in the seven figures. The suppliers in Guangzhou, when a major Donghai customer comes to buy, close the store on the spot, and only open it again to other customers after the Donghai people have made their selections.
Unfortunately, only those from the East China Sea region can afford to purchase millions of goods at once, with larger quantities leading to more favorable prices. The materials are sent by people from the East China Sea, and they are well aware of the processing costs and the prices they pay for goods are strictly controlled. Suppliers from Guangzhou can only make a profit from the processing fees.
For suppliers in any industry, cash flow is essential, as it is only through circulation that profit can be made. The crystal industry is no exception. Do crystals truly possess spirituality or energy? Personally, I am skeptical of these mystical notions. There are so many types of gemstones, all of which are stones from the earth. Why is it that crystals are said to have energy and spirituality? Crystals are simply transparent quartz; does that mean quartz also has energy and spirituality? In our village, many quartz stones and crystals are piled up in front of every household. Does that mean we will live as long as heaven and have blessings as great as the southern mountains? However, Confucius once said, ‘Respect ghosts and gods, but keep them at a distance.’ Therefore, I do not oppose others believing in these ideas. Foreigners are very superstitious about these things, and many energy theories have been introduced from them and localized by people from the East China Sea. Do foreign crystals require cleansing/activation? Absolutely not!!!!!! What is cleansing? As the name suggests, cleansing is the process of eliminating magnetic fields. Crystals can absorb energy, and inevitably, some of it may be negative. Regularly removing the negative energy absorbed by crystals can make them more spiritual. Methods of cleansing include using cleansing stones, sunbathing, moonbathing, listening to music, and soaking in clear water (sourced from the internet). Crystals that have been worn for a long time can be washed with clear water, but I cannot comprehend the concept of cleansing. Activation Many e-commerce stores boast that their crystals have been activated. The activation videos are all based on the same template, yet many people still believe them. Moreover, with monks in temples eating meat, drinking alcohol, and driving luxury cars, where is the sincerity towards Buddhism? Will crystal jewelry appreciate in value? Almost never. Low-end gemstones have little to no collecting value, not just crystals but also other colored gemstones and even diamonds under one carat. The buyback price for a diamond you purchased at a jewelry store may only be a fraction of the original price, and the buyback price for jade may be even lower. Of course, some high-quality crystals may still appreciate in value, but how many of us would spend tens of thousands of dollars on a high-quality crystal? Furthermore, once new mines are exploited, the prices of corresponding crystal varieties will drop significantly. That’s all for now. If you have any questions, please leave a comment, and I will continue to answer and update the article.