Field Notes

Field Notes and Market Intelligence

Notes from the buying trips and the laboratory literature. Written from Bangkok, between flights.

Global Sourcing Expeditions

Eighteen years since the great spinel find. What the hills produce now, and what the first wave got wrong.

Back rooms have bad lamps for a reason. Notes on judging color when the seller controls the light.

The word carries a premium of thirty to fifty percent. Where that premium comes from, and when it is worth paying.

The next note follows the next trip.