Tucson, the premier US Gem Fair
Each winter, miners, dealers, gemologists, creators and famous jewelry houses converge on the peaceful town of Tucson, in the Arizona desert, for a giant, three-week-long treasure hunt.
Tucson is more than a show. It’s a laboratory. A place where desert winds meet the sparkle of the world’s rarest gems. While most shows take place at a single venue, Tucson spreads across dozens of citywide locations, from the corridors of the main event to improvised marquees and motel rooms transformed into Ali Baba’s caves. Visitors can just as easily be inspired by an exceptional stone locked behind glass as a dusty cabochon pushed to the back of a tray. Already the long established reference for colored stones, it seems Tucson is replacing the Hong Kong International Jewellery Show in western designers’ hearts. More raw, more instinctive, the American show captures the imagination for its sheer size as well as its desert setting, amidst cacti and disused turquoise mines. /public-objects/befaca4c-83e9-464a-9026-fb47736943aa-b910da5a-f551-46e3-a609-27c310835f76-1.webp Image sélectionnée /public-objects/65ae9bc8-99ac-4eec-86a8-de01e9bd5791-6b718942-dfc9-4fef-81a6-f32f8eb35d16-2.webp Image sélectionnée AGTA and GJX at the epicenter Tucson is where you’ll see teams from Piaget, Cartier, Chanel or Bulgari, in town to source stones for their future high jewelry collections. The show’s institutional heart beats at the American Gem Trade Association (AGTA) GemFair, inside the Convention Center. It’s here that world-renowned dealers present and/or buy certified and appraised stones. Across the way from the AGTA show, the Gem & Jewelry Exchange (GJX) serves trade-only customers. We spent a day with the experts from Piaget who, gouaches in hand, had come to Tucson in search of stones matching specific criteria of color and proportion, for a collection scheduled to launch in 2028. Each specimen was compared to the drawing, held up and examined in natural light. The outliers But there is more to Tucson than the official halls. Pueblo, 22nd Street, Kino, Crystal Dome… what sound like codenames are actually locations, minutes one from the other, where vendors set up inside marquees, in motel rooms—doors left open—or alongside the highway, on parking lots. This is where you can pick up gigantic geodes, decorative crystals, agate lamps or hardstone marquetry drink coasters, rummage through boxes of cabochons and find strings of pearls in every imaginable shade. Something for all tastes and all budgets. At Tucson, the incredible meets the improbable. Constantin Wild's Tucson trend tips German gemologist and stone-cutter Constantin Wild walks us through this year’s trends, starting with a pairing of lagoon tourmalines and imperial topazes: one captivates with its intense, tropical bluegreen hue, the other with shades that range from pink champagne to fiery orange. Once confused with sapphire, purple spinel is enjoying a revival thanks to its lively brilliance and frequent absence of treatment. But the absolute star remains the Paraíba tourmaline: a neon blue gem, discovered in Brazil in the 1980s and now virtually impossible to find. Jewelers want top-tier gems and for Constantin Wild that means three things: high saturation, natural stones and strong colors.