what's new at the gemdealer.com

Here we will attempt to keep you up to date with the

latest news at thegemdealer.com

05-09-08 We begin our annual trek to the mine shortly. The house sitter is moved in and we're just about all packed to go - it's time to leave!

Auctions at eBay and sales from the store on the web site will re-start sometime in October.

Still haven't gotten absolutely final word on the phone - the last information was that it would be sometime after the 15th for installation! I don't expect to have internet service at the mine until next year. And, I don't know the new number yet. But we'll have a phone!

It looks like we may pick up a couple of new venders for the show this year - be sure to drop by if you have the chance.

We'll probably have a specimen picture contest of some sort up and running by early November.

And lastly, I plan to restart the old "Name that Rock!" contest sometime around Thanksgiving

04-15-08 Things are moving full blast for a mid-may move to the Mine in Nevada. We're getting more and more questions about the Virgin Valley Gem Show; if the weather cooperates it should be a pretty good show. You can find info on the show here.

02-19-08 We have now finished migrating the items from our eBay store to the web site. Pushing the store button on the menu will now take you to a store menu page which, in addition to store items, also contains a link to our auctions preview page. Links from the preview page will take you directly to live auctions.

Slowly but surely we're getting our adverting campaign on Google Base up and running, hits have already started coming in, which is gratifying.

02-12-08 After three years of application, the Sheldon Wildlife Refuge has said that we'll probably be able to get phone service to the mill site this year. I thank my lucky stars that Pat has kept at it - I had pretty much given up two years ago. I know it doesn't sound like much of a big deal but from a safety stand point it is. Hopefully it will finally happen.

12-07-07 Just finished bringing the links section up to date. The page was getting to be unwieldy so I broke it down into several different pages then spruced it up a bit to make navigation a little easier.

12-05-07 The movie section is up and running. We'll be adding new movies from time to time, so check back every once in a while.

11-30-07 Added a news feed for gems, jewelry, minerals, etc. to the precious metals spot prices page. I found it pretty handy while it was in testing.

11-28-07 I just added a couple of pieces of advertising to the site plugging Netfirms. One is at the bottom of this page. Netfirms' servers are delivering this site to you right now; and have been since it's inception. They have been hosting me in one guise or another since 1994. I don't recall ever having a problem with their service. If you're looking for a place to host your site at a reasonable price - you found it.

11-19-07 Quite a bit of work is going on behind the scenes here at thegemdealer.com. We're about to launch a new video section featuring how to videos related to gems, jewelry and collecting. If you've tried the store link lately you'll have noticed that it goes to an under construction area. We've decided to open a new store that is site based rather than re-opening the eBay store; but it's going to take some time to get it up and running. There are hundreds of pages to recode.

11-15-07 You may have noticed that advertising is starting to show up in some areas of the website. We've made arrangements with Google to add some tasteful, relevant advertising to a number of the content pages. This is being done to help defray some of the costs of maintaining the site.

11-12-07 We just made the switch to Google site/web search boxes on our pages. A sample is at the bottom of this page. The web search function has Google SafeSearch turned on. With SafeSearch, sites and web pages containing adult themed and explicit sexual content are excluded from web search results. We continue to be a kid safe site.

11-5-07 Last week I started work on a commission to stabilize and eventually cut a really nice piece of wood opal that was collected at Rainbow Ridge last summer. I'm documenting the procedure and hope to post it to the web once the project ends; sometime early next year.

10-15-07 We're back from Nevada for the winter. Expect to see auctions at eBay starting up again soon. Through a stroke of good fortune we acquired a substantial amount of misc. cutting material early last summer. I'll be pretty busy cutting for the next few weeks.

05-15-07 Our eBay store was closed today in preparation for our annual migration to Virgin Valley. The store will re-open sometime in late October. If you make it to the valley this year please stop by for a visit.

1-1-07 The gemstone and jewelry sections of our eBay store have been stocked up with new items over the past few days. We started utilizing Froogle at the Google search site to advertise not only our eBay store but have started putting up items for sale only on Froogle. The resultant surge in hits at eBay that we have been experiencing is encouraging.

12-27 There has been a major expansion of our eBay presence with new auctions posted nearly every day and a push to maintain at least 100 separate items in the store (currently about 130).

10-29 We've started posting new auctions at eBay.

10-26 Our eBay store is now open. More lots are added all the time.



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