The Reputable jade Sellers list

[AnnaWu2021]

What's with Churk???
I know he is a third generation jade carver and a great craftsman. He is prompt in answering questions and shipping, his pieces are accurately described and beautiful in person. I have purchased jade from his Etsy shop and have been happy with the purchase.
But whenever I ask him about doing something custom, first he says yes, then he drops off. (This has happened on two occasions for me now.) Most recently, I contacted him about putting a silver wrapping on one of my bangles I think is cracked with a design of his I really love. He wrote back right away to say "Yes, I can do that." And asked for pictures of the crack. I did my best, but it was hard to photograph. He responded "are you sure that is a crack?" because from the pictures it looked to him like a healed stone line. And then never wrote back.
I get that he is a master craftsman and can work on whatever he wants, but I find his customer care lacking. I would have appreciated at least a no. Has anyone had similar experience with him or do I just not know the secret Churk password to get on his good side? I am a paying customer of his after all.

Here is the crack, visible against the reflection. It is actually two cracks crossing at an X.
View attachment 4779728
I am worried about wearing it like this and the cracks bother me even if they are not dangerous to the bangle breaking. I would love to get it wrapped even if it is just for protection and decoration.

Does anyone here have an idea for a reputable jeweler who would put a wrapping on a jade bangle? I would appreciate the recommendation. I would have to send the bangle to them obviously, so it would be preferably someone in the states (I am in California) but any suggestions on what to do are appreciated.

Does Churk provide grade A jadeite? His products come without a cert and he doesn't provide the certification service to customers. I know everything is cut and carved by himself from an original piece of jadeite stone. But it doesn't mean everything is grade A because an original stone can still be treated with light bleaching and or sophisticated dye.
Has anyone had any experience with this shop?
Many thanks

 

[AnnaWu2021]

Ok. So Jojojade. I have never bought from them. I did try. They wanted 30k usd for this. I only managed to get these pictures after I told the sales person their actual picture was unreal and he only sent these to me after like two weeks of me not responding to his constant emails persuading me to buy. This is also an old experience so maybe they are better now. No idea.

Note that this was maybe 6 years ago, so 30k usd was a lot to ask for this, especially when these irl pictures do not tally with their actual picture (I cannot find their actual picture but it was nothing like these two pictures. The original sales picture with the price tag of 30K usd was of an extremely beautiful piece):

View attachment 5284469
View attachment 5284471

Yeah that's a crazy price tag. If this is a real picture with correct color, then indeed this vibrant lavender color is quite rare, however I don't think it will hit 10K USD. I have seen better ones in Mason Kay, Kathy Jade or UJ with much better prices.
I just bought the first bangle from them like last week, after more than 100 emails communication during 1 month. It is not convenient to buy from them as their website doesn't seem to operate, PayPal didn't work. Everything went very manual and informal to me as the seller sent photos of several choices of bangles to me via emails, payment through bank transfer, we agreed prices and delivery method also via email.
The seller was very responsive to me and willing to provide more photos upon my request, probably because I speak Chinese to them.
At the end, I still believe that the bangle I bought was overpriced, but I couldn't find any cheaper similar one so I decided to overspend a bit...

 

[AJadecent Angle]

Does Churk provide grade A jadeite? His products come without a cert and he doesn't provide the certification service to customers. I know everything is cut and carved by himself from an original piece of jadeite stone. But it doesn't mean everything is grade A because an original stone can still be treated with light bleaching and or sophisticated dye.
Has anyone had any experience with this shop?
Many thanks

From what I've seen based on his past listings being sold, nothing screams to me that the pieces are dyed/treated at all, not unless he wants to tarnish his reputation and family legacy as a 3rd gen jade carver, personally never had experiences with them but there are people who've bought from them in other forums that certainly are happy with their purchases knowing it's untreated.

Yeah that's a crazy price tag. If this is a real picture with correct color, then indeed this vibrant lavender color is quite rare, however I don't think it will hit 10K USD. I have seen better ones in Mason Kay, Kathy Jade or UJ with much better prices.
I just bought the first bangle from them like last week, after more than 100 emails communication during 1 month. It is not convenient to buy from them as their website doesn't seem to operate, PayPal didn't work. Everything went very manual and informal to me as the seller sent photos of several choices of bangles to me via emails, payment through bank transfer, we agreed prices and delivery method also via email.
The seller was very responsive to me and willing to provide more photos upon my request, probably because I speak Chinese to them.
At the end, I still believe that the bangle I bought was overpriced, but I couldn't find any cheaper similar one so I decided to overspend a bit...

I believe there's a post a long time ago detailing that jojojade is one of those middlemans where you pay them a certain amount they ask for (discount can be asked like 20%?), they purchase the piece off of the actual seller, take a portion of the price you paid to them, and then they deliver the jade to you. Hence why their prices is inflated.

 

[AnnaWu2021]

From what I've seen based on his past listings being sold, nothing screams to me that the pieces are dyed/treated at all, not unless he wants to tarnish his reputation and family legacy as a 3rd gen jade carver, personally never had experiences with them but there are people who've bought from them in other forums that certainly are happy with their purchases knowing it's untreated.

I believe there's a post a long time ago detailing that jojojade is one of those middlemans where you pay them a certain amount they ask for (discount can be asked like 20%?), they purchase the piece off of the actual seller, take a portion of the price you paid to them, and then they deliver the jade to you. Hence why their prices is inflated.

I will keep considering Churk then. I am convinced that he is not going to sell grade b c stuff and destroy his family reputation. But the technology in making grade b jadeite is getting more and more advanced and an experienced seller may not catch up with it and end up buying a grade B stone if he doesn't use equipments suc as infrare machine to test. If there was a reputable lab in the country where I am living, I wouldn't mind buying and going test by myself. Unfortunately there is no hence I am still considering, although Churk bangles' styles really fit me.

 

[nexiv]

I have also noticed this newly come store on Etsy. I also asked them about the certificates.
The store is based on France, and certificates are from China, so it seems to me that they imported from China and resell from here.

To me, buying jadeite from a store in Europe is never a good option, simply because in Europe there is almost zero reputable lab that test jadeite with reasonable price. I reached out to GIA, Gubelin, etc, but they all directed me to their labs in Hongkong, US or somewhere else except Europe, they said they don't have labs for colored gems in EU. There is only one lab in Switzerland testing jadeite however it costs 250 EUR/piece.

If it is a jadeite product from Hongkong and Singapore, it should not be a problem because HKJSL or NGI are the very reputable labs. Their certificates show clearly number, charts, graphs, etc in a transparent and public way. But if it is a product and certificate from China, I always ask sellers to bring it to one more reputable lab to re-test. (I asked JojoJade in Shanghai to re-test it in NGTC and they happily did it, so I purchased one bangle from them).

Why? Because there are thousands of labs in China and not each of them is reputable. We don't know what exactly they do in a lab to test, do they really weigh the gravity or test the infrared? And most of the certificates from China only disclose the density and infractive index and most of them are 3.33 and 1.66 exactly, sometimes I wonder if they just copy-paste the numbers on every certificate. As a Chinese speaker, I always go to baidu.com to read around comments about that lab. And the lab that YukeyHouseJade used seems to be ok-ish (60% positive, 40% negative). If it was me, I would ask the seller to retest in labs such as NGTC (in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, etc). And obviously, if a seller is based in Europe, it is 100% impossible due to high cost.

And yeah, if a seller shows you a Chinese certificate and says that this is made by a national lab, do not ever trust them immediately. There are a lot of private labs which are "covered" by some national entities, their name may contain the names of these national entities (for example, Beijing University Lab, etc), but in reality they have nothing to do with that university at all.

But as I see from YukeyHouseJade store on Etsy, for now their bangles don't seem to be at a luxurious quantity level (not very translucent, not lavender, all have quite pale colors), so I think the possibility of buying the dyed, powder polished or B/C grade could be quite low.

I will just observe other buyers's comments about this store, it seems new anyway and I haven't had encourage to buy from it yet

That’s all really interesting, thank you. And I find it interesting that my purchase from GoJade (on the reputable sellers list) does indeed have the numbers be 1.66 and 3.33. That makes me slightly concerned the certificate is just pointless.

 

[AJadecent Angle]

That’s all really interesting, thank you. And I find it interesting that my purchase from GoJade (on the reputable sellers list) does indeed have the numbers be 1.66 and 3.33. That makes me slightly concerned the certificate is just pointless.

I've purchased several pieces from Gojade/antijade actually and I personally think their pieces are untreated, it's just that I wouldn't recommend them personally if you want a jade carving that's personalized to you (whether it be hand carved, accessorize it to your liking) since they sell alot of machine carved pieces, and their red jades are likely heat treated to achieve that maroon red/fiery red look. While certs may seem pointless, it's really there for assurance that the piece you have is untreated and you can always look them up to their respective website.
I personally think you shouldn't worry about it too much about their piece + the certs it comes with unless you've spent a pretty penny on a piece and the cert wasn't from more reputable labs like GIA, or HKJSL.

 

[brnicutie]

The best jade that I've seen in my life was at Chow Tai Fook in Hong Kong.

 

[AJadecent Angle]

The best jade that I've seen in my life was at Chow Tai Fook in Hong Kong.

Oh I’ve heard of them before! Indeed they’re eye-catching alongside the various amounts of gold figurines they have.
Now if it weren’t for the scarily high price..

 

[nexiv]

I will keep considering Churk then. I am convinced that he is not going to sell grade b c stuff and destroy his family reputation. But the technology in making grade b jadeite is getting more and more advanced and an experienced seller may not catch up with it and end up buying a grade B stone if he doesn't use equipments suc as infrare machine to test. If there was a reputable lab in the country where I am living, I wouldn't mind buying and going test by myself. Unfortunately there is no hence I am still considering, although Churk bangles' styles really fit me.

I have a piece from Churk. Purchased it almost 3 years ago. It’s fairly opaque because I bought for the colour and had a limited budget.
I’ve not performed any specific tests on it, but I may do as I am considering selling it on to begin a purchase of a more expensive bangle.

 

[Otto8]

I believe there's a post a long time ago detailing that jojojade is one of those middlemans where you pay them a certain amount they ask for (discount can be asked like 20%?), they purchase the piece off of the actual seller, take a portion of the price you paid to them, and then they deliver the jade to you. Hence why their prices is inflated.

I don't know about that post. I have not gone through the entire thread. I just chanced upon this query so I thought to reply with my own experience.

Hmm, yes. Still does not justify the inflated price tag. I think vendors do that. That is fine. They should earn a cut for finding the item. However, inflated by this much is a no no. Not for this quality.

So maybe the item they found was already at a high price. They just added on their cut. But if they are middlemen and taking a cut, shouldn't they advise you this price does not tally with the real quality of the items? After all, that is their role as middlemen who are trying to find you the best price, or maybe not. Their bearing at that time was, this is a rare one.......and two pictures of an odd pink bangle that looks completely different to the beautiful original photo-shopped version of 30K usd. This was 6 years ago.

Having said all that, I have just taken a look at their website. It seems to be up and running now and the bangles do look more like the original items and prices don't seem too bad if you can bargain down by 30% or more, depending on how high the price tag. I think higher priced items can be knocked down by a bit more than already low priced items.

 

[AJadecent Angle]

I don't know about that post. I have not gone through the entire thread. I just chanced upon this query so I thought to reply with my own experience.

Hmm, yes. Still does not justify the inflated price tag. I think vendors do that. That is fine. They should earn a cut for finding the item. However, inflated by this much is a no no. Not for this quality.

So maybe the item they found was already at a high price. They just added on their cut. But if they are middlemen and taking a cut, shouldn't they advise you this price does not tally with the real quality of the items? After all, that is their role as middlemen who are trying to find you the best price, or maybe not. Their bearing at that time was, this is a rare one.......and two pictures of an odd pink bangle that looks completely different to the beautiful original photo-shopped version of 30K usd. This was 6 years ago.

Having said all that, I have just taken a look at their website. It seems to be up and running now and the bangles do look more like the original items and prices don't seem too bad if you can bargain down by 30% or more, depending on how high the price tag. I think higher priced items can be knocked down by a bit more than already low priced items.

Yeah that's what I was wondering but w/ the listing pics not matching (at least in my opinion) the price by either a tad or sometimes by a huge margin, it's a reason for myself to believe it to be true where jojojade does take a % of the listing price for themselves even if you can haggle the price down. As to the aforementioned bangle you mentioned, I would chalk it up to jade being photogenic + photoshopping to make the bangles look more appealing than they actually are, but it's a risk we all understand will happen.
All in all I still feel that if you're wanting to get a deal/steal and don't mind taking some risks, then better to search for other sellers on ebay/etsy/carousell.

 

[Junkenpo]

To add a bit more about Jojo - some of the problem is that there is nowhere on their site that says they are a middle man or that they are charging more as a finder fee. The seller gives the impression that all the jade they are selling is in their own inventory and that they took the pictures themselves.

I purchased from them before this came to light, but for this omission, I will not purchase from them again.

 

[CraveJade]

hello! This thread has been so helpful to me. Has anyone here purchased from Yokdee and can share their experience? The place I can recommend for the real deal has been mentioned: Mason-Kay. I purchased 2 pendants and 1 bangle from them. I want a backup though as MK can be on the pricey side. It’s harder than I thought to find good lavender coloring and I am looking for a bangle! The search continues…..

 

[AJadecent Angle]

hello! This thread has been so helpful to me. Has anyone here purchased from Yokdee and can share their experience? The place I can recommend for the real deal has been mentioned: Mason-Kay. I purchased 2 pendants and 1 bangle from them. I want a backup though as MK can be on the pricey side. It’s harder than I thought to find good lavender coloring and I am looking for a bangle! The search continues…..

Hey welcome! Many people here have bought from Yokdee and definitely had pleasant experiences with her both online and in-person, her products are definitely on the premium side, but you'll surely get your monies worth with her + she does custom orders.
Also I do agree that lavender bangles are hard to find especially since they're more rare than green ones depending if you're looking for color + translucency, so best of luck to you!

 

[CraveJade]

Hey welcome! Many people here have bought from Yokdee and definitely had pleasant experiences with her both online and in-person, her products are definitely on the premium side, but you'll surely get your monies worth with her + she does custom orders.
Also I do agree that lavender bangles are hard to find especially since they're more rare than green ones depending if you're looking for color + translucency, so best of luck to you!

What I am wary of is the items that are a bit pink, I haven’t really seen that before on a product that wasn’t dyed but if she custom designs things and is legit, I’ll need to do some serious jade hunting. I tried emailing her a couple of times and no word yet, staying Positive.after YingYu Jade took me for an embarrassing sum of money, I’m nervous to jade shop.