No Stone Unturned

The jewellery industry’s best-kept secret is a gem show in the Arizona desert where the world’s top designers rifle through buckets of rubies and bags of emeralds, searching for that career-defining stone.

- Kareem Rashed

Walking down the hallway of a dingy roadside motel in Tucson, the scent of patchouli and incense wafting through the air, I catch a glimpse inside a guestroom. There, a middleaged man is handing over a small white envelope, neatly folded to protect its contents, in exchange for a wad of cash. It isn’t drugs but something just as mesmerizing: an exceptionally rare, eight-carat padparadscha sapphire. Welcome to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show.