I don't feel like harping on this too much, but Tom, if you seriously are buying Afghani gems, I hope you realize that they're definitely covered in the blood of kids who died because the expired Russian dynamite their goatherd family was using to excavate misfired. You seem to think that small scale artisan mining of gems is somehow better, but really all that does is create mass graves every time a mine with no safety features collapses.
The fact that you think saying you got gems from fucking Ethiopia and Brazil through presumed backmarket channels makes you look good is astounding. It's the most bloody part of the already bloody business of the gem trade. Do you trade Burmese rubies, too, Tom?