We are proud to announce our newly redesigned website. Thanks Virtualize.  We hope the new website will be easier to use on phones and tablets, compared to our original site, which was designed before SmartPhones and Tablets.   In the 90's, if you wanted a website on the internet, you designed for big box computers.  Just for fun, we thought it would be interesting to look at how far our website has come since 1995.
We put up our first website in 1995, but the first version found on the  waybackmachine (waybackarchive.org) is from 1996.  You have to remember in those days, most people got on the internet via dial- up on AOL.  If you had many large images, people would leave immediately because they took too long to load.  As you can see in the screenshot of our original site above, we had one photograph of a 15.41 tsavorite and a link to the Smithsonian Gem and Mineral Collection.  You might also notice we had no gemstones for sale.  
It seems unbelievable today, but selling on the internet was originally considered
taboo.  The internet was designed initially only for the sharing of information.  A sort of free speech, anti-capitalist experiment. If you tried to sell anything, the rest of the internet would gang up and flame you into submission.  In the spring of 1995, we went on-line as http://www.primenet.com/~rgenis/.  Yes, this is how you set up websites at the time.  By 1998, the domain name business exploded and we bought preciousgemstones.com.  Eventually, large corporations entered the net and the culture of not selling faded into oblivion. The no-selling dictum seems quaint now.  
One final change to note, in the beginning a one dimensional picture of a gem or grading report was the norm.  Eventually, clients wanted numerous pictures of the gem from all angles.  Today, the gold standard is video.  
Seems hard to believe we have been on the internet for 25 years.  Time does fly.  We hope you enjoy the new site, whether on your home computer, phone, or tablet.  Stay tuned to our website (preciousgemstones.com), for our new blog, the Gemstone Forecaster newsletter and other exciting things happening in the gem markets.