About ManikPola

From Embilipitiya to the world

The market, moved online — carefully

For two thousand years, Sri Lankan gems have changed hands in the same way: face to face, in the street markets and back rooms of Ratnapura, on the word of people who have known each other for generations. The word manik pola means exactly that — gem market.

That system works beautifully if you were born into it. If you are a collector in Munich or a jeweller in Tokyo, it is almost impossible to enter safely. And if you are a miner in Elahera holding a fine unheated sapphire, the international buyer who would pay a fair price for it is entirely out of reach.

ManikPola.com exists to close that gap. Sellers list their stones here. Buyers register their interest. Sena Manik personally brokers everything in between.

I have spent my working life around these stones. My name is on this website, and it is on every transaction that closes through it.

What "brokered" actually means

We are not a classifieds board that takes a listing fee and disappears. On every deal we:

• Review the listing before publication and question anything that does not add up.
• Verify that the buyer is genuine before we take a seller's time.
• Keep both parties' contact details private until a deal is genuinely agreed.
• Arrange independent laboratory testing in Colombo where the buyer wants it.
• Hold the transaction so neither side has to move first on faith.
• Handle export documentation and insured shipping.

Listing costs nothing. We are paid a brokerage commission only when a stone actually sells, which means we have no incentive to publish anything we cannot stand behind.

Where our stones come from

The great majority come from Sri Lanka's classic gem districts — Embilipitiya, Ratnapura, Elahera, Balangoda, Pelmadulla and Rakwana — through the miners, cutters and family dealers who work them. Sri Lanka has produced the world's finest blue sapphires for millennia, alongside padparadscha, cat's eye chrysoberyl, star sapphire and star ruby, alexandrite, spinel and moonstone.

Where a stone is not Sri Lankan, we say so plainly on the listing. Where treatment has been applied, we say that too. An honest description is worth more to everyone than an optimistic one.