Dear collectors and friends,
This week's journey takes us to Botswana, a country in Southern Africa that has been producing agates for decades.
Generally, a lot of these are not very valuable, and that is because they have a relatively repeating pattern, always the same colors in different shades of blue and white. In rare cases, a little bit of red or pink.
However, they are a continuous seller, and the reason is that they have some of the most contrast in their banding found in any agates worldwide, and also a lot of parallaxes, which a lot of people love. 
Since about three decades, Botswana enacted a law that makes it illegal to export any unprocessed rough stones from their country. So the specimens you find with a natural husk will get increasingly rare in the future. In the recent times of export, all the rough stones get pre-tumbled, which gives them this river washed look.
A lot of the Botswana agates end up in cheap jewelry or as tumbled agates.
The high-quality flawless specimens, like at any other agate location as well, are a lot rarer!
This week I have been cutting some of the best rough Botswana agates I could find in my personal cutting stash, and I was rewarded with an incredible outcome.
The largest Botswana I have ever cut turned out to be a killer specimen!
You can watch me cut these pieces in this week's video on YouTube, and get them right into your collection if you head over to my website.
I also added two nice Malawi to bring a little more color variety into this week's update.
Hope you all have a great week and wish you all the best from the agate summer in Lwówek Śląski, Poland,
Joshua