So we were told we could buy Gemstones...

{quoted}

Was this just a straight up lie or am I missing something?

It's very poor conduct to haphazardly throw out accusations of lying and disparaging others, especially when you already _know _ that there is good chance that it could only be due to your own ignorance and not to other people's behaviour!

And YES, it is only your ignorance of gemstone sales here.

Pretty sure there were multiple events were Riot straight up put 10 gemstone+Box bundles in the store, Snowdown had one and I can't quite remember but I believe Lunar Year had one as well.

You are missing something. They've had multiple events that make buying gemstones themselves possible, or a way that is 100x easier to buy gemstones.