NY Diamond District

[phoenixgirl]

My husband and I joined my parents for a weekend in NYC (Spamalot was a blast!). We walked down the 47th St. diamond district, and my family allowed me to do all the window shopping I wanted. Half of the stores were closed because it was Saturday (owners observing the sabbath or just a preference to be open during the week?), but the ones that were open were a sight to see. They either had people posted outside to lure you in (one was an attractive young lady who appeared to be browsing herself) or people in the windows gesturing wildly. I saw a lot of honking stones with big honking inclusions to match. I also saw a stone that said it was a K and had a GIA report that looked really, really yellow. I guess when the attractive young "browser" heard me questioning the color of their stone, she didn''t bother trying to convince us to go in and focused on another couple.

We went inside one store that was really, really big. It was obvious that cases were rented out by various vendors. One old man convinced me that it was "free to look" and not to be shy. I did look at a tanzanite necklace that was pretty. DH sweetly asked how much it was. The old man consulted his magic calculator, which told him to charge $425 for it (well, really he just pretended to look at the nonexistent tag and then made something up). It''s not like we were communicating in different languages -- was the calculator supposed to make it seem more official?

Overall it was fun, but there was definitely a "You must not leave without buying something!" vibe, which is stressful if you''re just window shopping.

 

[kenny]

Do knowledgeable buyers shop there too?

Could I walk in with a print out of specs and prices from PS and find competing stones with AGS and GIA reports, and can decent prices be negotiated?

Or is it 100% ripoffs for ignorant customers?

 

[phoenixgirl]

If you search for "diamond district" a bunch of posts will come up like this one. My general impression is that if you know how to make sure the stone is of good quality and know what you could get the stone for elsewhere, then you have a good chance of saving money. But if not, don''t expect them to educate you.

 

[Kaleigh]

I was there recently and was amazed at how yellow the diamonds looked and saw many that had very visible inclusions.

 

[OldBride]

I was in NYC in May for my son''s graduation. We have a family friend there who has been in the jewelry business for years and who is now a consultant to retail jewlers. I assumed at the time that he could recommend or "fix me up" with a good vendor there. He told me that I would do better at Blue Nile (guess he doesn''t know about all the other vendors) and recommended a jeweler at home (Sacramento) who has a vast selection of settings. As he explained it to me, Blue Nile, for example, posts the merchandise of many vendors, some of whom may use older, lower prices, and that if I looked carefully, I could pick up a pretty good deal. Anyway, at the time I thought the advice was strange, and that he just didn''t want to help me. In retrospect, his advice was basically sound. The real diamond business, I''ve been told, takes place upstairs, and not on the street level. He also told me that if I wanted to look at various designer settings while in NYC, to go to Michael C. Fina.
And yes,most of 47th street closes up early on Friday and all of Saturday for Shabbbat.