shlo_mo_shun
Rough_Rock
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2007
- Messages
- 12
So last night I was with my friend, and his wife is a custom jewelry maker. She was asking about the stone I had just proposed with, color, clarity, etc...
Now mind you, she mostly deals with gemstones, but less so in diamonds. It was clear to me when we were talking that I knew more about cut (real cut, not shapes), H&A (which she thought was a special proprietary cut), even clarity, than she did.
But anyways, the question turned to price, and she asked in confidence what I had paid. Her guess was way, way, way low. She was guessing my stone would be like 2k. For reference, my stone was an ACA 1.26 G-SI1.
Now, not only did I feel silly telling her what i really paid (7800), but now I''m wondering what the real deal is. She was shocked, and showed me a couple of stones she had bought recently. Much smaller, but far less expensive too. The largest she had bought was a under a carat, but it was like $1000. She had just helped get a 1 carat Emerald for her brother-in-law that was like an H-VS1, for really really cheap too. Some tiny ones, probably 1/4 carat, she said she got for $20! So what gives?
Besides the initial shock, the male-ego in me preventing me from feeling too ripped off, as first of all, Im fairly confident that my ACA is far and away more amazing than what she had (I really hope). Besides, I looked all over, both in retail and online for diamonds, so I know what the market rate is, generally speaking. Besides, the average diamond purchase is what? 5000, and about 1 carat? So if mine is larger, and more brilliant than the average, what I paid seems a fair price.
So I''m left with 2 possibilities. One is that the markup to the consumer on diamonds is rediculously high. Like 2-4x what they acutally cost. You hear that the online business has really cut into diamond markup, but are they still marking them up rediculously from wholesale?
Or that she is dealing in stones that aren''t well cut, and doesn''t really know (or possibly care) about the difference. Supporting this point is even that she commented that she hadn''t see the stone yet, so she couldn''t say for sure what she''d think it would be worth. I''d love to believe this is the primary reason that I paid more than 3x more than she thought I should, but either way, it''s a hard pill to swallow.
Just wondering what your thoughts are on this whole interaction? I didn''t work with her before hand, because she had made comments in the past about how difficult it is professionally to do work for friends, but after last night, she was saying that i should have talked to her. She was actually pretty graceful about the whole thing, and I don''t feel that bad about it....just curious about the whole thing. Thanks for your thoughts.
Now mind you, she mostly deals with gemstones, but less so in diamonds. It was clear to me when we were talking that I knew more about cut (real cut, not shapes), H&A (which she thought was a special proprietary cut), even clarity, than she did.
But anyways, the question turned to price, and she asked in confidence what I had paid. Her guess was way, way, way low. She was guessing my stone would be like 2k. For reference, my stone was an ACA 1.26 G-SI1.
Now, not only did I feel silly telling her what i really paid (7800), but now I''m wondering what the real deal is. She was shocked, and showed me a couple of stones she had bought recently. Much smaller, but far less expensive too. The largest she had bought was a under a carat, but it was like $1000. She had just helped get a 1 carat Emerald for her brother-in-law that was like an H-VS1, for really really cheap too. Some tiny ones, probably 1/4 carat, she said she got for $20! So what gives?
Besides the initial shock, the male-ego in me preventing me from feeling too ripped off, as first of all, Im fairly confident that my ACA is far and away more amazing than what she had (I really hope). Besides, I looked all over, both in retail and online for diamonds, so I know what the market rate is, generally speaking. Besides, the average diamond purchase is what? 5000, and about 1 carat? So if mine is larger, and more brilliant than the average, what I paid seems a fair price.
So I''m left with 2 possibilities. One is that the markup to the consumer on diamonds is rediculously high. Like 2-4x what they acutally cost. You hear that the online business has really cut into diamond markup, but are they still marking them up rediculously from wholesale?
Or that she is dealing in stones that aren''t well cut, and doesn''t really know (or possibly care) about the difference. Supporting this point is even that she commented that she hadn''t see the stone yet, so she couldn''t say for sure what she''d think it would be worth. I''d love to believe this is the primary reason that I paid more than 3x more than she thought I should, but either way, it''s a hard pill to swallow.
Just wondering what your thoughts are on this whole interaction? I didn''t work with her before hand, because she had made comments in the past about how difficult it is professionally to do work for friends, but after last night, she was saying that i should have talked to her. She was actually pretty graceful about the whole thing, and I don''t feel that bad about it....just curious about the whole thing. Thanks for your thoughts.