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| 14k and 22k yellow gold pin with garnets |
However what many of you don't know is that occasionally I will work on a commission basis to resell significant stones for my customers. What do I mean by significant? In the case of diamonds they have to be over 2 cts, and, unless there is something else interesting about them, preferably of fairly high quality. In the case of colored stones they have to be larger and high quality no matter what. The reason for this is that I work on a commission basis on these items and I need to make enough to make it worth my while to take time out from making and selling my jewelry.
I recently had a customer come in with just such a project. When the customer first told me about the stone, I assumed
when he told me that it was a 20 ct. diamond that he had no idea of what he was
talking about in terms of the size.
However it sounded like a project I might be interested in (even if it
was nowhere near 20 ct) so I told him that I was happy to look at the
stone. When they actually came in with
the stone however, I was a little taken aback at the size of it. It was a pear shape and the stone was so large that the Leveridge
gauge I use to measure stones wouldn’t actually measure the length of it,
making it difficult to estimate the size.
The customer claimed she had been told that it was 25 ct.---it was her
mother’s originally—but there was no way for me to know for sure as long as it
was in the setting. Now mind you the
quality of this stone is nowhere near my quality range.
It was an I1 clarity and it had strong fluorescence. The color grade was good however and it was
most assuredly big---so big that I had never held a diamond that large in my
hands---which qualified it for the "interesting" part of my criteria.
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17.68 ct. pear shaped diamond ring next to a .75 ct. (center stone) ring+(2).JPG) |
The customer and his wife had gone downtown to a local, very
high end and big name jewelry store where they had been made an offer on the
stone but they complained they didn’t like the gentleman they were talking to (who I believe was the owner
of the company) and refused his offer of $50,000. I told them I had no idea what the stone
might really generate because it was out of my normal range of goods (both in
terms of the clarity grade and the size) and that because of the size there
were no diamond price charts one could look at to get an idea of the value. But I discussed with them what the minimum
amount they might like was and the fee I would charge for my work on selling it.
In working with one of the dealers I sell to occasionally
the initial price he was talking about was far above the initial offers but we
still didn’t know what the actual weight was and our measurements were yielding
estimates much lower than the customer’s belief that it was 25 ct. So while we were initially thinking it was at least
20 ct. we knew we had to find out the actual weight. So we popped out the stone finally. It weighed out at 17.68 ct. Still the biggest stone I’ve ever held!
Unfortunately the price came down a bit once we realized it
wasn’t over 20 ct., but for this stone I was able to get $80,000 ($30,000 more
than the other offer made) for my customers after my commission, which they
have happily accepted.
Now I won’t do this kind of thing for people for ordinary
smaller diamonds because, quite frankly, it isn’t worth my time unless the
piece is unusual and I can make a reasonable commission. But if you happen to have a larger diamond
you have inherited or an unusual colored gemstone, please come by and see me.
Perhaps we can all make some money together.
The picture of the piece of mine at the top of the page was a very old piece of mine which is why it was made with 14k gold instead of my usual 18k.
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