'£6,000 profit buying cheap engagment rings - surely not' blog discussion

jamesd

Once you get the diamond right then you have to wonder about the certificate, if any. AGS and GIA are two of the reliable ones, EGL and most others aren't reliable and can be expected to over-grade. And stores using only their own descriptions can be assumed to be over-grading as well.

Once you get that right you then have to consider the cut. Not all round brilliant diamonds are really well cut or anything close to it so you can get poor-appearing diamonds even though the minimal specs on a certificate say they are OK. The angles on the certificate can help to judge this, though they won't be for every facet so they can also be misleading if some are good and some not.

There are some tools at pricescope.com that are useful and you can find sensible discussion there as well. It's worth running the numbers through the Holloway Cut Adviser as well.

Declaration of interest: never made money from diamonds but I have considered and discussed becoming a retailer for one of the high end specialty cutters some years back. I've met Mr. Holloway and had a fair number of discussions with him over several years about diamond cut.

anewman

People are also forgetting the popular Amazon marketplace scams that were around a while ago, usually involving high priced items and often involving other payment methods such as Western Union. End result no item, no money.

lizzycg

Crucial information - in the product description towards the bottom of the page these diamonds are described as 'clarity enhanced' which means that they are injected with a glass like substance to hide the natural inclusions, these clarity enhanced stones whilst being natural diamonds are valued at a fraction of the cost of a natural untreated stone. The full retail prices quoted are fantasy figures . One of the stones in the photo appears to be a good white colour but the description has it as a 'K' colour which is classified as faint colour on the GIA colour scale . Overall it is a pointless exercise to compare these clarity enhanced Diamonds with the cost of natural untreated Diamonds. Also a single stone of 1.50 carats falls into a totally different price category to a ring which has 20 -30 stones totalling 1.50 carats.
My husband and i are both in the jewellery trade .

Wig

Martin,

I'd like to think you have a good reason for making it an affiliate link (if indeed that is what it is), but now that we have basically got to the bottom of this SCAM could you please ammend your blog, to remove the link and warn people not to buy these (at the begining of your blog)?

Of particular concern is that the diamond talked about the one for £1,460, is now not showing, has it been sold? To an MSE idiot?

jamesd

Wig, I wouldn't say it's a scam, just Martin demonstrating how easy it is to get caught out when you don't know much about diamonds.

For someone who doesn't know much about diamonds and doesn't mind buying from overseas suppliers I suggest the Pricescope search and picking diamonds with good HCA cut scores. It's not perfect because of non-uniform cutting but it'll be way better than the decisions that someone not familiar with diamonds would make. Some of the vendors there do have UK sites, so buying via UK site of a listed vendor would be another option. Or use the AGS cut grade and computer-projected light performance or broader GIA cut grade, both of which have the advantage of full diamond measurements to use.

Wig

jamesd wrote: »

Wig, I wouldn't say it's a scam, just Martin demonstrating how easy it is to get caught out when you don't know much about diamonds.

Of course it's a scam if it could never be realistically valued at £14,000 pounds. You're not saving £12,500 you're just buying a ring possibly worth £1,460

jamesd

Wig, that could be a genuine 90% reduction in asking price, which isn't a scam even if the original price wouldn't have worked for a well informed buyer. It is a way for a buyer to get caught out, though.

For a scam I'd expect something like undisclosed clarity enhancement or misleading grading in a description or certificate. Or simply not being the diamond described or on the certificate.

Wig

In my books it's a scam.

samarajames

1) Clarity enhanced - drastically reduces the value
2) "Certified" - but who by? GIA, IGI, HRD or AGS fine, anyone else not!
3) Some of these show SI3 clarity - which is actually I1 - Visible inclusions. Also shows it is not one of the better certifiers as they don't use SI3.
4) No information on Fluorescence, "Strong" will drastically reduce the price
5) No information on cut grade, again can have a dramatic effect on the price.

Basically the "original prices" are completely bogus, assuming the worst of all the above factors they are in fact expensive for what they are...

disfeb

Does anyone have any advice on the best way to sell a diamond engagement ring. It's around 10 years old.

Thanks