Is consumer demand so slack that big box and now big e-box stores
need to push the product?
Actually this is an indication of just the opposite. If consumer
demand were slack then Amazon
wouldn’t bother selling the product.
I'm sorry but it's hard to swallow the luxury / one of a kind
branding with announcements like this.
Actually it won’t take Amazon long to learn the new lessons and I
wouldn’t be surprised if they started offering their own branded
diamonds (at a premium price of course) within a few years. Also,
selling loose diamonds on the web is not exactly a new idea.
They’re actually way behind the eight ball on this one.
So with a whole bunch of people selling loose diamonds on the web,
and all kinds of people predicting diamond price doomsday, it’s kind
of interesting to note that the price of better color and clarity
diamonds has continued to rise at a steady pace in the last year and
demand continues to be strong (and grow stronger) for higher
color/clarity, better cut and larger goods. Say what you want, but
there’s still good money to be made in a high quality product.
And here’s a little side note about diamond rarity. Diamonds, in and
of themselves, aren’t a particularly rare commodity. However higher
quality
diamonds are. I regularly appraise customer’s stones for them. No
more than 1 in 15-20 falls into the category that I sell in my shop
(D-E-F color, VS or better clarity) (and I am being generous with
that figure as about every fourth one of those that do fall into the
category are brought in by customers I’ve educated about what quality
to buy, but they’ve bought elsewhere). No more than 1 in 250-300
falls into a D-E-F color, VVS or better clarity. I have only
appraised one diamond I called flawless in 30 years and it’s color
wasn’t great. And when it gets to melee goods, no more than 1 in
3-400 stones falls into the category I sell in my shop (again D-E-F
color, VS clarity) and, outside of some Tiffany’s pieces I have
never seen the ideal cut melee that I sell. So while it’s easy to
claim that all diamonds aren’t really rare, high quality diamonds
definitely do fall into that category.
Daniel R. Spirer, G.G.
Daniel R. Spirer Jewelers, LLC
1780 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02140
@Daniel_R_Spirer
www.spirerjewelers.com