Unpleasant facts do not ‘attach’ themselves to material objects.
They are put there by superstitious people who like to believe that
their misfortunes are generated by curses and jinxes instead of their
own actions. When we take responsibility for our actions and future,
superstitions fall by the wayside, and we take control of our lives
to make them better on our own.
Lee Cornelius
Vegas jewelers
Stephen -
Of course, if you are going to sell the jewelry in its original form
to someone local, you should give them the option of knowing the
story behind the jewelry, assuming the person who sold it to you is
fine with you doing so. If someone is interested in the piece who has
shown respect for the deceased family in the past, then they would
surely want to know the story.
Lee Cornelius
Vegas Jewelers
To me, striving to be honest has nothing to do with whether I will be found out. But it has everything to do with "Can I live with myself once I have said/done this?"
This week our local radio station interviewed me. Afterwards, the
radio guy gave me a little lecture on advertising and marketing. He
talked about what does not work, what works and what works better.
For an example he talked about how diamonds have been marketed. Years
ago the ads were about the “Four Cs” and attempted to make the
consumer more well informed. Now “A Diamond is Forever” sells many
more diamonds using emotion as the hook.
I know he is right. Emotion gets through to the audience more
powerfully than technicalities. To motivate our customers to actually
buy something and make our art a viable vocation, what we make and how
we present it has to have some kind of an attraction. Is it magic? Is
it a flim-flam? I suppose a happy balance is possible that is both
emotionally stimulating and still honest and responsible.
Stephen Walker
Now, people like stories, stories sometimes are just stories, and are not the truth. "God" made everything, we have temporary possession, and it might be a far stretch to assume that we can have a negative effect on something God made greater than the inherent good contained within by the fact of what or who created it. So is your belief system a downward spiral, or do you believe in inherent greater good contained within everything regardless of how it appears?
Once again, it is not my belief system to which I was referring, it
is the customer’s. The answer to the question of “what is to be
gained by passing on what seems like an interesting story, or some
might consider gossip” has been answered many times by companies
such as De Beers, who romances diamonds like nobody else in history.
If a retailer wants to sell diamonds, then “passing on interesting
stories” is by far the best method of doing so. Selling estate
diamonds provides even more opportunities to “romance the stones.”
For instance, many of the more superstitious, or should I say
spiritual customers who attach a negative connotation, or "vibe"
to a divorce diamond will look more closely at the possibility of
purchasing one if you suggest the idea that they themselves, or some
feng shui, rei ki, or “woo-woo” master of their choice, “clear” the
diamond(s) of all negative energy before utilizing it in a
completely new design that is filled with positive energy. Whether
the retailer or salesperson believes in the customer’s spirituality
or not, the customer certainly does. Perhaps they also believe they
can clear out enough energy to have a positive effect on the previous
owners’aura, or something. That could be “doing something for the
greater good.” Who am I to scoff at others’spiritual beliefs? Who am
I to violate those beliefs by withholding the provenance of the
stone? To me, that would be as evil as offering a Muslim person a
pork rind cracklin’ while telling them it is, in fact, a potato chip
if I thought it would sell them the whole bag.
Most of my spiritual customers have the deep belief that rocks and
crystals can pick up energy, positive and negative. It doesn’t
matter what my beliefs are because I’m not the one to make the
decision for them. But it does matter that I respect their beliefs
and take them seriously. Some of them believe in God, others believe
in a Goddess and a Horned God. Still others believe in an enormous
pantheon of them. The ones who believe that a divorce stone is just
too much “bad luck” for them will always return to me to spend their
money on a new stone because of my honesty and respect for their
beliefs. So, while spilling the beans about an estate diamond’s
history may spoil the sale of that particular stone, being up front
about it opens the next door to an unused one. It also opens the door
to their other spiritual friends who also appreciate honesty in this
industry.
There will always (in my lifetime, at least), be plenty of new and
estate diamonds to go around. Meanwhile, I will take every measure
to instill consumer confidence in myself and this industry by
respecting the consumer’s needs. I believe that, in turn, increases
their respect for me. It may not make me the wealthiest man in the
business, but I eat well, have a roof over my head, several quirky
collections and can smile at the mirror in the morning after a very
good night’s sleep.
James S. Duncan, G.G.
James in SoFL
Most of my spiritual customers have the deep belief that rocks and crystals can pick up energy, positive and negative.
I have customers who have similar beliefs, and I do not scoff at
them, but I do point out that we as humans can pray for each other.
Rocks don’t. We have consciousness, rocks don’t,we have creative
thought, rocks don’t. A rock never invented or created anything.
Every spiritual or religious “leader” I have heard of has said things
I agree with, and some I disagree with. There is always some measure
of truth mixed in with questionable beliefs or practices. I pose to
customers that while we attribute whatever concept we hold to imbue a
material with attributes, it is a transference, a symbol or
representation of something that the material may or may not actually
contain.
I never met a rock that would supply me with the emotional support I
need. I do have friends and relatives who can be there for me. My
customers respond very positively to me, as I believe what we really
want and need is to feel like we are making a connection with another
human who can recognize where we are what we are going through, what
we are feeling. "What we are looking for, is what we are looking
with. Most of what we do, is interact with other humans, and we can
believe that what we are doing is important, and the human relations
are a subtext, or we can believe that the connections are what is
important, and the activity is the subtext.
Consciousness experiencing consciousness, The time it takes for what
your eye sees to be processed by your brain means that we are always
seeing what has already happened, the past. By virtue of the fact
that whatever glue keeps the rock together is the glue that holds all
physical reality together, “truth” is not contained is anything in
the physical realm.
What we are perceiving with, not what we are perceiving.
Richard Hart
1.legacy: money or property left to someone by a will or a bequest,
anything handed down from an ancestor.
2.provenance: origin, derivation; (where the stone was mined, where
the ring was made)
3.ethics: conforming to the standards of conduct of a given
profession or group.
4.gossip: a person who chatters or repeats idle talk or rumors esp.
about private affairs of others.
The only definition above that fits the original post, is #4, by my
understanding of the accurate use of words and concepts defined by
Webster’s dictionary.
The main irritant to my mind is someone trying to try to relate their
opinion as if it is a matter of ethics. Informing someone who owned
any physical property is by the above definition not agreed upon as a
standard of how professionals conduct business in any business I know
of. Objects attain more value when resold, if it is known and can be
proven, that the object was owned previously by an athlete, movie
star, politician rock star, ect to add value to the price.
I can’t believe that this thread is still going on. Yes, perhaps this
thread has become about ethics. However, telling a customer or not
telling a customer a story about a previous owner of a 1/2 carat
diamond is not about ethics. What you are doing in telling the story
is that you are passing on gossip about the previous owner of the
stone. Does the stone have some intrinsic value because the previous
owner was notorious or famous in some way? Telling the story of the
stone as you know it is really gossip no matter who it is about.
Society today is overwhelmed with gossip and quasi legitimate
"facts".
So many people out there are right about this issue on all sorts of
levels. But the bottom line is, if you are telling a story for what
ever reason you are adding that to the sale. Is it really
necessary? You are selling a commodity, a 1/2 carat Diamond.
That is the point of the original inquiry of this thread from my
understanding. Do you need to pass on gossip to sell the stone? Why
get involved in gossip and create a potential embarrassment to the
seller, the buyer and yourself.
Be realistic, if the Diamond had been worn by the Queen of Sheba and
you had a photo of her wearing the thing, then perhaps you could sell
the story, that is the point of provenance. Then, you are really
selling the story, not the Diamond. I quess the jeweler needs to ask
themsele [ here is the ethics], am I a jeweler selling a diamond or
a salesperson selling a story. This is just 2 more cents, take it or
not.
Unpleasant facts do not 'attach' themselves to material objects. They are put there by superstitious people who like to believe that their misfortunes are generated by curses and jinxes instead of their own actions. When we take responsibility for our actions and future, superstitions fall by the wayside, and we take control of our lives to make them better on our own.
You are right in that facts do not of themselves “attach” to any
material object. Facts just are. Murder in the house? Fact. That it
is bad luck to live in it? Meaning attached to it by a person, a
superimposition on the fact, a superstition if you will. But people
rarely see things as they are, as mere facts. All of us have
beliefs, and we all take our beliefs very seriously irrrespective of
whether anyone else thinks they are valid or not. So I just think
its safer to respect peoples beliefs in the case of the diamonds. As
for taking responsibility for ones actions, you are absolutely
right. That is in fact what the word “Karma” actually means. It
means “action” and is also used to refer to the consequence of
action. The idea is that whatever occurs in your life is the direct
or indirect consequence of your own past actions and that therefore
you are the only person responsible for it. That also means that you
are the only person with the power to change it. You create your own
life with your own two hands; it is not someting forced upon you by
another. It would be a wonderful world indeed if all of us did take
responsibility for ourselves and our future.
Raji
4.gossip: a person who chatters or repeats idle talk or rumors esp. about private affairs of others. The only definition above that fits the original post, is #4,
No. Remembering friends is not “gossip”.
Stephen Walker