The 83 million dollar question

News of recent record-breaking diamond prices has saturated the media. But what effect will these prices have for the typical retail jeweller?

First, let’s get things in perspective. $83 million for the 59.60 carat “Pink Star” diamond is one heck of a lot of money. These are the playthings for the ultra-wealthy; people who own private jets, mega-yachts and Picassos. Most of us cannot even dream of making a purchase like this. But to be fair, at this level of the game it is more about moving money into tangible assets. The market for extreme high-end diamonds is stable. Buyers for these stones are not bothered by the economic fluctuations that the rest of us must face, they are immune.

Most retail jewellers will never sell a stone of this value. In fact, most of us will never even see stones like these. So what does it matter to us? How can this help our business?<

The publicity that follows sensational diamond sales brings attention to diamonds in general. This is a good thing, especially right at the beginning of the holiday selling season. The attitude of the public toward diamonds has been lacklustre for the past few years. But now there is a buzz again, especially about coloured diamonds.

This would be a good time to feature coloured diamonds. While rare colours and large stones are unbelievably expensive, many coloured diamonds are surprisingly affordable if you stick with smaller sizes or lighter saturation. Even vivid colours can be reachable as long as your stay with smaller sizes. At the Bangkok show last February a dealer was offering suites of multi-colour diamonds at around $1000 per carat for groups of 7 – 10 stones per carat. Perfect for interesting designer goods.

Pink diamonds of any size are expensive. A 1 carat stone can easily cost over $100,000 and even a half carat can take $20-30,000 out of your pocket.   If you have the clientele, this is the time to go for it!   As an alternative, Gemisis has lab-created pink diamonds at a fraction of the cost of a natural pink diamond. For folks with even smaller budgets there are HTHP colour enhanced diamonds and even colour-coated diamonds.

For those dealing in silver or fashion jewellery there are even more opportunities. Anytime extremely valuable jewels make the news there is a surge in sales of replicas. Just look at the frenzy for synthetic Sapphire surrounded by CZ’s copying Princess Diana’s engagement ring. Now is the time to bring out those horrendous “Pink Ice” CZ’s that have been sitting in your back room. There will never be a better time to move them than right now.

Sales of world-class rare jewels always create a wave of excitement. Ride that wave!