It’s About the Diamond, Dood.

I got a call the other day from a guy in Florida who was looking for a diamond and wanted to know if I could help him.  These kinds of calls fall into one of two(2) categories:

1. I am sincerely looking for your help because I feel you know things I don’t and I want to get the “right” diamond for me.  Help me with that…will you?
2. I’ve studied diamonds online…visited with several jewelers…and there isn’t anything you know that I don’t so let me tell you what I want and then give me your price.

I don’t talk very long with guy #2 because he’s too cool for words and he will never understand that professional jewelers can and want to be his Hired Guns.  Unless you’re in the business of buying and selling diamonds all day…every day…you’ll never know what we know.  They aren’t secrets as much as they are lessons learned…diamond wisdom you could call it.  Same thing with accountants, doctors and even (gulp) lawyers.

Turns out this man physically looked at over 100 diamonds the day before.  Not online…but actually looked at them with his own eyes.  That my friends is what we in the trade call a sh*tload of diamonds!

I irritated him almost instantly because when he told me that I said, “You looked at more than 100 diamonds and you didn’t buy one?  Why not?”

I honestly don’t remember what he said because it was a confusing non-answer about “being sure,” and “I want to know what the best deal is,” and “I KNOW diamonds,” and blah, blah, blah.  As soon as someone tells me they “know diamonds” I can be sure that they don’t.

I don’t mind giving advice when I’m talking to guy #1 above…I do it all day long.  However, I’m a bit more blunt with the second guy because if it’s true that he “knows diamonds” then we should be able to talk turkey.

The rest of the conversation went something like this:

Me: “Why are you calling me?  Do you want me to get you a diamond?”

Guy: ”I want a 1 1/4-1 1/2 round brilliant, nice cut, F-G color and somewhere in the VS/SI range.”

Me: ”Did you see any of these in your 100?”

Guy: ”Well, yeah.  And they were all really well priced.  I just want to see if you can do any better.”

Me: ”Yeah…no.  Adding another 1 or 2 or 100 diamonds into the mix isn’t going to do either of us any good.  Just buy one of those diamonds.  I’m sure you’ll be happy in the end.”

Silence.  A little more silence.

Me: ”Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Guy: “So…am I better off with a GIA certificate or an EGL?”

The Heart of the Matter:

And there you have it.  This guy couldn’t pull the trigger because he didn’t know which diamond was “better” based on what a certificate said.  I can’t say why he didn’t get a satisfactory answer from his diamond source…but that’s why he was calling me…and honestly it was nice to hear a little bit of guy #1 in his voice.

So I gave him this bit of advice that helped him feel a little better and I’d like to pass on to you here:

LOOK at the diamonds with your own eyes and forget what the certificate says.  A certificate can validate the asking price for a diamond but it shouldn’t take the place of your own senses.

Somehow we’ve gone too far in terms of what a bunch of written information can give us.  There is nothing more important when making a buying decision in the diamond world than the way a diamond LOOKS.  Trust your eyes, fella’s.  If you need or want more information talk to your jeweler but try desperately not to get caught up in the cert hunt.

The diamond…not the cert…is the symbol of your everlasting commitment to the woman of your dreams.

You will rarely if ever look at that certificate again…but the diamond?  You’ll see that for the rest of your life.  (And she certainly isn’t going to be wearing a certificate!)