Buying Diamonds | Samuelson's Media

September 4, 2010

Selling Your Diamonds

There’s a lot info online about buying diamonds, but not as much about selling unwanted diamonds and jewelry. Whether you’re in Baltimore, Maryland, Washington DC or Virginia, we strive to make selling your diamonds, gold or estate jewelry as easy and as educational as possible. It does not have to be an intimidating experience at all. In fact, here at Samuelson’s Diamonds, we explain, with full disclosure, the market on your diamond, what you can expect to get for it, and WHY.

Round Brilliant Cut Diamond

The price given to a customer when buying their diamond is determined by these factors: (in no particular order)

1) Quality: cut, color and clarity. Most often, people have appraisals and lab reports with diamond grades on them. However, one must remember that an appraisal or lab report is only subjective – it’s done by humans, not a machine. The question that I personally ask myself when buying a diamond is simply, “Is this a diamond that I want to own?” And that can just be a feeling or something about that diamond that I like (or don’t like). For all of you in the market to buy a diamond, that’s a question that you should be asking yourself as I explained in this blog post, “How To Look At A Diamond”.

2) Shape: Most people do not realize that some diamond shapes are in demand and some are just not. Rounds are always in demand and salable, but marquises and heart shapes are generally not in demand. (until you get to larger sizes) So, for example, you will get more when you are selling a 2 carat G, SI1 quality round diamond, and not as much for the same exact size and quality in a marquise diamond. It’s not to say that there is anything wrong with your diamond, it’s just simple economics. If we buy a marquise, our cash will be tied up for a long time since there are few customers buying that diamond shape.

3) Carat Weight: It’s pretty obvious that a 3 carat diamond is generally going to be worth more than a 1 carat diamond. Of course, if the larger diamond is very poor quality, it may not be desirable at all. One thing that diamond sellers should be aware of when talking about carat weight – the center/primary diamond is where the main value is. So a 3 carat solitaire diamond will be worth more than a ring with ten diamonds that equal 3 carats TOTAL WEIGHT. Just something to think about.

4) Inventory Levels: If we have 20 one carat princess cut diamonds in stock, and you have a one carat princess cut diamond to sell, we may simply not need your stone in our inventory. Our store inventory often reflects overall diamond market levels in certain shapes and qualities, so sometimes a common diamond that is very easily accessible will not bring as much.

5) Market conditions: Although the diamond market has actually held strong and steady in this very difficult economic climate, there are still a lot of diamond suppliers that are either: a) holding too much inventory or b) are short on cash and are owed a lot of money from failing retailers. In 2008 and 2009 here a some companies that either filed for Chapter 11 or simply went under – Fortunoff, Whitehall Jewelers, Robbin Bros, Robbins Diamonds and Robbins Delaware Diamonds, Shane Co, Bailey, Banks and Biddle (a division of Zale Corp), David Webb, Fred Leighton – you get the picture. So the bottom line is that if you have CASH, you can get pretty good prices on diamonds. And something very important to remember is that we can’t buy diamonds from the public for more than what we can acquire them for in the open market.

That said, the good news is that we always have the cash to buy your diamonds! (or gold/estate jewelry). And we pay the most for diamonds in Baltimore, Washington DC and Northern Virginia.

All of these factors are explained to each and every customer that we buy jewelry from so it makes sense, so please don’t hesitate to contact us or stop by to sell your jewelry!

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November 30, 2009

Buying and Selling Diamonds

Filed under: Jewelry — Tags: baltimore diamonds, buying diamonds, diamond cutting, diamonds, emerald cuts, gia, maryland diamonds, princess cut diamonds, radiant cuts, round diamonds, selling diamonds, virgina diamonds, washington dc diamonds, washington diamonds — Ron @ 5:06 pm

I wanted to talk about what we do best here at Samuelson’s Diamonds…buying and selling diamonds. We specialize in diamonds – round diamonds, emerald cuts, radiant cuts, princess cut diamonds and everything in between. Unlike other jewelry stores selling diamonds, we hand pick each diamond that we sell, whether we bought from an individual, estate, or from a supplier. One of my favorite things to do after buying a diamond is to study it and recut it to “Samuelson’s Diamonds Standards.” A large number of diamonds we see are just not cut right, which is a very important to the fire and brilliance of a diamond. I’m not talking about the the way some companies market “Ideal Cuts”. You hear that everywhere, but who really knows what it means? Sure it has a little to do with certain parameters like depth and table percentage, but we work very closely with our cutters to insure that our diamonds look just right to us and then to our customers.

Let me share an example with you. Recently we bought a 2.62 emerald cut diamond from one of our customers. It was beautiful color, the clarity was nice, but upon further inspection, we thought we could improve the clarity, cut and overall appearance. This stone was already a VS1, but it had some tiny chips on the girdle and crown facets of the diamond. So we took it to our master cutter and let him work his magic. What was the windup? We came out with a 2.57 D color (the highest diamond color grade given by the GIA) and VVS1 clarity. (the highest diamond clarity grade besides Flawless). And we only lost five points. So there you have an example where we sacrificed a small amount of weight loss for a higher clarity grade and better overall brilliance. Take a look at a picture of this diamond with two matching .95 carat emerald cut diamonds on the side.

2.57 Center D VVS1 and matching sides

Sometimes, we take an even bigger weight loss to make the stone a different cut completely or even a different color! Check out this video from a while back where we took an 8.57 off color round cut diamond and turned it into a 6.86 Fancy Yellow Radiant Cut diamond. On that one we took about a 20% weight loss, but it was well worth it. Some diamonds on the other hand are not worth recutting, as they won’t hold enough weight. For example, it’s not always worth taking a loss on a 1.25 carat diamond, as the value will substantially decline once the stone goes below 1 carat, even if the diamond quality is a little better. So it’s really just a simple optimization of having a bigger diamond, or a smaller diamond that is better quality. And we always go with the option that will yield the highest ROI. (return on investment)

However, this stuff takes a lot of experience, patience and guts because once that diamond goes on the wheel, you are taking a chance. Fortunately for us, we use the best and most respected diamond cutters in the world that make our diamonds not only the best diamonds in Baltimore, Washington or Virginia, but in the the best diamonds in the world!