Hint : It ain't 500%

[BrandiR]

Another thread made me wonder, but I didn't want to take it off topic.

Jewelry - what do you think the retail mark up is? I know the answer, I'm just curious about what most people think.

If you have experience or personal knowledge of other retail items people seem to be mistaken on, discuss!

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[Pythonfriend]

i have a small collection of diamonds, i got them from different sources, including wholesale. when i look at what jewellers want for them, im thinking its more like 1000%, but then i dont know how much work goes into making a ring and how much weight in gold is added.

especially for smaller diamonds, the price difference between wholesale and jewellers is really dramatic. when i buy a diamond for 50 euros, the jewelry i see with a comparable one ranges from 500-1000 euros. but then, i dont know what the setting costs.

i know one cheap way to get jewelry is to buy loose stones wholesale and pay a goldsmith to custom-make the jewelry. big online vendors like renesim.com are also quite cheap.

[BrandiR]

I'm going to speak in terms of dollars because I'm American and I'm too lazy and lacking in math skills to figure out the conversion.

You are correct that the mark up is higher on smaller stones. But it is nowhere near 1000%. On larger stones (over a carat) it's not even 100%. I deal in high quality diamonds now but I've sold crap in the past and I'll concede that you get jacked a little harder on those, but not to the tune of 1000% what the jeweler paid for them.

I will also give you the benefit of the doubt that overseas it may be as you describe, but it absolutely is not the case in the U.S. Does that mean there are NO US jewelers who do this? I can't say for sure. I can say for sure it's not the norm.

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[Mike41793]

I got so many diamonds that I need to where an oxygen mask, too much carbon is all up in here

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[MasonC2K]

Standard retail markup is 300-400% for most things. If Jewelry is different I wouldn't know.

[bcr229]

I would guess 75-200%.

Firearms I can tell you it's 10-15%, 20% on a good day, for new guns. Used figure it's 50-100%. Ammo is 10%, optics and other accessories 25-40%.

[BrandiR]

Standard retail markup is 300-400% for most things. If Jewelry is different I wouldn't know.

On average it's 250-300%, so you're pretty close.

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[Pythonfriend]

for me, the apparent price markup may also be increased because of some of the wholesale access i have.

where i live, once a year we have the biggest trade show for minerals, fossils, and gemstones in europe. the biggest wholesalers from around the planet are there. you choose cut, color and size, they get it for you, and from a lot of up to 1000 pieces they put 50 or so on the table and you make your picks. some jewelers travel to these trade shows to buy, or they travel to Antwerp or Cape town or Tel Aviv to buy. but most jewelers dont jump through these hoops, which means they have an additional middleman.

and, as i said, i have no clue how much work goes into making a ring and how many grams of gold are in there.

that being said, diamonds are quite overpriced anyway due to the monopoly of de beers, which is why i shifted my attention to synthetic diamonds.

[BrandiR]

DeBeers doesn't control the diamond market anymore.

I'm not a fan of synthetics, probably because of my place in the diamond/jewelry industry. There is a reason an ideal cut D/Flawless diamond costs a lot of money. They're rare.

When you just go make one because you can't afford the natural version, you're devaluing the natural one. In my opinion it's the equivalent of buying a knock off Hermes for $50 or putting one of those body kits on your car to make it look like a higher end model (I don't know a lot about this, I wasn't really paying attention when it was being explained to me).

I'm not a snob. I can't afford most of what I sell. But I'd rather not have it than fake it. Unless we're talking about not-gray hair. Then I'd rather fake it.

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[Pythonfriend]

the synthetics im talking about are not fake, in that the material they consist of is an actual diamond crystal with the same chemical and physical properties. im not talking about cubic circonia or white sapphire or stuff like that. simple tests based on thermal conductivity or optical density see them as real, you need to go deeper and look for microscopic inclusions or fluorescence to see that they are lab diamonds. but then, all the bigger ones have a laser inscription anyway.

they are difficult to create, and some are not even cheaper because they come in very rare fancy colors. white ones are even harder to make than fancy colors, they require the vapor deposition method. the others are made in a high-pressure-high-temperature cell that is being compressed by a set of steel anvils pushing on a smaller set of tungsten anvils. both methods often require weeks to grow a diamond.

i like the idea of not having diamond mining involved. with whats going on in diamond mining when it comes to poverty and dangerous working conditions, i see no problem with devaluing natural diamonds.

last time i checked the de beers monopoly is still working well. at least all the rough they stored away is still safely stored away. the business model was to create scarcity on the market by controlling 90% or more of the trade, and each year they would get in tons of rough, but only sell a few hundred kilograms. today their market control may have diminished to 60% or 70%, but the other players seem to do something similar. anyway i dont see the prices coming down, and if that monopoly really would fall, there would be a global drop in prices. did you know that the amount of gemstone quality diamonds that is mined is 10 times larger than the amount of gemstone quality rubys? most diamonds still dont reach the market and never get cut.

de beers also buys and dismantles small startups that aim to produce synthetics and invests in testing procedures that can distinguish them from naturals. and there is some market pressure involved, most dealers stay away from synthetics, out of 10 diamond traders only one or two have the real synthetics. you will find more traders that also sell color-enhanced naturals and diamond simulants, hunting down the real HPHT or vapor deposition lab diamonds is half the fun of collecting.

simulants are boring, i have a cubic circonia brilliant with a 3 centimeter diameter and ive seen synthetic sapphires of enormous propotions. synthetic sapphires are getting so large, soon they can cut a champagne bottle out of one.