Quote:
Originally Posted by hulkrogan
Why is every ring ever bought appraised for way more than it's worth?
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I think its to make a man feel better for spending far too much money on a piece of jewellery. They are literally bad estimates of value, you can go to 3 different jewellers and get 3 different assements of the size, clarity, colour and cut. Its kind of a joke, appraisals are so far off of actual value its amusing to me.
I work at a pawn shop. We had a lady who brought in her custom ring to pawn. She had it made and it was a 3.41 carat diamond appraised at nearly $30,000(bad clarity and colour, as well as a mediocre cut). She had it made so the diamond was loose before it was set into a ring and it was put on an actual diamond scale and weighed out at 3.41 carats. She had it in and out a few times and when she finally left it behind we didn't have the appraisal papers with it.
So, we used our off site jeweller to do an independant appraisal. He estimated the diamond at about 2.6 carats (massive difference) and the appraisal value was $15,000. We immediately went to another jeweller, he appraised it at $18,000 and had the diamond pegged at 2.9 carats, again a big enough difference. Finally we took cut the setting and took the diamond out and weighed it on our diamond scale, it weighed out to 3.41 carats, like the original appraisal we seen. We went down to both jewellers and demand why the difference. The jeweller we use regularly appologized (the one who had it at 2.6 carats) and said it was just a rough estimate and thats how it goes, great definition eh? I have tools to do a rough estimate by measuring the diameter and depth and I had it pegged at about 3.1 carat, the only thing I cant account for is the girdle. The second jeweller who we never used before, accused us of changing the diamonds. So he got a big FU from me. and gets nothing but had things said from me when people ask me about jewellers.
I of course recommend getting rings from pawn shop, because the mark up at jewellers stores is huuuuuuuuuge . I understand people don't like used rings, but buy the ring from a pawn shop for the centre diamond, get it taken out and put into a custom setting and bingo bango you have a new ring, at a cheaper price then a jewellery store. You have to remember alot of of jewellery stores now adays offer trading of diamonds, so even that new ring at the store could be a used diamond as well. She'll never know.