I see all this jewelry advertised on TV at huge discounts,
are they really a good deal?
Most of the jewelry that we see that has been bought from television shows
are
promotional grade.
Promotional grade in the jewelry business means just that,
jewelry that is made to sell on promotions.
Several things that we notice when
appraising this jewelry is that it is usually made
too light weight for
long-term wear.
The gemstones are mostly very low grade, the labor is very high
production,
and usually from a far eastern country.
The jewelry is shown greatly enlarged and unrealistic retail prices are given as examples.
To further
complicate matters,
alot of retailers tend to give high appraisals on jewelry
that they appraise,
thus making it seem like the jewelry purchased was indeed a
real bargain.
The truth of the matter is the jewelry is cheap and cheap jewelry
does not last.
When it comes time for
us to repair the piece,
we have to tell the customer that
the repair won’t make the jewelry any better.
In many cases we advise the customer that we think the jewelry should be worn occasionally.
If worn everyday
it will not last.
There are a couple of tricks used to market these lightweight,
far-eastern made jewelry products.
Rhodium plating (white plating) is used to
make diamonds look bigger than they really are
and to make parts of the ring
look as if they have diamonds when they do not.
Another way they try to sell this
product to you,
is they use information that suggests the jewelry is special,
when in fact the information suggests the opposite.
Examples:
"These Mozambique garnets are imported just for this special piece of jewelry."
"We
have a limited supply of these genuine pink sapphire rings for you to purchase."
Mozambique is a source for garnets and produces low grade to fine garnets.
The
pink sapphire rings were made with mass production and if they sell, they will
be back.
Low quality is easily sold on TV because you can’t feel the weight of
the mounting,
or tell the true quality of the stones.