Many of you were kind enough to respond to my thread begging for advice on a necklace I got for my girlfriend. I bought it, in a couple of weeks I’ll see whether she shoves it down my throat or takes her clothes off.
So, now I’m pleading for more advice. Where can I find nice jewelry at stunningly low prices? Things are getting fairly serious. Even though I don’t believe in marriage (THAT’S a whole topic in itself) I might want to get her a nice ring sometime in the next few months.
So, I’m prostrating myself, asking for top-secret connections from jewelry nuts. I wanna buy a $3000 ring for $150. Where do I go? Who do I sleep with?
I agree with caircair. I used to work at a pawn shop and I’ve purchased all my wife’s jewelry there. She doesn’t mind, so neither do I. After working there for 5 years, I learned about the incredible markups jewelry stores use. Sometimes as much as 1000%! Another good thing about pawn shops is variety. Most jewelry will carry “classic” stuff, but try to keep up with current design trends.
ebay.com, local ads in the paper, or if you really want to get the real stuff & get it dirt cheap, find a shop that buys gold & silver for scrap. The stuff is bought based on the market price of the metals, which is dirt cheap right now.
Always ask for the price spread. Also, they do test metals so you know they are real. Shucks, he said he would only pay me $1 a point for a real dia, thats $100 a carat, would sell for about 10% more.
I would suggest that if you’re going to buy a ring from an ad in the paper that you have the seller meet you at a local jewlery store. Have the store test the stone to see if it’s real before you buy. Pawn shops also have a thing (don’t know the name, but I call it a diamond gun) that they can touch the stone with to see if it’s real. Just so you don’t get scammed.
Sure I got scammed once. Jewelry said 18k on it but when I took it to the guy who buys metals, first thing he said was ‘I saw this before’…which kinda let me know that it wasn’t real. nuts.