If you are looking to sell your jewelry, then you should keep these seven secrets in mind about where to sell diamond jewelry, so you get the best deal.
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but they aren’t always as nice as cold, hard cash. Maybe a loved one who loved jewelry recently passed away. Maybe a partnership didn’t go as planned and you now have a ring you have no use for. Maybe (and with any luck) you just happened upon a collection of fine jewelry that you’d like to trade in.
Whatever your reason, if you’re ready to trade in your old diamonds, or if you need cash quickly, here are the top seven secrets you need to know about where to sell diamond jewelry.
1. Get a Professional Opinion
Before you look into any options for selling your jewelry, you need to seek out a professional opinion. In other words, go to a jeweler and get your diamond appraised.
If you’ve ever worked with diamonds before, you’ve at least heard of the 4 Cs of diamond quality. These are carat, color, clarity, and cut. Getting a professional to confirm these details for you will help you get a better handle on what price to list and how you should describe the jewelry to customers.
2. Adjust Your Expectations from Appraisals
Appraisals are necessary for figuring out where to sell your ring and how much you should expect to make, but not because they mirror the market. Your diamond will almost always sell for significantly less than the value it was appraised at.
To avoid disappointment, do some math and figure out a solid estimate of how much you will actually make. You should anticipate earning only 75% of whatever appraisal value the jewelry professional gave you. For example, a ring appraised at $20,000 may only be able to sell for $15,000.
3. Ask for a Local List of Where to Sell Diamond Jewelry
Now that you have a better idea of how much your diamond is worth, you can start narrowing down where to sell it.
General wisdom is that you should try to sell diamonds worth more than $8000 to accredited dealers or through accredited websites. While Facebook Marketplace and eBay are easy online options for making sales, you should look for a company that more specifically deals with jewelry. If you can find a company that specializes in diamonds, you’ll likely have even better luck.
Regardless of cost, though, there is one step you must take if you’re dead set on selling your diamond in person rather than virtually. This step occurs when you take your diamond to the jewelers to get appraised. Specifically, while you’re there, you should ask the jeweler if they have a list of local places that buy diamonds.
Tempting as it may be to take a cross-country road trip for a really good deal, you’ll have better luck financially sticking with locations that are within a few hours of you. Traveling outside of that radius runs the risk of you wasting serious time and gas money without ever making a sale. It’s just as possible that you’ll have poor luck selling your diamond jewelry locally, but at least then you won’t be carting yourself all over the place.
4. Avoid Jewelry Stores
Despite shows like Pawn Stores, pawnshops still carry negative connotations. Most people expect to find cheap but worthless items that store owners will expect you to haggle over.
Whether or not this is true, the expectation is enough to convince many people to convince pawnshops as a last resort. Instead, they’ll seek out reputable jewelry stores.
It may come as a surprise, but this isn’t the way to get the best bang for your buck. Jewelry store resale values are notoriously lower than appraisal values, especially when it comes to diamonds. This makes sense given that, unlike pawn stores or trade-in shops, jewelry stores earn their biggest income from selling brand new and/or specially designed items.
5. Research Your Online Options
Don’t think you’re out of the woods if you’ve decided to go virtual rather than in-person with your sale. Although you probably won’t travel as much, you’ll need to spend much more time on research.
Typing in “sell diamond jewelry online” into any search engine will yield hundreds of thousands of results, but local and international. To avoid overwhelming yourself this way, you should narrow down your search topics. Use terms that are specific to the description of your ring (i.e. the 4 Cs).
6. List on Multiple Sites, But Be Transparent
If you decide to list your jewelry online, don’t limit yourself to just one site. Listing on a variety of sites will get you more visibility in a much smaller timeframe.
The only catch is that you have to specify on each site that the listing exists in multiple places. The reason here is twofold.
First, it keeps buyers from assuming that they’re the only interested parties. Specifying that you’ve crossposted your item guarantees that potential buyers will act more quickly to close a sale. It also builds a reasonable defense against potential buyers who ultimately didn’t make the purchase.
7. Sell Your Cheapest Diamonds for Scrap
If your diamond jewelry is worth less than $1000, you’ll be better off selling it for scrap. The diamond itself may not net much cash this way, but the setting it’s in will.
No jeweler will set a diamond into a band, base, brooch, or bracket that isn’t made of precious metal. That means your diamond jewelry is surrounded by, at the very lowest level, sterling silver.
Sell Your Diamond Jewelry in Chicago
If you live in the Chicago Metropolitan Area, you have dozens of local options to pick from for selling your diamond jewelry.
Whether you need to know what type of diamond you’re working with or where to sell diamond jewelry online and in-person, we have everything you need. Check out our blog today for the best tips on selling your old jewelry to make a quick buck.
