Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2007 1:21 am Posts: 99 Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Hello all;
A few months ago I bought 2 pcs of Ruby GF from a respected rough dealer that is a GO member and I will not give their name because I have bought rough from them in the past and still plan to. All of the other material I purchased from this vendor has, what I consider good value. After I cut the 1st pc (about 7.5ct @ $50 per/ct, YES) i ended up with a nice looking 1.85ct heart cut. Then I started reading about GF Ruby value and was dissappointed to hear the $10-$20 per ct CUT value.
I finally asked the vendor and recieved the you get what you pay for answer. I assumed that maybe because I'm not a gem expert that I would just shut up. Now, having read more about glass filled rubies I'm wondering why this vendor would sell these stones at this price. There are pieces of this material on sale today for $50 per caret. Again, I'm wondering if I'm not seeing something here, other than I got screwed. I have had a good relationship with this vendor and it just does not make sense for this vendor to risk their reputation. I need some enlightenment here. I Will turn my ?'s to you that are already enlightened. Thanks to all, bob
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:22 pm Posts: 21602 Location: San Francisco
A vendor is under no obligation to sell something at a low price. Perhaps the vendor also paid top dollar for it and is just trying to recoup. He/she is only obliged to properly represent it.
It is the buyer's responsibility to research prices BEFORE making a purchase.
If you find a source for similar material at a lower price elsewhere, buy it there in the future.
Joined: Mon Oct 17, 2005 2:39 pm Posts: 3528 Location: San Francisco Bay Area, CA
In some jewelry stores, jewelry with GF-rubies sells for regular retail markup prices in the $100s per carat.
It's all about the when and where of who's willing to pay a certain price, I suppose.
That being said, I'd be a little upset too if I was a regular customer of a vendor and given such a short shrift answer... it doesn't sound like great customer service to me. Still, not all GF-ruby is created equal. Maybe this is "high end" stuff... if it looks substantially better than the garden variety stuff out there, that may explain the added cost.
Or, as Barbra said, maybe the dealer is just trying to get back what THEY paid for it... not everyone gets good deals all the time.
It's a wierd world. Just this week we recieved, on memo from a well known diamond supplier, a glass filled ruby set into an elaborate ring. The ruby was about 5 carats; the wholsale COST for the ruby, without the mounting, was $1,070/carat. We screamed and sent it back immidiatly. Perhaps it is a case of diamond dealers venturing into unknown waters? In any case, this is the reason we are gemologists. Ignorence can be extremely expensive in our field.
_________________ It's worth a cup of water in the desert...if you're lucky.
Joined: Fri May 12, 2006 11:24 am Posts: 7523 Location: Rome, Italy
Richard wrote:
a glass filled ruby set into an elaborate ring.
it's happened to me aswell recently to see many of those rings, sometimes with 10k$ of diamonds mounted and "gorgeous" GF rubies, my fear is that somewere there will be someone that will buy them.... ciao alberto
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