Not new thread-worthy by any means, so it fits in here. Diamonds. What a scam. what a joke. Please, dont ever buy diamonds for your wife, they are worthless almost as soon as you leave the jeweler. Case in point: Im an attorney, a criminal defense attorney primarily, which means my clients are almost always broke. I stupidly did some work for a guy without being paid up front and low and behold when his bill came due he had no money so...he offers his diamond earrings and after deciding that if I didnt take these as payment I would most likely receive nothing at all, agreed to accept them under the condition that they be professionally graded and locally appraised. Both were done to my satisfaction, with certificates to prove authenticity. Appraisal comes back at $9,400.00 retail value, which is close to what he paid for them. A bit of research on my end indicates that wholesale value of diamonds (what retailers pay) is about 1/3 of retail value (did you get that, they are marked up 300%....suckers!!) so I figure that I am going to be completely reasonable when I go to these places and try to move these for between $2,500 and $3,000. Boy was I wrong. Each diamond is 1 full carat, set in platimum (which I guess is pretty nice) I have placed them on craigslist and ebay, numerous times and there is no interest, even at a listing price of 3K and pics of the appraisal and grade - and I wouldnt expect there to be much, who is buying diamonds sight unseen off ebay?). So off the the local jewlers in the Fox Valley and Milwaukee who advertise that they give the most for jewelry, etc. To this point I have been offered a max $875.00 total for the set. That's it, that's all they are worth. Each place I go examines them, confirms that they are what the appraisal says they are, offers me next to nothing. I question them about what the retail price is, and they dont dispute my appraisal. On guy said he would simply put them in his case and list them for close to the appraised value. I ask, why such a low offer then? And each jeweler has said the exact same thing. "we reference the book" and that dictates what we can offer. This last place I asked what they would do with them, keeping in mind that these earrings were sold from a local jeweler as they are just 2 years ago and they told me they would be sold to a third party, tossed into a vat where the platinum/gold/whatever would be melted down and the diamonds would remain on top and then by plucked out and resold to wholesalers. That seemed like a stretch since they were already good enough to be sold in a store as they are. Luckily for me my wife thinks diamonds are a waste of money before we got married, so she literally owns no diamonds, but this has been a huge eye opener for me on what a scam diamonds are. There is no market for them, they are not able to be sold to anyone at all. They are worthless. If you have a $10,000 diamond on your finger, you are kidding yourself. I could find a shiny rock on the shores of Lake Michigan and set it in a ring and claim its a special $2,000.00 diamond and be closer to its actual resale value than the person who has a similar size actual diamond on their finger that they paid $10,000 for. Ok..Rant over.