Forever Everyday: A Diamond Dealer’s Diary
by Peter Nolan Smith

Part 4.

I work at a ground floor diamond exchange on West 47th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, the diamond capital of the world.

Diamonds come in all shapes, all sizes. The dealers and brokers on the street profess that their stones are no different from those sold at Tiffany’s and Harry Winston’s, but with the smallest amount of gemological acumen, anyone could look at the goods on offer and pick out the good from the dreck. Fortunately, for people in my business, most people don’t have any gemological acumen.

This does not mean that the experts are beyond being fooled.

Last week a couple from Australia were shopping around a ruby they had inherited from a dearly departed relative’s estate. The ruby was a little off-red and most dealers passed on buying the gem, or offered much less than the Aussie couple were expecting. Finally an Indian color stone merchant from Jodphur offered them $9,000 for the three carat ruby.

They produced ID, signed the police report to assure the gem had not been stolen, were paid, and went on their merry way to spend the money in New York. God Bless them, but the deal had gone too smoothly from the Rajastani merchant and he decided to bail out the stone to another dealer.

“How much you want,” this dealer, a guy who came to New York from Bombay, asked.

“I paid $10,000, give me twelve.”

“I like it, but not for 12. I more love it for $10,500.”

The Rajastani gives him the stone at the agreed price, happy that he made $1500 in less than an hour, but the Bombay dealer also senses something suspicious about the ruby. He takes it up to the Gemological Institute, the nation’s most esteemed appraiser of diamonds and semi-precious stones.

A day or two goes by and the GIA report comes back to declare that the ruby is indeed not a ruby. The Bombay dealer is devastated, until being told the stone in question is a red diamond and worth $9,000,000.

The next day the Bombay dealer was back at work. When asked, “Why haven’t you retired?” he answered, “That was only one sale, maybe I’ll get lucky again.”

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