Sooo, part of working as a gold buyer is realizing you might be dealing with thieves, scammers, or a mystery, some of whom are more mysterious than others. I saw so many woman. as did my bosses and co-workers, who we suspected of stealing from their jobs or employers. My boss told me they have research showing the average customer is a 35 year old woman. Most of these women worked the kind of job where they interact with elderly and/or vulnerable people, like a housekeeper, nurse, or a healthcare aide (HCA).

I learned the most common sign was the frequency of women selling to us. What I noticed is most women who want to sell stuff they own will visit the store infrequently because they wait until they have a large pile of, let’s say jewelry, they want to sell. The sellers who were frequent also had smaller “pile” of jewelry they wanted to sell. The kind of jewelry these women tended to sell are best described as old, out of style, broken, missing pieces, or was a gift from someone in their life (romantic partner or family). There’s even situations where the woman selling a thing has a story about the thing that you just don’t believe. You hear a story by a customer and immediately think thief.

Once, my gold buying co-worker Olivia (not her real name) had a couple, a man and a woman, try to sell one diamond ring. I was busy with a different customer, but I could hear how Olivia was talking about the diamond. Olivia was doing exactly what were trained not to do: compliment the jewelry. Olivia was GUSHING about the diamond. As gold buyers we’re supposed to regard the stuff customers want to sell dispassionately. One reason why “compliment the jewelry” is bad is that you indirectly remind the customer this thing had emotional value to them. The more you compliment, the less likely the customer will agree to sell to you. I will never forget how Olivia described that diamond as the most beautiful she’s ever seen since working as a gold buyer. I never saw it, but most diamonds I saw were best described as not impressive.

At some point, I realized Olivia is not going to buy the diamond ring even though she talked like the diamond was big and beautiful. After the customers left, I asked Olivia what happened. To Olivia, there were two problems. One, the diamond was so big, that when Olivia looked up the MRSP (Manufacturer’s Recommended Sale Price) chart for that size was around $80,000. She and I knew there’s no way that our boss would be happy if Olivia paid out $80,000 for one diamond ring. In fact, if Olivia had bought that ring, our boss probably would have fired her.

Two, Olivia did not believe the story the couple told her about their big, beautiful diamond ring. The story, if you can believe it, was the woman was gifted the ring by a family member. The woman, who worked as an HCA (surprise, surprise), had no idea of the ring’s value which is why the couple visited our precious metals business. Olivia and I found it hard to believe that a family member would “gift” a diamond ring whose diamond alone is MRSP $80,000 yet not tell the recipient the ring’s original price. We thought it was most likely the woman stole it from a client. Sometimes, the story a customer tells you is un-f**king-believable and you don’t want to buy what they are selling.

As a side note, if you’ve read thus far and wonder how much would we could have paid for a MRSP $80,000? The truth is dependent on the size (as in carat), shape (round is worth more), and how much a diamond buyer will pay. Notice I didn’t include the quality of the diamond. The company I worked for, the rule is to value diamonds at their lowest quality value. For a diamond like this, we’d explain how we broker items over a certain value. A diamond as big and beautiful as this one, might be worth $5,000-$10,000 to us as gold buyers. That’s a big might. This means, even when the diamond is perfect, we will offer an amount reflective of the poorest quality diamond of that size. A damaged diamond can still be turned into jewelry by a skilled jeweler. Sounds dishonest, doesn’t it?

Out of all the diamonds I’ve seen and/or bought and those of my co-workers and bosses, the highest amount paid out for a diamond was $1,800 for a one carat stone in a gold ring. The woman who sold the ring to us, actually sold two gold rings. One ring had many small diamonds while the other had the one carat plus small diamonds. She thought the rings originally cost around $10,000, but she wasn’t sure of their exact value. Notice how I indicated $1,800 for the one carat and not ALL the diamonds. We do not pay for all those small diamonds. Gold buyers are trained to NOT buy the small diamonds, as in anything less than 0.5 carat we likely will not buy.

Even though the precious metals business I worked for clearly advertised they buy diamonds, the reality is they teach their buyers to ignore the small diamonds and value diamonds at the poorest quality for it’s size. We don’t consider the quality of the diamond. My bosses were pleased when we bought jewelry that has diamonds but we did not pay for the diamonds. That’s the kind of situation I hated being in because it felt duplicitous. It’s one of the reasons I quit.

The TL: DR is diamonds are not worth as much as you think they are, selling them is hard, be wary of women who work around vulnerable groups, and thieves should work on crafting better lies.