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One of the most common questions I get when people come into the pawn shop is why should I buy jewelry from you rather than a jewelry store? And more specifically, when I have a customer for an engagement ring, they want to know how I got it, why I got it, what happened to the marriage etc. In fact, from my experience it seems like a lot of people are very hesitant to even buy a pre-owned engagement ring. A lot of what I have to do before I sell one is explain why buying a pre-owned engagement ring Boca Raton is no different from a new one. Hopefully in this video I will explain to you why buying an engagement ring from a pawn shop is actually BETTER than buying an engagement ring from a jewelry store. But before I do, let’s re-cap last week.
Last week I talked about the Apple watch and how it will affect other watch companies. I said that I think it will really hurt the mid-level brands like Michael Kors but won’t effect high end brands like Rolex. If you want to know why watch the full video by searching #AskBRP Episode 16 in YouTube. Now, let me talk about engagement rings.
There are two major reasons why buying an engagement ring from a pawn shop beats buying one from a jewelry store. The first reason is price. You cannot beat the prices at a pawn shop. Jewelry stores have huge costs. They have to pay to advertise, pay the manufacturer who makes the ring, pay huge commissions on sales, etc. And for all those reasons they have extremely high retail prices. They can get away with it because they have amazing branding and marketing. But when you break it down, you are paying way over what you should be at a jewelry store. Pawn shops want to move inventory fast so that they can keep lending. If they don’t sell product, they won’t have enough money to lend. Plus, whenever you buy something previously owned you can assume it will be cheaper than something new. When you buy a used car, it’s less than the new one right? Well same concept applies in jewelry. But, and this leads me to my next point, whether jewelry is marked as “new” or “pre-owned”, it’s more or less exactly the same. Let me explain.
Jewelry is manufactured. When you think about what a ring really is, first it has to be designed by a designer. Once there is an idea a mold is created. Liquid gold and other metals are poured in the mold and out comes a ring. But the great thing about jewelry is, it’s not a car, it doesn’t have an engine. And a professional jeweler can polish out scratches and make the ring look brand new again. So at the end of the day, a new ring vs a pre-owned ring is almost exactly the same. And when it comes to a diamond, no diamonds are “new”. They form over millions of years in the Earth. There is no such thing as a new diamond. So really the only difference between a new engagement ring and a pre-owned one is one has been worn before and the other hasn’t. But after a good polishing, side by side, you would never know the difference.
Sure, I can’t help you if you think it’s bad karma to buy a pre-owned engagement ring, but I think that’s ridiculous. The marriage didn’t work out because of the ring, it didn’t work because of the people involved. So if you can get past the fact that it was once worn, a pre-owned engagement ring at pawn shop is just as good as a new one from a jewelry store, and for a whole lot less.
