De Beers has launched a new stand-alone business, the International Institute of Diamond Valuation (IIDV), to study the second-hand diamond market. Tom Montgomery, senior vice president of strategic initiatives for De Beers, said the new Institute will run a “diamond re-selling insight program” with a small number of retailers in New York from September until the beginning of 2015.
He said the program will generate better insight on the scale of consumer re-selling activity and, more specifically, the consumer experience from those who look to re-sell their diamonds, and its impact on the lasting value benefit of diamond ownership.
“The practice of consumers looking to sell back their diamonds isn’t new,” he said. “For the vast majority of people, a diamond is something they keep hold of forever and never look to sell. However, for reasons such as death, divorce or financial distress, some people will always look to resell their diamonds.”
“Some retailers have expressed reservations however, about how the current re-selling experience could impact consumers’ views on diamond equity in the long-term. We believe that the only way to gain a true understanding of diamond re-selling activity by consumers, is to run this small-scale program to access how re-selling has developed, how it might evolve and how it impacts upon consumer perceptions of diamonds.”
The IIDV will offer the selected retailers and their customers “the highest quality valuation and pricing information for diamond jewellery” based on “a comprehensive database of 100,000 diamonds”.
Retailers will have a choice of either sending their customer’s jewellery away for valuation at IIDV’s laboratory where the company will “conduct an exhaustive evaluation using the most advanced technologies available in the market” and then provide a “market price quote”, or conduct an in-store evaluation of their customer’s jewellery and then send the report to the IIDV for a market price quote.
According to the IIDV, the market price quote is “the highest possible price one could achieve for his/her diamond jewellery in the secondary, wholesale market”.