Retail jewelry markup up is insane. A typical diamond ring costing $2000 at the mall has about $400-500 face value for the stone and metal.
I worked in Fine Jewelry at one time...if people really knew the scam this is they’d be far more selective about what they choose as wedding and engagement rings.
They even sell under-graded discolored diamonds and call them ‘Chocolate Diamonds’ or give them some other appealing name for the consumer to consume...
It’s racket and always will be because Diamonds remain “traditional” regardless.
Heck I even had one customer who bought a $12. costume Jewelry Diamond for his fiance because it was big enough to impress her (he was wealthy rich) for the duration of what he considered the engagement would last. He wasn’t about to put the family heirloom rock on a gold digger’s hand.
Several years ago my girlfriend and I were walking in a mall in the south peninsula of the San Francisco Bay Area. . . there was a jewelry store there that had a big sign saying everything 90% off! My girlfriend has a collection of jewelry worth north of $750K. . . and I have some that is quite valuable as well, including my 15 ½ carat solitaire black diamond ring. The girl behind the counter spotted my girlfriend's diamonds and gushed that she had to show us the $110,000 dollar ring they had just gotten in that day. We indulged her. . . she got a ring out of a safe that had about a two carat solitaire in what she said was a platinum setting. It was pretty plain looking. We could see the BIG BLACK inclusions in this stone from six feet away! With their 90% discount, it was on sale for only $11,000.
We did not disabuse her of her fantasy that it was a $110,000 ring. After we left the store, both my girlfriend and I agreed the stone was junk, probably worth less than a $1000 for a two carat diamond because of the HUGE black inclusions (there were more than one). The four grams or so of platinum in the ring itself was worth perhaps $220 at most at scrap metal prices. Add some for workmanship, markup, and $2,200 was too much to pay for that ring even at the 100% mark-up normal for retail jewelry.