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Comment by michaelbuckbee | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure there have been attempts, but I've always wanted to create a startup that really directly goes after the "vintage diamond" market.

Diamonds and engagement rings in general have a really low resale value (despite being sold as an investment). This should create a market where you can buy low and then sell at a substantial mark up that is still _less_ than what's charged by the cartel.

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Contact me on LinkedIn if you are seriously interested in pursuing something like this :)

We, at Liquid Diamonds, are building an online exchange for naturally mined diamonds; think Nasdaq for diamonds. https://liquid.diamonds/

There are a few person to person markets that work pretty well, like diamondbistro and idonowidont.

That won’t work. The reason they have a low resale value is because the retail markets have a 100% markup. So, immediately after buying the diamond you cut its value in half. So you’re proposing buying diamonds at this price (wholesale price) and then selling them at a big mark up - who are you selling to??? Why would anyone buy a diamond from you instead of Zales? You can say “because mine are cheaper”, but how are you marketing? You may have noticed, those jewelry retailers have quite a marketing budget.

* there is no diamond cartel, this myth needs to die. DeBeers isn’t even the top diamond producer by volume any more

Significantly more than 100% last I checked if you don’t buy wholesale. I went to Bloomingdales 7 years ago and they had “50% off” diamonds and the markup after that discount was still roughly 500% considering the very poor quality of the gemstones. People really get ripped off unless they do proper research. Even Tiffany’s was 2-3x markup, although at least I will say they only had high quality diamonds so that’s a point in their favor.

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