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Comment by kylebrown | Hacker News Reader

> the problem here is literally that you will find that what you've bought can't be resold for anything like what you bought it for,

What does this have to do with an "open market price"? Most anything bought at retail price will not have the same resale value, that's just how resale markets work. They buy at wholesale and sell at retail. Pieces of jewelry and whatnot are not commodity bundles you can trade on a liquid market.

Retail art pieces aren't any different.. High dollar art trades at auctions (again, lots of liquidity), that's why they're easier to resell. But if you sink five grand into a piece from some gallery, good luck reselling it.

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As I said in my message, I covered that with the "retailer premium", which I understand exists for a reason, which I describe. That reason does not cover the degree to which you can not resell the ring, which is absurdly large. Also observe that despite technology recently being able to make "forgeries" ever better, this inability to resell at anything like what you paid for it has been true for decades.

So then what is the cause?

Maybe because the demand for rings is not for their commodity value, but for their signaling value? So buying a ring from Tiffany's is worth a lot more than buying one off craiglist? And they aren't scarce so jewelers don't need to snatch them up off the "open market", but they need to make high margins to cover the overhead of their fancy stores.

Are you looking for a cause to the "absurdly large" degree? Or just pointing it out as some mysterious conspiracy?

Of course you can't get full retail value when reselling a luxury good. That's as true of Tiffany rings as it is of Macbooks.

But there is a conspiracy to exploit people desperate enough to have to liquidate their jewelry. It's detailed in the article linked to by the OP. That conspiracy is what causes jewelry to have a resale value of maybe 20%. Compare this to 6-month old MacBooks Air (worth ~80% of their retail price) or a car you drive off the dealer's lot (worth ~80% of what you paid).

Gold, silver, and diamonds are quite literally valued by an open market. You can call a broker and buy them for what the whole world has agreed is a fair price.

A piece of jewelry's wholesale value is determined by adding up the market value of its constituent components and then adding a workmanship premium. In an ideal world, consumers could buy and sell jewelry in the same way.

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