How to Buy a Diamond: Insider Secrets for Getting Your Money's Worth, Sixth Edition - Softcover

Cuellar, Fred

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1402215061 ISBN 13: 9781402215063

Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2008

Synopsis

"Finally, one of the top diamond experts breaks the silence and demystifies the world of diamonds for regular folks like you and me."
- Gregory J. P. Godek, author of 1001 Ways To Be Romantic

Get Your Money's Worth on a Great Diamond

Buying a diamond can be one of the most important and intimidating purchases you ever make. Whether you're getting engaged or married, or are buying for an anniversary, investment, or just because, How to Buy a Diamond will take the pressure and uncertainty out of your purchase, and will show you how to get the best diamond for your money.

Newly revised and completely updated, How to Buy a Diamond is the only book on the market to include wholesalers' secret pricing charts that you, the public, never get to see! The charts are broken down by carat, clarity, and color - including the various types of color within each color grade.

Important sections include:

• Matching your funds with the perfect diamond
• The four Cs explained: clarity, color, cut, and carat size
• Ring styles and settings
• Insuring and caring for your diamond
• Picking the right jeweler
• Jewelers' tricks of the trade
• Wholesalers' secret pricing charts!

About this title

About the Author

Fred Cuellar is founder and president of Diamond Cutters International and is known as one of the world's top diamond experts. Cuellar is accredited in diamonds by the Gemological Institute of America. Cuellar is the official diamond expert for MSNBC, Men's Health, AOL's theknot.com and The Wedding Network, and Icon magazine. He has been featured and discussed on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, NBC's Today Show, CBS Morning News, CNN, ESPN, the Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, US Weekly, In Style as well as over 100 other news and talk shows.. He lives in Houston, Texas.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

My first experience with diamonds, long before I became a gemologist and diamond merchant, happened for the best of all reasons: I was a young man in love, with a burning desire to offer my bride-to-be a diamond ring and ask for her hand in marriage. It seemed simple enough. Between college classes I would stop by a jewelry store, select a diamond worthy of my beloved, and be on my way. I thought it would be easy-and it was, until I glanced at my first price tag.

After I was resuscitated by the jeweler, I realized this wasn't going to be as easy as I thought. The only "rock" I could afford then was one I could pick up off the ground.

That experience, however, led to a management trainee position with a major jewelry chain, followed by an opportunity to run a jewelry store. Then I became a wholesaler, and over time my business evolved into what it is today, where I can practice what I preach about buying and selling diamonds.

Keeping in mind my own first experience with diamond buying, I have always tried to teach my customers everything they should know before making their purchase. If you were planning to buy a new car or a washing machine, you'd probably read Consumer Reports to educate yourself before the purchase, and you'd at least want to kick the tires and look under the hood before putting your money down. That's what this book is all about. It puts you in charge of the transaction by showing you how to tell one diamond from another, what makes a diamond expensive, and what "investment grade" diamonds are. I'll also show you the tricks of the trade, how to avoid shysters-in short, how to get the most for your money.

When I first published How to Buy a Diamond, it created quite a stir. Honest diamond dealers-and there are many-loved the book. They said to me, "Fred, we've needed this for a long time, because it's hard to compete with dealers who cheat." The dishonest diamond dealers-and there are many of them, too, unfortunately-hated the idea of educating consumers, of revealing the "tricks of the trade." They were the ones who made threatening phone calls, who vowed to put me out of business. "You can't do this," they warned. "You can't let the suckers (that's you) see behind the curtain. You'll ruin us!" So of course they threatened to ruin me instead, and even went so far as to make attempts on my life! Things got so bad I had to hire a bodyguard to stay at my side for a couple of years.

During that time, a lot of people saw me on TV, heard me on the radio, read about me in their newspapers-and bought my book. Becoming well-known made me harder to threaten. Now I'm the jeweler to the Super Bowl Champion Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos, and service the diamond needs of nineteen other pro sports franchises. I supply two hundred jewelers with their diamonds and colored stones, supply replacement diamonds for three major insurance companies, and I'm one of just two suppliers of diamonds to the Saudi royal family. But I also provide fine diamonds to private clients, individuals who may be just like you. And what matters most to me is that I've helped thousands of ordinary people get diamonds at fair prices. Helping you get a good deal on a diamond is just as important to me as creating a ring for baseball star Roger Clemens, because it takes me back to when I was a young man in love, shopping for an engagement ring.

Read my book. Call my HelpLine if you have questions. And walk through your jeweler's door with confidence that you'll walk out with the right diamond at the right price.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1402215061
• ISBN 13: 9781402215063
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 6
• Number of pages: 420