Friends,
As most of you know, Karen and I retired from our retail jewelry store. It was a mom & pop operation; both of us are Graduate Gemologists and I'm a journeyman gold & platinumsmith, plus I was a Certified Master Watchmaker (AWI).
We literally did all of our own work and sent out practically nothing. THAT is the key to making a decent income.
Having said that, I would surely HATE to be in our former jewelry business today. How could we ever give our clients their moneys worth at $1,750 gold and $1,575 platinum (which is alloyed with irridium ($1,075/Toz itself).
And with practically every family struggling to make economic ends meet, the high prices I would HAVE to charge .... UG, it just makes me shiver.
Even repair would be quite difficult. I used to charge $70 for a full ladies ring shank, making myself a handy $40 ... today, the material cost itself would be close to $200 and if I missed the estimate of 14K shanking material weight, I'd be easily in the
dead loss column.
I have a good friend who is a retired manufacturing jeweler who has done work out of his home shop for the last several years (retired from Zell's, Carl Grieve and Shrieve's). He is a MASTER goldsmith and probably finer than I ever was.
He recently received a quote on 18k yellow gold shank stock to do a ladies ring ... the stock was $95 per pennyweight and the ring probably would take 4dwt to do. My friend mis-guestimated by one pennyweight and ended up doing the three-hour job for free and losing $100. Then the lasy complained like heck ... she could not afford the original estimate and wanted to renegotiate the price. He did what I would have done ... he GAVE her the ring, with his compliments and told her than his shop was closed forever.
He quietly pulled in his horns and is doing NO more work.
Tough times. Did I mention that I'm SO HAPPY to be retired and out of the economic mainstream?????
God Bless,
Steve
