Not surprisingly, everyone wants top dollar and almost everyone has unrealistic expectations about prices.   To some extent this comes from how much people paid and what they were told during the original sales presentation and to some extent it comes from ‘appraisals’ that report things as being enormously valuable.  A reality check is essential.  Thanks to the Internet, it’s easier than ever to work this out, at least with diamonds.   For starters, with the exception of certain designer and antique items, your resale price is almost always going to be based on the materials, not the craftsmanship or design of the mounting, and the major item on the materials is that center diamond.  As with many of the issues above, it’s essential to know what you have before you can sensibly set your prices and the easiest way to get this is to hire YOUR OWN expert grader.  When you’re confident that you know the grading details of your stone, use the ‘Pricescope your diamond’ engine to search the database here for comparable offers.  What you’ll see is your competition. Usually there are dozens to hundreds of superficially similar stones being offered by the dealers here and usually the range of prices will be a factor of 2 or so.   Choosing the right one as ‘comparable’ can be a little tricky but here’s an approach. 

Start by searching for the same shape/clarity/color and a size range of a few points around yours being careful about crossing over a critical weight barrier like 1.00cts. or 2.00cts.   If there’s only one or two results, make a bigger size range and if there’s more than a few hundred results make the range smaller.  You can sort the list by price by clicking on the column header to the price column.  Scan the list for comparables.  Make sure to pay attention to the lab doing the grading and to the cutting.  If you’ve got a GIA, look for GIA’s, if you’ve got an IGI, look for an IGI,etc.  Don’t forget the cut grading.  If you don’t have it, don’t assume it’s‘Ideal’ or even ‘Excellent’.  You can be sure your prospective buyers won’t.  Assume‘good’ unless you’ve got some reason to believe otherwise.  If you’ve got a fairly ‘standard’ sort of stone, this should zero you in on a price from your aggressive dealer competitors to within about 15%. 

If you’re selling to a dealer, expect to see about 40%  - 75% of that price.   Popular things, like 1.00/VS1/G/GIA/XXX are going to sell easier and for a higher percentage than the things they will expect to need to own for a while before they can find a it new owner, like a 2.85/VVS2/K/IGI/Marquise.   It doesn’t matter what you paid, and  it doesn’t matter what the selling jeweler/appraiser said the ‘retail’ value is. 

Pricescope is a pretty price competitive place and a lot of consignment dealers can get higher prices than the dealers here.  They’ll be selling for anywhere from matching these prices to 50% above, again depending on what you have but also depending on the nature of their store. Commissions will range from 15% up to as much as 50%.    A quick note on consignment pricing.  It isn’t always best to go with the dealer who charges the lowest commission and/or the one who asks the highest prices.  ASKING a lot isn’t the same as GETTING it.   By all means if you’ve got a dealer who can get top prices and is willing to do it cheaply, go for it, but these two things rarely go hand in hand.

Direct retail sale prices will be somewhere between the above two depending on your own selling skills, what you have and just plain luck.   If your buyer can get it cheaper from a ‘real’ dealer, they almost certainly will prefer to do it that way and if you can sell it for more to a pro then there’s no reason for you to go through the brain damage of dealing with a retail buyer.