As a rule, I probably shouldn't be writing this, but I think that people should know what their jeweler is talking about when going in for repairs. I've been working at my Dad's jewelry store, Marquis Jewelers, for about a year now; however, when explaining things about repairs to customers they sometimes look at me like I'm speaking a foreign language. So, I decided that more people should be able to "speak jeweler," well, at least the fundamentals!
When you say, “I need my rings sized, how long will that take?” Our reply is a couple of days.
A lot of times jewelers don't give you an exact date when your jewelry is going to be ready for you to pick up. We'd love to say in an hour, but lets face it, there are going to be jobs ahead of you. I work in the sales part of my Dad's store, and I don't like to promise jobs because I don't know how many jobs or how big the jobs are that are going to be in front of yours. By saying a couple of days we do give ourselves some time to make sure the job is right! So don't worry if you don't get an exact date!!
When you say, “You called me yesterday saying that my job is ready, my name is so-and-so.” And we spend awhile looking of it.
This means that we might have misplaced it. Not to worry though, if we called you that means that it's in the store. Generally after about 5 minutes of frantic searching we find the piece, and everyone's happy. When we spend awhile looking for it, we might have just set it down where it wasn't supposed to be, or we misfiled it. Not everything works like clockwork, everyone makes mistakes, right?
When we're looking for your job, and we go to the boss and say the jeweler needs to talk to you about something, urgent.
Generally this means that, unfortunately something may have happened to your ring and we need a back up plan fast! This is a rarity, and only happens when we are polishing a ring as you wait, a stone may have fallen out. But, you will never know because it is always covered in the end. It's just our way of saying, “There's a problem with my customer's ring, come in the back and I'll explain.”
When you replace a spring ring clasp, and your salesperson wants you to get the lobster claw instead.
As a salesperson I can honestly say that I've done this many times. When you're replacing a clasp, and I still strongly advise this, get the lobster claw. It lasts longer, stronger, and easier to put on. But we also want you to get the lobster claw because it is more expensive and we make more on the sale. It's still a good thing that we try to help you get the better clasp, right?
When you like two rings that you want to buy and your sales person motions for another sales person and asks which one they like better.
This is a sales tactic, that I might add works very well. You motion for another sales person and say the words, “do you like this one, or this one better?” Whichever one is pointed at first is the one the other sales person is going to say, unless they strongly dislike it, and I mean strongly. Or they just don't know the tactic.
When asking about diamonds.
Okay, I'm not going to lie to you guys, I mean what's the point? I don't know a whole lot about diamonds, I'm learning, but I will tell you what I do know. The best kind of diamond is a SI-1 D color. This means that the diamond is clear and no faults can be seen in the diamond. Color goes down the alphabet starting at D, the lower you go the worst quality and color of the diamond. As for SI, and lower I'm not entirely sure about.
A Shank
Is the band on your ring. Your jeweler will tell you when it needs a new one because of wear, I swear. We at Marquis Jewelers make sure your ring has no more "miles" on it before we tell you that you need a new shank because the one you have is worn out ant too thin.
As you can see, jewelers are fairly conniving, but in a good way, I swear!! There is a lot to the jewelry business, you can't learn it all in one day. It takes many months and years to really know exactly what's going on. "Speaking jeweler" is quite hard, and to tell you the truth there's more to it than in this article. I hope you learned a lot!
