The silver state. [volume] (Winnemucca, Nev.) 1909-1925, 1910-12-08
MANY TRICKS IN
DIAMOND TRADE

-
1t is as dangerous as buying horse.
This is because not one person in q
hundred knows enough about dia-
monds or horse to buy either intel
ligently. For this reason there is as
much trickery in the selling of one as
of the other.
There is an old English legal axiom
that you "buy with your eyes open,o -
and if you are stung" either in buy
ing diamond or horse, unless de-
liberate fraud is proved, you might as
well let it go at that, for you will get
little sympathy with the courts, and
less with your friends.
The st. Louis Post Dispatch recent
ly laid bare the methods of horse
traders in fixingo old, broken down
horses for sale to the unwary. A few
days later two ladies bought beau
tiful and spirited animal that dropped
dead in the shafts as it was being
driven to its new home.
But more people fall for the pawn
ticket scalper's game than for the
fixed horse, because more people
buy diamonds than buy horses.
Many people in moderate circum-
stances have assion for diamonds.
This is the tap-root of the pawnticket
scalper's business. Some of them be-
lieve that if they are earning $40 a
week diamond ring or a stund will
make them look as though they be-
longed to the $50-a-week class.
Others have an idea that diamond
is safer than government bonds as an
investment, and pays bigger interest
than a savings bank. They argue that
" diamonds are getting scarcer every
year, and that if thew invest saw
ings account of 800 in a diamond it
will greatly increase in value in a
year.
The Diamond Output.
Another reason for buying a dia-
mond is that it is always ssready
money! and if they must have cash
there is nothing so easy to dispose of
as a diamond. They probably do not
know that the De Beers company,
which owns the Kimberly diamond
mines in Africa and the visible supply
of the diamonds of the world, annual
ly holds out of the market more dia-
monds than they sell for the purpose Of
keeping up the price of those bits OF
sparkling carboniferous crystal, and
that only one of the fine Kimberly
diamond mines is being worked.
There is another class Of people
whose sole ambition is to accumulate
enough money to buy a diamond for
some girl to whom they are at the
moment attached by setimental ties.
The callowness of such make them
ripe fruit for the picking of the pawn
ticket scalpers.
But about the easiest victims of all
are the sporty negroes. Pullman por-
ters, the attendants on private cars
of railway presidents and multimil-
lionaires and other negroes of COM
paratively good earning capacity. The
negro sport will "fall' for anything
in the way of diamond if the lure is
attractively presented and well played.
But the class of buyers who delight
the scalpers most are those who buy
thinking they are getting stolen goods
cheap for that reason. They are alb
solutely safe and can be relied upon
never to "make holler' to the police
when they discover that they have
been stung. A good many of this
class believe that they are judges of
diamonds and that they can buy a
stone from a thief for a third of it's
value, and, on account OF their stand
ing in the community sell it again at
good profit.
Sometimes they do succeed in being
an amateur fence and buy stone
from a sure-enough thief. But gen.
orally they are victims of "frame-
up'' and get something that is worth
less, while their tongues are tied by
their own guilty knowledge.
Buy From Reliable Houses.
AS the ordinary person is no judge
of the value of diamonds the only safe
method for them to pursue is to buy
from some established, reliable
house, such as J. s. Lewis & Co., Og-
den. Firms of this character have
sufficiently large sales in diamonds
and other precious stones to enable
them to sell at close margin OF
profit. Usually it is agreed with the
purchaser that the diamond may be re-
turned at any time within two years
and exchanged for other jewelry up to
90 per cent of the amount paid for 1T.