A woman is like a diamond. Strong, resilient and beautiful.
We wanted to open this episode with this quote because today, we’re talking about diamonds. Divorce & Other Things You Can Handle was created as a way for us to bring you more of what you deserve, but we really do at Worthy is help you sell diamond jewelry and fine watches that you’ve outgrown.
We’re not in the business of convincing anyone to part with precious jewelry, but the fact is a lot of people are looking for a safe and smart way to do it, and we’re proud to be here to help. We chatted with Roy Albers, our Chief Gemologist and our chief gemologist. Roy leads the team that handles the items you send us and helps you get the best deal available. You can watch this video of this episode so you can get a look at some rings, learn about the resale market and see how all of this works.
Audrey: 00:00:00 Welcome to Divorce and Other Things You Can Handle. A branded Podcast from Worthy. I’m Audrey, and I’m your host. A woman is like a diamond. Strong, resilient and beautiful. We wanted to open this episode with this quote, because today we’re talking about diamonds. Divorce and Other Things You Can Handle was created as a way for us to bring you more of what you deserve. What we really do at Worthy, is help you sell diamond jewelry and fine watches. We’re not in the business of convincing anyone to part with precious jewelry, but the fact is, a lot of people are looking for a safe and smart way to do it. We’re proud to be here to help.
Today I’m sitting down with Roy Albers, our Chief Gemologist. Roy leads the team that handles the items you send us, and helps you get the best deal available. We’re also going to be uploading a video of this episode, so you can get a look at some rings, learn about the resale market, and see how all of this works. Divorce and Other Things You Can Handle is a weekly Podcast, so make sure you subscribe to keep up with new episodes we’re curating to help empower and uplift you, as you embrace your fresh start. This Podcast is for you, so join our Facebook group, Worth Women and Divorce, to let us know what you think, and what you want to hear. You can also get more at Worthy.com/podcast. We’re going to take a quick break, then we’ll be right back with Roy.
Speaker 1: 00:01:27 When you sell a piece of jewelry, you can’t control how much it’s worth, but you can make sure that you’re selling smart with a team of experts and advocates behind you at Worthy. Your engagement ring can be a financial asset that allows you to embrace a new and fulfilling life after divorce. Let us help you get the best deal possible for the jewelry you’ve outgrown. Go to Worthy.com/podcast to learn more.
Audrey: 00:01:54 I’m so, so excited that you are on the Podcast, welcome.
Roy Albers: 00:01:57 Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Audrey: 00:01:59 Absolutely. I’m so proud of this company and what we do. You are really a pillar of what makes Worthy, Worthy. You’re the first man, and maybe you’ll be the only man to be on the Podcast, but if there’s going to be one, it’s going to be you.
Roy Albers: 00:02:13 Well, thank you. Thank you, that’s really exciting.
Audrey: 00:02:14 We’re so excited you’re here. I was hoping you could give our listeners or our viewers, kind of an idea of what Worthy is, what we do.
Roy Albers: 00:02:25 Okay. Worth is the first online marketplace for selling pre-owned luxury goods. What it means is, we auction jewelry and collectables to professional buyers. We have a very expensive marketplace of buyers internationally and domestically here in the United States. We’ve been in operation since 2011, in many different businesses and innervation’s of Worthy, now since 2013, have been operating as an online auction house. We’ve auctioned over 20 million dollars worth of items and collectables for people. We’ve been a very big asset to the divorced community who didn’t have an outlet for their jewelry. As you know, most jewelry stores won’t buy back the rings they sell, for obvious reasons. If you go to a pawn shop, you’re going to get so little of the value and the founder saw this opportunity for us, and for the divorced community, and it’s really been a very fulfilling thing for the employees here, and for me personally. I am a divorcee, not a woman though, but I’ve been down that road and I know what it’s like. I know what the male’s perspective is on it.
Audrey: 00:03:48 I think you’re right. When you’re in that moment, there’s so much going on, there’s so much to worry about. You’re going through so many changes, and selling a ring is a lot of work. You can find these videos on YouTube of especially women, going into the diamond district and just getting totally ripped off, and it’s so much foot work. You have to walk around, meet all these people, it can feel kind of icky.
Roy Albers: 00:04:13 There’s so much emotion tied up in it. That’s the big thing. You have so much emotion tied up into this high-valued item, and you need to have someone to really help you distill it all down, and move it away from the emotion, and the attachment to it, and figure out what the value is.
Audrey: 00:04:32 It’s interesting that you say that, because Loriette came on our Podcast. She’s the financial advisor we worked with on our white paper and everything, we love her. One of the things she talked about was how people have really emotional connections to their money, and by hiring a financial advisor, you really have somebody who’s just looking at the facts, who’s going to kind of help you move through it, because it can be really overwhelming and diamonds are exactly the same way.
Roy Albers: 00:04:54 Same thing.
Audrey: 00:04:55 What’s unique about a divorcee in the diamond market, is that she’s likely to really just have the one item, maybe she has some other gifts that her ex-husband gave her, but she’s not someone who can walk into the diamond district with a bunch of inventory that she’s pushing, and be making those kind of relationships and deals, but what’s amazing about Worthy, and that’s why I wrote this ad, that says, “A team of experts and advocates,” you are the head of the team of experts and advocates, you are sort of like the dream advocate that somebody would want to have behind them when they’re selling a diamond.
Roy Albers: 00:05:29 Oh, thank you.
Audrey: 00:05:30 I haven’t even mentioned Tiffany’s in the ads for this episode, anything. Let’s get a little bit of a background professionally. How lucky are we to have you at Worthy?
Roy Albers: 00:05:41 Okay. I’m a jewelry brat. I grew up in the business, my parents had a jewelry store. I went to GIA instead of going to college.
Audrey: 00:05:51 I didn’t know that, good for you.
Roy Albers: 00:05:52 Yes. I have been in the jewelry business for a long, long time. I won’t tell you how old I am, but a long time. I started at my parents store for a number of years, and found that I didn’t like the retail, I wanted to be more involved with diamonds and buying diamonds and selling diamonds and gemstones and pearls. I was very fortunate enough to work with a company called Krementz and Company in Newark, New Jersey. Which, at the time, back in the 80s, was the largest jewelry manufacturer in the United States. I was fortunate enough to mentor under a gentleman who took me around the world, buying and selling diamonds, gemstones, pearls.
Audrey: 00:06:37 Was that as glamorous as it sounds?
Roy Albers: 00:06:39 No it’s not glamorous because you’re going to a lot of places, to mines, to China to India and you have very large financial transactions that, back in the early 80s there wasn’t the internet, so it was Telex and phones. A phone call out of India cost 300 dollars for about five minutes, so you never called. I was traveling a lot, seven months out of the year I was overseas.
Audrey: 00:07:09 Wow.
Roy Albers: 00:07:10 I did that for 11 years, until Tiffany came calling and wanted me to head up their gemstone acquisitions department, and consolidate all their buying of loose gemstones, diamonds and pearls.
Audrey: 00:07:22 I just want to underline that for people who are listening or watching. Tiffany came to him, and asked him to be in charge.
Roy Albers: 00:07:28 Yes. It was a very big honor and a very big challenge. We set up a team, we re-wrote the how to buy a diamond book, and back then Tiffany had 10 stores, and from there it boomed.
Audrey: 00:07:44 You wrote the book on how to buy a diamond?
Roy Albers: 00:07:46 I re-wrote it.
Audrey: 00:07:47 You re-wrote the book on how to buy a diamond-
Roy Albers: 00:07:49 With today’s modern cutting.
Audrey: 00:07:51 Again, I started the episode by saying we don’t want to convince anybody to sell their ring, that’s not the Worthy way, but we know that a lot of people are looking for the solution, and if they are, you are the guy. You re-wrote the book.
Roy Albers: 00:08:05 That’s how to buy one, now we’re talking about how to sell one.
Audrey: 00:08:10 Right but our buyers read the book.
Roy Albers: 00:08:12 But our buyers yes, yes.
Audrey: 00:08:13 Okay, so you were at Tiffany’s?
Roy Albers: 00:08:15 Yes, I was there for many years, then I got divorced, and I left. That was during the first internet bubble, and a bunch of us from Tiffany made a start-up on the internet, which, unfortunately didn’t do very well. It got me into this whole online business, which I love. I found that I really liked to build businesses, and work with teams like Worthy. When Worthy came along, I was at another internet start-up, and Worthy came along and the founder came to me, and a friend came to me and said, “You should really look into this.” I saw that this is something that not only is a very good business, but it has a cause that resonates with a lot of the people that work here. That’s what makes it fulfilling for me, I’m a father of five, and it makes me feel very good that I can give back to people this way.
That’s my story, that’s how I got here. I’m really, really happy that this business can do what it does for people.
Audrey: 00:09:22 Yeah, this is certainly a different kind of job than you had in the past. You’re still working every day with diamonds, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what your day-to-day is like.
Roy Albers: 00:09:32 My day-to-day is pretty much surrounded by the products that are coming in that people ship to us. The shipping process is probably our customer’s biggest fear in the beginning. How do I put my ring in a FedEx box and ship it to you? We insure, 100% the item, based on the value that the customer has in their appraisal, or their bill of sale, or a document that values their piece. We’ll insure it up to 100 thousand dollars. If it’s over 100 thousand dollars, and we do have items all the time that are over 100 thousand dollars, then we arrange for a non-FedEx shipment, and we do a Brink’s or a Malcolm mid-shipment, which are armed carriers. Which will come either to your business or to your home and pick up the item for you, fully insured by Worthy, and delivered here.
Once it gets here, we have obviously tracking on it through FedEx and the other carriers, once it arrives here, the package is opened up under a camera, and we then right away take another still picture of it, a close up picture, that identifies it with the barcode. We know exactly what we’ve received.
Audrey: 00:10:48 It gets a new internal barcode.
Roy Albers: 00:10:50 Yes, a new internal barcode that tracks it throughout the entire Worthy process. Then it goes through various stages of its life cycle here at Worthy until it’s sold. The main thing is, we prepare it for the auction, for the buyers to see. We clean the item, we take more digital photography. Very close, what we call beauty shots of it for the auction.
Audrey: 00:11:12 Actually, we have the coolest cameras for that.
Roy Albers: 00:11:16 Yes, we do.
Audrey: 00:11:17 There’s the 360 video. I don’t know the name for the other one, but we’ve got the real beauty shots.
Roy Albers: 00:11:25 We have Nikon cameras that take digital photography.
Audrey: 00:11:28 We’ve got those light boxes and everything.
Roy Albers: 00:11:30 Yes, we have very controlled light situations that have revolving platforms in it, to the turntable for the 360.
Audrey: 00:11:38 Awhile ago we were doing “your photo versus our photo,” because we used to have people send us pictures of their ring. It’s amazing. Obviously people can go on Ebay, they can go to Craigslist, they can try Facebook Marketplace, it just is like night and day the way we … after your ring is cleaned here, it’s 100 times more high quality, it’s so much more expensive, then you get these beauty shots of it, and side by side you can’t believe it’s the same item. It seems like not that big of a deal, but when you’re trying to sell something, it’s a huge difference.
Roy Albers: 00:12:15 Makes a big difference. Absolutely. That’s why we have professional ultrasonic machines, we have steam cleaners. We go through all of that care upfront to get the piece right, then we do the photography, we decide where the item’s going to go, either the Gemological Institute of America, the GIA, for its evaluation, its independent evaluation, or it will go to IGI or GHI, and that determination is whether or not we can remove the center stone from the mounting.
Audrey: 00:12:45 Right. When do you remove stones? Do you just remove stones? I know this is a pain point for a lot of people.
Roy Albers: 00:12:50 First of all, the customer has to feel comfortable. That’s the number one thing. If they’re not comfortable with it, we won’t remove it. Regardless of the size. If the ring has a pre- existing Gemological Institute, a GIA Certificate, we still need to update if it’s older than a year. Our buyers really want to have an updated Certificate. To remove a stone is very simple. We have trained diamond setters that will remove it, and it’s very safe. It’s done under camera.
Audrey: 00:13:21 I just want people to hear that we would never do it without their permission.
Roy Albers: 00:13:24 100%. If it looks like we can’t remove it safely, or put it back in, we will ask you anyway. Some people don’t care, they’re going to sell their item anyway. This is the best way to sell it. If the stone is loose, the buyer can see the stone entirely, and we can do a 360 video, like we talked about earlier of the entire diamond, which is great. International buyers who are offshore, who have to rely on photography will bid more if we have a complete 360 video of the stone.
Audrey: 00:13:57 Right, and that updated GIA Certificate.
Roy Albers: 00:13:59 Yes, and the updated GIA. Yes. Very important.
Audrey: 00:14:03 Right. I want to take a little bit of a step back. I want to ask you a little bit about the diamond industry as a whole.
Roy Albers: 00:14:13 Sure.
Audrey: 00:14:14 I’m on social media all the time, as Worthy. One of the things that I see people saying all the time is, “The diamond industry is a total sham, don’t buy diamonds.” I’m really curious to hear what your response to that is. From the perspective of our clients, what do people need to understand about the diamond industry?
Roy Albers: 00:14:36 Okay. Well, the diamond industry is like the automotive industry. It’s very, very similar. It’s an industry that sells luxury products that people buy for a lot of emotional reasons, and really the jewelry industry is so tied to that event, that emotion. Whether it’s a wedding, or an anniversary or a birth of a child-
Audrey: 00:15:00 Or an inherited piece.
Roy Albers: 00:15:01 Inherited piece, whatever it is.
Audrey: 00:15:02 A sentimental value. Cars are maybe a little more practical, jewelry is pretty [inaudible 00:15:07]
Roy Albers: 00:15:06 Yes, but people buy cars emotionally too.
Audrey: 00:15:06 Right, also, yeah.
Roy Albers: 00:15:11 They’re buying it also for the look and everything else. It’s really about the value. When you go to a store, and you buy an item of jewelry, you’re paying a price for the designer, for the store to make money, for the manufacturer to make money, for the diamond or stone cutter to make money, and there’s a lot of different layers. Just like there’s a lot of different layers in the automotive business. When it’s time to resell your item, if you’re in a divorce situation or an inheritance situation, you’re not going to get that retail value, you’re going to get a value that’s back at the beginning of the chain, because really there’re hundreds of stones out there. If you have a similar stone, and your stone is more, they’re going to pay less for the other stone. The retail value, like the retail value on a car, has to be brought back down to a relative resale value. That resale value is all about supply and demand, just like in cars. If you’re buying a Mercedes, and you go to resell it, yes a Mercedes like a Tiffany ring, will have added value.
Audrey: 00:16:22 A higher resale value-
Roy Albers: 00:16:23 A higher resale value.
Audrey: 00:16:24 Than a Honda.
Roy Albers: 00:16:25 Right. Or even a similar car like at Cadillac. Cadillac’s a brand name, and a higher quality car, but it doesn’t have the resale value of the Mercedes. A Tiffany ring versus a Zales ring, even if it’s of similar size and quality, a Tiffany still has a premium, whereas the Zales doesn’t. The market value does have a big effect in how we evaluate the price of an item.
Audrey: 00:16:55 Right. Let’s say you have a ring from Zales, and you paid a lot for it, then you find out what the resale value is. How do you explain that to someone who expects to get a lot more when they sell that ring?
Roy Albers: 00:17:15 Again, there is a market cost for the diamond, or that ring, if we’re selling it as a ring. That market cost is the components that it’s made out of. The center diamond, any side diamonds, and then the metal that’s around there, whether it’s platinum or gold. The metal has a very definite cost, based on the price of the gold today, or the price of platinum today. The side diamonds have a value based on what the quality is, how many of them are there, and what shape or cut they are. They have a definite resale value.
The whole thing is about the center diamond. The center diamond in the marketplace, whether it’s from Zales or from Sterling or from your local jeweler, has a cost. It’s all tied to a market price that is driven by a supply and demand in the marketplace. The most common diamond there’s thousands of them available in the marketplace. If it’s a one carat, G quality, VS stone, there’s probably two or three thousand stones that are in the marketplace ready for sale now. When you go to resell it, your price is below that market price, because somebody’s going to pay you cash for your diamond. They’ll pay cash versus sell it to a store and have that store pay on terms down the road, manufacture it and everything else.
There’s a hard number, just like when you go to trade in your car, there’s a hard number. That car may be available on the lot that you’re trading it into. The price that they’re going to resell it at, is not the price you’re going to get for your trade in. It’s always something less. That’s the cash value of your car. That’s the same way it works with diamonds. There’s a hard cash value for that. That’s the price that diamonds are traded at in the marketplace.
Audrey: 00:19:18 One of the things that I think we have really tried to do as a company is create different kinds of educational pieces. We have these on our blog, and we can link to them at Worthy.com/podcast, for anyone who’s interested in reading some of these. It’s a harsh reality. When you have a stone or a ring that you wanna sell, we see a lot of people disappointed.
Roy Albers: 00:19:42 That’s because they’re thinking of what they paid for it.
Audrey: 00:19:44 Right.
Roy Albers: 00:19:45 Just like what you paid for that car.
Audrey: 00:19:47 Right, I think it’s again, we talked about how people might only have one item like this. When you’re not an expert and you don’t know the difference between that retail and that resale price, it can be a shock.
Roy Albers: 00:19:47 A very big shock.
Audrey: 00:20:00 That’s when we see that disappointment. We really do everything that we can. I know we talked about the cleaning, and the imaging. We talked about the 3rd party grading, which you know-
Roy Albers: 00:20:09 The other big thing is that we’re a marketplace.
Audrey: 00:20:11 Right.
Roy Albers: 00:20:12 We have people bidding on the stone all over the world. We can get a better price than a local jeweler, which is, can he put it into his store? Does he have a customer for it? Then he might buy it back from you. In nine out of 10 cases, he’s got his own inventory sitting there. He doesn’t want to buy back a ring-
Audrey: 00:20:33 Especially the buying power of somebody outside of the place with its own diamond district. How much cash turnover do they have to be able to buy these big stones all the time?
Roy Albers: 00:20:46 Correct. We have hundreds of buyers.
Audrey: 00:20:48 Yeah. We have all these stories too, of people who talk about they got three times as much with Worthy that they were offered locally.
Roy Albers: 00:20:57 Yes.
Audrey: 00:20:57 That I think, going back to what you said, about enjoying working for an internet company, we in the tech industry talk a lot about innovation and disrupting industries, I really feel that Worthy has been able to disrupt the diamond industry, because somebody in the Midwest or in the South or really anywhere in the United States, even people living in New York City, they come in and they use Worthy because we’re doing the footwork for you. We’re going to cover the cost of the insurance, and the shipping and we assume all of the risk. We’re going to do all of that putting it up, having buyers bid on it. Another thing to keep in mind is that Roy’s signature is on the bottom of the page. That’s just major. It really allows people to have, I think of that part as almost like a real estate agent. It’s really hard to know what you have, and to know what it’s going to sell for.
Roy Albers: 00:20:57 Correct, yes.
Audrey: 00:21:52 When you have somebody who you can trust, who’s going to take a look at it and then not just help you understand the whole process, and understand what you’ve got, but-
Audrey: 00:22:00 Process and understand what you’ve got but sell it for you and get it in front of the right eyes. It’s like a really amazing thing-
Roy Albers: 00:22:10 Get it from hundreds of pairs of eyes at once.
Audrey: 00:22:11 And approved eyes. Maybe you want to talk a little bit about our buying community.
Roy Albers: 00:22:16 Yes, our buyers are all professional buyers, they are international domestic like I’ve already said and they have tremendous buying power and they’re very competitive. We’ve had items that I’ve looked at and said, “oh, this is going to get xyz value and it’s bid up three or four or five times above that value,” because they see in different parts of the country different needs and differ the market place internationally what doesn’t sell well here might be selling well in Hong Kong or might be selling well in Europe.
Audrey: 00:22:50 And so if you’re somebody living in South Florida.
Roy Albers: 00:22:55 Yes.
Audrey: 00:22:56 What access do you have to Hong Kong?
Roy Albers: 00:22:58 Right.
Audrey: 00:22:58 Through Worthy you’ve got it.
Roy Albers: 00:22:59 Yes, yes. Makes you be much more able to recoup the value out of the item, a better price.
Audrey: 00:23:08 So, Worthy was really I think built to have these kinds of things in mind.
Roy Albers: 00:23:13 Yes.
Audrey: 00:23:14 And when you were helping to build this. I mean, what kind of things were you thinking about, do you feel like when you were building Worthy you had these pain points for a client in mind?
Roy Albers: 00:23:27 We did and as more clients shipped us items we realized that there were a lot more pain points than we realized for the customer. Getting over the hurdle of shipping it to us, getting bigger marketplace. We had a great marketplace for emerald cut diamonds because we had a lot of them earlier on because they were a big seller in the earlier eighties, late eighties. And then princess cuts came and princess cuts took over the emerald cut market and then the early nineties everybody was buying princess cuts and now the whole market has changed again in the United States away from princess cuts to softer, rounder shapes.
And now in Asia more princess cuts are selling. So we’re seeing the princess cut buyers in Asia bidding up, the princess cuts where in this country they don’t. That’s one of the pain points we found that by building this marketplace, by creating a network of buyers, we could serve our customers better. The other thing was, just being able to do the watch business, now we’ve really started to build up our watch business and the watch buyers are a very peculiar group, they’re not as disciplined or as organized as the diamond market but when you have a nice watch, when you have a TAG Heuer or a Rolex or an OMEGA, there are buyers for those watches not only for the old, everybody wants the old ones.
But the modern ones, the ones that were bought two years ago or three years ago, there’s a marketplace for them.
Audrey: 00:25:01 Totally.
Roy Albers: 00:25:02 And so developing different marketplaces for different types of diamonds, for different types of jewelry has been really the interesting thing of building out what Worthy is.
Audrey: 00:25:14 Well, I think we should take a quick break.
Roy Albers: 00:25:17 Okay.
Audrey: 00:25:17 And we’ll be right back with Roy.
Roy Albers: 00:25:19 Super.
Speaker 2: 00:25:21 Moving past divorce is hard enough without your old engagement ring staring you in the eye every time you open your jewelry box. Worthy provides the smart solution for women looking to safely elevate their rings from dusty relics of hard times to financial assets to help you embrace your fresh start. Worthy covers the cost of insurance, shipping, grading and more. So, if you’re going to sell, sell smart with Worthy. Go to worthy.com/podcast to get started. We’re ready when you are.
Audrey: 00:25:56 Alright, we’re back with Roy and Roy, we started talking about our process. So, we got as far as saying that people ship stuff in. So, I want to talk a little bit more about the shipping process.
Roy Albers: 00:25:56 Sure.
Audrey: 00:26:11 So, if I were to call Worthy and say, “I’ve got this ring,” what kind of advice would I get about the shipping?
Roy Albers: 00:26:18 Number one, follow the shipping instructions.
Audrey: 00:26:21 Right, so we provide really, really clear-
Roy Albers: 00:26:23 To the tee, we provide really clear shipping instructions, you want to use the FedEx packaging that’s provided by FedEx, we offer the ability to pick up the item at your home. FedEx will come to your door, if you can prepackage it before the FedEx truck arrives at your home, you want to get a medium FedEx box and a small FedEx box or something larger but you want to double box your item. And why do you want to double box your item, is FedEx works in this big massive conglomerate of boxes everywhere and if-
Audrey: 00:27:04 I feel like we have a lot of boxes, it must be crazy at FedEx.
Roy Albers: 00:27:07 It’s crazy at FedEx and it’s all automated, so now your box goes on a conveyor belt right off the plane, right through the airport, right to a distribution center and if it gets punctured, the outside box gets punctured, the inside box protects the item. If you have a small ring and it’s in a plastic bag and it’s inside this box and the outer box gets crushed and there’s no inner box, that ring will pop out of that box because of the conveyor and the weight. So, you want to have the double box, that’s very important and if you’re not double boxed, you’re not insured. The insurance companies demand that your item be double boxed, it has to be in two boxes. Even if it’s a big brown box, an Amazon box, put it in a smaller box inside.
Audrey: 00:27:57 And I know, we see like a lot of items come in taped to the inner box and they have it in a ring box taped to the inner box inside the outer box but if you’re listening, this might sound overwhelming but we really make it super clear-
Roy Albers: 00:28:11 It’s very clear-
Audrey: 00:28:12 I mean we have how many rings coming in a day, so many.
Roy Albers: 00:28:15 Over a hundred.
Audrey: 00:28:16 And so it sounds like a lot but it’s totally manageable and we wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t think we could do it in a safe way for you.
Roy Albers: 00:28:24 And we provide a label, a pre-addressed, pre-paid label that has our destination on it, our name and it allows you to just put the label on the outside of the box, seal it up, put your items in first please because sometimes people forget.
Audrey: 00:28:40 Oh my gosh.
Roy Albers: 00:28:41 Yes. But you have to make sure that the box is sealed properly. You have it double boxed, it comes insured to us, we open it up, we check it all out-
Audrey: 00:28:52 Yeah, we talked about how we open it under a camera and you get that first picture, you get the barcode, then we get things cleaned-
Roy Albers: 00:29:00 Cleaned.
Audrey: 00:29:01 We get things photographed and videoed.
Roy Albers: 00:29:04 Yes.
Audrey: 00:29:04 It’s like your rings model moment.
Roy Albers: 00:29:07 Yes.
Audrey: 00:29:07 And then we talked a little bit about the grading. I mean you know more about diamonds than anybody, why can you not just be the one who says, “this is the grading?”
Roy Albers: 00:29:15 Because unfortunately at the point of sale when you buy a ring sometimes let’s take a mall store, this can be any of them. When you buy a ring in a mall store, you’re buying one style that has been reproduced thousands of times by that jewelry manufacturer who sold it to the mall store, and they come with the certificates. Some of them are even a certificate that we would provide later, IGI. But what IGI does when they’re grading these thousands of rings all the same style, they’re giving a range but because not every diamond is going to be that particular quality. It’s going to fall into a range of quality, and sometimes it’s a broad range.
Audrey: 00:30:00 Right.
Roy Albers: 00:30:01 When you’re selling your ring, you want to have the exact quality, you want to have the exact range and so that’s why when we look at it, if we can remove it, we will send it to GIA, if not it’ll go to IGI or GHI, who graded inside of the ring. Having Worthy do that doesn’t allow us to have an independent view of the item.
Audrey: 00:30:24 Right. So, that’s one of the things that I think people get a little bit mixed up of that about Worthy, they think sometimes people think that we’re buying the rings and we’re not. We’re more like the real estate agent that helping you get that sale.
Roy Albers: 00:30:35 That’s right, that is correct.
Audrey: 00:30:36 And so, while it’s really important for us to have the trust of our sellers, we also have to have the trust of our buyers and being able to have that kind of relationship with them, I think gets our sellers a higher bid.
Roy Albers: 00:30:50 That is correct.
Audrey: 00:30:51 And that’s one of the reasons why I feel important that you’re here because you’re such a trustworthy person in the industry, people know your name and … but even though you’re so well respected, we still get that third party grading.
Roy Albers: 00:31:03 100%, we want that.
Audrey: 00:31:03 Because that’s going to get you the best deal.
Roy Albers: 00:31:07 It gives the seller the trust that we’re standing with them to make sure they get the best deal, we’re looking at the grading, we’re going to give them what we feel the value is for the item at market.
Audrey: 00:31:19 Yeah.
Roy Albers: 00:31:20 Whether it’s a watch, whether it’s a necklace, whether it’s a ring, whether it’s a loose diamond. We evaluate what the certificate comes back, the seller doesn’t understand the certificate.
Audrey: 00:31:20 Right.
Roy Albers: 00:31:30 They need our help in order to evaluate it properly and once we evaluate it and we put our value on it then the seller can say, “okay, I’m going to set my reserve price.”
Audrey: 00:31:42 Right, so now okay, the item comes back and we tell them what the grading said-
Roy Albers: 00:31:47 And what the range-
Audrey: 00:31:49 And we give them what we think they’re going to get.
Roy Albers: 00:31:51 Yes.
Audrey: 00:31:51 So, okay this is now I think one of the things that I love the most about Worthy, I think it’s one of the things that makes Worthy such a good match for women who are in the situation looking to sell an item So, you say you’re the smartest man in the world about diamonds. You say, I think that you can expect from here to here.
Roy Albers: 00:32:10 Yes.
Audrey: 00:32:10 But some women from anywhere in the United States can completely ignore what you think-
Roy Albers: 00:32:17 Yes, a 100%.
Audrey: 00:32:17 She should expect and we let them set their reserve price, their minimum, so tell us a little bit about how that works?
Roy Albers: 00:32:24 Okay. So, after it comes back from grading and I look at it and evaluate it and say the markets going to be this range, from x to y. That’s really where we feel it might fall slightly above that, we hope and feel that it … unless there’s something in the marketplace that we’re not understand, that we fall below that. But in general we feel that’s the target range of where it’s going to be, the seller can then set the reserve at that price, below that price if they’re really motivated to sell. And the best thing about is, that doesn’t stop where the auction is going to go. Give you an example, if you set the price at a $1000, that’s your reserve and I said it was from $900 to $1200.
Audrey: 00:33:15 Okay.
Roy Albers: 00:33:16 At a $1000 the auction doesn’t stop. They often go to $1200, $1300, $1400, $1500, $2000 until the bidding stops and the seller gets the advantage of all that extra money in their pocket minus our fees of course but that’s what’s good about Worthy and even if you set it at $2000, instead of a $1000, the auction runs and you as the seller hears the final price because over $2000 it’s sold. If it goes over a $1000 in the first example, it’s sold.
Audrey: 00:33:47 Right, so when-
Roy Albers: 00:33:47 But it doesn’t end.
Audrey: 00:33:48 When it reaches that price that you’ve set it’s an automatic sale and anything that’s above that you’re also going to get back.
Roy Albers: 00:33:48 Yes, yes.
Audrey: 00:33:55 You’re not capping-
Roy Albers: 00:33:56 You’re not capping it at a $1000. We’re not stopping the auction at a $ 1000. Now if it goes below a $1000, if it goes to $800, you’ll hear the best price we have for the item and then you can determine as the seller whether or not you want to accept that.
Audrey: 00:34:12 So, okay. Let’s start with somebody accepts it, how do we close everything out, what happens?
Roy Albers: 00:34:18 There’s a couple of different things that happen, the first is, you get notified, be an email if it goes over the reserve price and that your item is
successfully, one, please put in your banking information if you haven’t done so already. Now we ask for it upfront, so that we can save this step but sometimes people don’t get to it and you put in your banking information or if you want a cheque or if you want to get paid in another method, we have a couple of different ways to get paid, but you determine what’s best for you and some of those certain ways take longer or shorter period of time.
Audrey: 00:34:54 And it depends on your bank and-
Roy Albers: 00:34:54 And the bank to bank.
Audrey: 00:34:57 We get it done very quickly.
Roy Albers: 00:34:59 Very quickly.
Audrey: 00:35:00 That’s one of the things that I hear people love so much about working with us, is that they can’t believe how fast the whole process went and how fast the money was in their account-
Roy Albers: 00:35:07 Yes, the fastest way is just a-
Audrey: 00:35:09 Bank transfer-
Roy Albers: 00:35:10 A bank transfer, that’s the most popular way, and the fastest way.
Audrey: 00:35:13 Yeah.
Roy Albers: 00:35:14 If it goes below that, there’s a process now that you can say, “I’ll accept the offer,” or you can go back to the top five buyers and say, “heres my buy it now price.” And you can set a new price, something below, we give you a recommended range below what your initial reserve was but closer to what the high bid was and see if you can move the high bid closer to what you want and that takes a few days to do and then at the end of that of course you’ll still hear the best price that you got or maybe the buyer has moved his price to your price and then it’s sold to your new price.
Audrey: 00:35:51 So, in the unlikely event that we don’t get you the deal that you’re looking for.
Roy Albers: 00:35:54 Yes.
Audrey: 00:35:55 What ha`ppens, if somebody says, “okay, I came in, I said I’m willing to sell for a $1000 or more and the highest bid I got was 800, I extended, I got 815 after three more days and I really don’t want to sell for less than a 1000.”
Roy Albers: 00:36:11 Then we do a couple of things. Number one, if we removed your diamond from your ring, we put it back in your ring, that’s the first thing and that takes a couple of days to process because we want to do it right. We want to make sure that the-
Audrey: 00:36:23 These are diamonds, we’re not rushing around, right?
Roy Albers: 00:36:25 Right. And we do that if the diamond is in the ring, we then process your return takes 24 hours to process the return. We make sure that everything’s correct, we match up everything and then we create a new label, we have to talk to you about where you want it returned to. Because you might have shipped it from your office and now you want it sent to your home.
Audrey: 00:36:50 Maybe you moved.
Roy Albers: 00:36:51 Maybe you moved or maybe you are going to go away and you want it to go to your sisters house but you have to give us your new return address.
Audrey: 00:36:59 Right, confirm the address.
Roy Albers: 00:37:00 Confirm the address.
Audrey: 00:37:01 For the return.
Roy Albers: 00:37:02 Yes, yes. And then it gets shipped back today FedEx to your home or where ever.
Audrey: 00:37:06 And how much does … let’s say this didn’t work out for somebody.
Roy Albers: 00:37:11 Yes.
Audrey: 00:37:11 How much does it cost, I mean we paid for the insurance, shipping both ways, a grading, how much does a grading cost?
Roy Albers: 00:37:19 Depends on the size of the item but on average about $80.
Audrey: 00:37:25 Okay. So, we’ve spent, how much would you say on a standard.
Roy Albers: 00:37:31 There’s probably about a $150.
Audrey: 00:37:31 Okay, so Worthy has spent like a $150 and you’ve decided not to sell the ring, so what does it cost the client?
Roy Albers: 00:37:39 Nothing.
Audrey: 00:37:40 Nothing.
Roy Albers: 00:37:40 And they get their certificate.
Audrey: 00:37:41 Right and they have those model shots of the ring now.
Roy Albers: 00:37:44 And the model shots, yes.
Audrey: 00:37:45 Yeah. So, every once in a while I’ll see something on Facebook, somebodies got their pictures up with the Worthy logo in the corner. Of course, they’re not getting any better offers on their Facebook marketplace than we were able to get them but it is nice that they have those pictures and it has happened in the past that people then take their item back, they try to shop it around and they end up sending it back in and selling with Worthy.
Roy Albers: 00:37:45 Yes, yes.
Audrey: 00:38:08 And we’re happy to do that.
Roy Albers: 00:38:10 We get that a lot when people say to me, “get that offer back.” Unfortunately we can’t if it’s not within about 10 days because the buyers moved on.
Audrey: 00:38:18 Right, there’s turning so much inventory, they’re not going to remember it and-
Roy Albers: 00:38:22 Yes, yes, right.
Audrey: 00:38:23 Right, but we can start over.
Roy Albers: 00:38:24 Yes.
Audrey: 00:38:25 And if you do sell your ring, we have this amazing office and amazing staff, so how do we make our money to afford to do what we do?
Roy Albers: 00:38:35 We make our money by charging a percentage of the sell fee and it’s anywhere from 5% to 22%, depending on the value of the item.
Audrey: 00:38:44 Right, and we’ll link also to where you can see the fee structure-
Roy Albers: 00:38:48 See the fee, sure.
Audrey: 00:38:48 Worthy.com/podcast and one of the things that I love whenever people in my personal life ask me what I do and I tell them about Worthy, they always ask me what the fees are and they’re so surprised because especially online places, the fees are like 40% in most places and we really, I think that our fees are really competitive. Your local jeweler is probably going to take also like 25%, we do have our fee, it’s how we do what we do. But it’s a really reasonable fee-
Roy Albers: 00:39:19 It’s a fair fee.
Audrey: 00:39:19 Yeah.
Roy Albers: 00:39:20 Yes.
Audrey: 00:39:21 Okay, great. So, I think the next thing that we’ll do, is I’m going to ask you some of the most common questions that we get, but let’s start with … this is I think the most common question. We talked about your grading report and we talked a little bit about appraisals, what I think people always confused about the difference between an appraisal and a grading report and it’s really, really important when you selling your ring to know the difference.
Roy Albers: 00:39:21 Yes.
Audrey: 00:39:50 So, tell us what’s the difference?
Roy Albers: 00:39:57 Okay. There are three things, there is the invoice that you get when you buy something, okay. Then there is an appraisal which is used for insurance purposes which values the ring normally two times the value that you paid for and why did [inaudible 00:40:13] an appraiser do that, is because he’s looking or she is looking to the future about the value of the ring at retail and trying to anticipate the price of diamonds what they’re going to look like five years from now or seven years from now. So, an insurance appraisal is the value that you would receive from the insurance company less your deductible for the ring if it’s lost or stolen, okay. That’s the value.
Audrey: 00:40:44 And that is the money then that you would go used to buy it again at a jewelry store.
Roy Albers: 00:40:44 Correct.
Audrey: 00:40:49 So, we’re talking purely retail. It’s like your appraisal is retail.
Roy Albers: 00:40:53 100% an inflated retail.
Audrey: 00:40:55 Right and that’s another question that I have, I mean it’s in our interest to have your ring be as much worth as possible-
Roy Albers: 00:41:02 Absolutely.
Audrey: 00:41:02 Because we make more when you make more.
Roy Albers: 00:41:02 Sure.
Audrey: 00:41:05 And also for the insurance company, right?
Roy Albers: 00:41:05 Yeah, of course.
Audrey: 00:41:07 They also the premium-
Roy Albers: 00:41:08 Well, the premium plus more-
Audrey: 00:41:09 Paying. So do you find that it happens a lot that insurance companies are over evaluating items to get higher premiums?
Roy Albers: 00:41:18 They over value, they over value, not evaluate because the evaluation is really goes back to the grading report, okay-
Audrey: 00:41:24 Right, that like more science.
Roy Albers: 00:41:27 Yes, that’s the science side. So, if the diamond is graded at a specific color and clarity and carat weight and the metal is a certain gram weight and the side stones are certain size, that’s all the evaluation part. That’s the part that we do here and that the GIA does and the IGI company does or the other labs. The appraisals really just, the retail version of where they think it’s going to go in the future.
Audrey: 00:41:52 Right and they’ll take it as high as they can.
Roy Albers: 00:41:55 Because they make more money.
Audrey: 00:41:56 Right.
Roy Albers: 00:41:56 Yes.
Audrey: 00:41:56 Right, okay. So, and that’s something buyers know, right?
Roy Albers: 00:42:01 Yes of course.
Audrey: 00:42:01 So-
Roy Albers: 00:42:02 The buyers don’t even look at the appraisal to tell you the truth. The appraisal document, it means nothing to us, the only thing that a buyer looks at is the GIA evaluation of the stone which gives them the gemological view of what the stone is.
Audrey: 00:42:16 Right.
Roy Albers: 00:42:17 Which will then determine its value in the marketplace.
Audrey: 00:42:19 Right, and so what I usually tell people when they ask me what is my appraisal useful for, I say, “like for sure it can help you fill out our online form when you’re describing your ring to us which helps us know how much to insure it for on its way here.”
Roy Albers: 00:42:19 Correct.
Audrey: 00:42:35 “But as far as if you should expect anywhere near to that number.”
Roy Albers: 00:42:41 Has nothing to do with the value that you’re going to receive.
Audrey: 00:42:42 And so people … again back to this you know women who we love, they have this one item and this is a totally new industry and a totally new sale that they might not be experienced with this is a moment that I think people get really disappointed.
Roy Albers: 00:42:56 Yes.
Audrey: 00:42:56 But it’s just again we do everything we can to educate you about how this works and given the realities of the resale market, we do everything we can to get you the best deal.
Roy Albers: 00:43:06 Right.
Audrey: 00:43:06 So, an appraisal is like not the thing to lead with here.
Roy Albers: 00:43:13 No, it has no bearing on the resale market.
Audrey: 00:43:14 Right, right.
Roy Albers: 00:43:16 It’s just like you insure your car going back to the car analogy, you insure your car for x dollars when you don’t expect to get that money, the insurance value when you go to trade it in.
Audrey: 00:43:29 Right.
Roy Albers: 00:43:29 Or when you go to sell it on eBay or on Craigslist or Kelley Blue Book.
Audrey: 00:43:35 Okay. So, okay this is another big one that we get all the time.
Roy Albers: 00:43:40 Yes.
Audrey: 00:43:41 So, a lot of the time people will send an item to us and they say like it’s a three carat ring and it turns out that it’s three carats total-
Roy Albers: 00:43:50 Total weight.
Audrey: 00:43:51 What is the difference and why is it important?
Roy Albers: 00:43:55 So, here you have a three carat emerald cut center stone with two one carat emerald cut side stones and then-
Roy Albers: 00:44:01 Emerald cut side stones and then 210 point baguettes on the center stone, so right here and then the wedding band in the back is soldered together and there are two more baguettes on the back. But this ring total weight is four and a half carats. Okay. But it’s only a three carats center stone. Okay. So there’s a difference when you go in and say I have a four and a half carat diamond ring on our platform and say it’s four and a half carats. You would get a different evaluation than saying I have a ring with a three-carat center stone and a carat and a half inside stones.
Audrey: 00:44:49 Okay. Here’s another question then and we’ll come back and look at another one with lots of little diamonds to talk about total [inaudible 00:44:56].
Roy Albers: 00:44:49 Sure.
Audrey: 00:44:56 Because I know that’s an important piece of this, but when we sell an item, like we were just looking at this ring and has a three carat-stone in the middle and then it has all these other smaller stones and is this platinum or white gold?
Roy Albers: 00:44:56 It’s platinum.
Audrey: 00:45:10 So and it has platinum. So when you sell this item, what are you selling?
Roy Albers: 00:45:16 We’re selling the entire ring. Okay. What we will do, we will ask the seller to remove the center stone and in this case we would remove the two side stones because they’re large enough to get their own GIS certificates. So this ring that we just looked at would have three GIA certificates and then we would evaluate the four bad gets and the platinum separately and one total value. So you’d have a value for the center stone and internal value. How I look at it, and internal value for the center stone. Two values for the two sides stones, because they each have their own GIS certificate and a value for the side, small baguettes and the platinum, you’d get one evaluation for the entire ring of all those components together.
Audrey: 00:46:03 Okay? So when you sell with Worthy, you’re going to get every piece that is a-
Roy Albers: 00:46:03 Every piece.
Audrey: 00:46:09 … Value is going to sell.
Roy Albers: 00:46:09 Correct.
Audrey: 00:46:12 So it’s not like I know there are some places will take the stone and then you send your gold over here, but we will take care of the whole thing for you. Okay, great. So now let’s get back to the question of a total carat versus center store.
Roy Albers: 00:46:28 So here’s another version.
Audrey: 00:46:30 Okay.
Roy Albers: 00:46:31 So here’s a princess cut center, which is a three quarter carat center diamond, and then there’s another carat of side diamonds around it. Okay. So this is one and three quarter carat total weight ring at point of sale at a mall store. That’s how they would sell it. One and three quarter carat ring. So when a customer then goes into Worthy and puts their information in, they would put it as a three quarter carat center stone and a one carat total weight side stones.
Audrey: 00:47:14 So it’s frustrating because the jewelry store is going to sell it to you one way and the buyers are going to buy it in another way. Again, that’s one of those harsh realities that we really can’t do anything about that. That’s the jewelry store knows what they’re doing and they’re able to sell it to you that way, but you can’t sell it that way.
Roy Albers: 00:47:32 Right. A lot of people would input into our system. One in three quarter carats of diamonds and then we’re evaluating it based on a one and three quarter carat center diamond, which inflates the value.
Audrey: 00:47:47 So when it comes here and you’ve sent it out for grading and you come back with different numbers, how does the price adjust?
Roy Albers: 00:47:56 We would evaluate it on a three quarter carat center diamond. Okay. And then our team would call the seller and say you have a three quarter carat center diamond and one carat of side diamonds, plus the 14 carat gold.
Audrey: 00:48:11 Right.
Roy Albers: 00:48:12 And here’s the total value for that. Unfortunately though, a lot of times when the seller first gets their initial estimation, that estimation is based on a carat. 1.75 carat diamond, which is totally different. A totally different price point. And so we have to explain that away by the difference between total carat weight and send her carat weight.
Audrey: 00:48:38 Right? And that’s like one of those other moments where like sometimes I think people maybe misunderstand why that’s happening, but we really are always doing everything we can to get people the best deal possible. And even if that’s how the jewelry store sold it to you, our buyers know exactly what the jewelry store was doing and that’s, it’s something that’s in the past that we can.
Roy Albers: 00:49:02 when you see those flyers from the mall store and your Sunday paper and they’re saying one carat total weight and you look at it and there’s a small center stone and all these stones around it that’s not a one carat center stone and it has to be priced appropriately.
Audrey: 00:49:13 And these rings like a lot of the time we see a lot of these cluster rings that have the four flare diamonds in the middle. And it’s beautiful. It’s really beautiful. And of course people should wear them in good health.
Roy Albers: 00:49:28 Absolutely.
Audrey: 00:49:28 But as far as the resale value goes, it’s just, it’s not the same kind of a deal as [inaudible 00:49:34] center stone.
Roy Albers: 00:49:34 Those sold as a total weight ring. And when you look at all the parts, that’s how you have to evaluate it as parts. It’s unfortunate.
Audrey: 00:49:43 Right? Okay. I think we covered the big tail.
Roy Albers: 00:49:47 Two big [inaudible 00:49:47] yeah.
Audrey: 00:49:48 So now we’ll have a little bit more fun. We talked about minimums. Okay. Let’s say there’s somebody who has a GIA certificate from last month in Minnesota.
Roy Albers: 00:50:00 Yes.
Audrey: 00:50:01 Does she have to set her ring in to use Worthy?
Roy Albers: 00:50:04 Yes.
Audrey: 00:50:05 Okay.
Roy Albers: 00:50:06 And why is because first of all, we have to do all the photography, all that work, all that work has to get done. We have to verify that the stone matches the certificate. Believe it or not. Jewelry stores sometimes make mistakes and we’ve had this happen where the certificate doesn’t match the stone in the ring. Okay. And I’ll give you a good example of how it happens. A store has three or four diamonds, very similar in size and they’re showing it to a client who wants to buy one of the stones and for whatever reason the salesperson makes mistake and puts the wrong ring of the wrong diamond together with that ring. And the certificate goes along with that and then it comes down stream to us and we look at it, there’s no way it matches. And unfortunately we have to then send the original certificate, the diamond to GIA and have them reevaluate and match it up for the way it is now.
Audrey: 00:51:05 What a nightmare.
Roy Albers: 00:51:05 It’s a very big [crosstalk 00:51:06].
Audrey: 00:51:06 And I know we’ve also Had people send things in and they find out that it’s not a real diamonds.
Roy Albers: 00:51:10 That’s another real problem. Unfortunately, some people will say they bought a diamond. And-
Audrey: 00:51:19 That’s something you-
Roy Albers: 00:51:20 … Or they’ll sell the center diamond out of the ring at a later time. They need cash or whatever and they put an ACC, or they put a [inaudible 00:51:28] or something else.
Audrey: 00:51:30 so we hear about that a lot on social two people who have come across our site and they’re really excited about it and they say, “oh, I took it to my jeweler before I was going to send it in and it turns out it’s not a diamond,” and it happens a lot and so it’s just disappointing, but that’s the thing that really happens.
Roy Albers: 00:51:47 Or it’s a synthetic diamond.
Audrey: 00:51:48 Right, right. [crosstalk 00:51:51] Okay. We talked about the insurance. We will ensure things based on the information that our clients give us when they start the process and it’s up to $100,000 and that’s all on us and then is Worthy safe? That’s another question I get all the time.
Roy Albers: 00:52:10 Listen, we don’t own any of the jewelry that we sell. It’s somebody else’s merchandise, so we take this very, very seriously. It’s our sellers merchandise. We want to facilitate a sale for them, but we never take ownership of it and we do everything we can to make sure that we track the item from the point it’s received to the point either it’s sold to our buyer or given back to them and our whole role in this is to facilitate a sale and we are extremely careful with our sellers’ items to make sure that nothing impacts them. Everything’s bar coded, everything’s tracked. We have cameras at every key location, so we do everything we can ensure that our seller feels that Worthy is going to protect them during this process.
Audrey: 00:53:02 I mean you can’t even get up to the floor without a special key, this is a really secure facility and there’s amazing people working here.
Roy Albers: 00:53:10 We have very good relationships with GIA, which is the best lab in the world and IGI and GHI, other very good labs. All of our employees are vetted and bonded and insured and my team really does a great job to make sure that your ring is your ring when it’s shipped.
Audrey: 00:53:32 I think you also talked about how you have been through a divorce and it’s just like a part of your experience being here. And I think for, I think for everybody here, on the one hand, yes this is a secure facility and we’ve put all of the practices in place. We have a great relationship with Brink’s. We have a great relationship with FedEx and we’re on top of all of those things, but also the people who are unboxing your item, the people who are cleaning it, they know the stories that are coming in with these items and there’s so much love for our clients here. So it’s safe and sound, it’s beyond this. We look at it as beyond the security and I think that’s one of the things that really makes our company different from other options that people have.
Roy Albers: 00:54:21 Right. Right. And like I said earlier, we’re not here to make them an offer and just buy it from them and then resell it. We’re here to make sure they get the most that they possibly can. And part of that is doing all this extra work that gives their item the best chance to sell. And you touched on it. It’s very emotional for us. We are in tune with our sellers. We become part of their process and we’re there. We hold their hand through the entire thing. And it’s really, really great.
Audrey: 00:54:55 I think this podcast is kind of a piece of that fact that we’re able to do something like this when this is what we’re normally, we have writers and different kinds of divorce professionals and single moms on the podcast and their stories are really important. And one of the things that we really like to do is we know that we are providing the best solution to women who are at this stage of their life with their jewelry, but there’s not enough people that are advocating for these women and giving them the attention and the content that they really deserve. And it’s something that people aren’t always talking about. And so I think you can see how what we’re able to do with jewelry has grown into so many different things. It’s not just this podcast, it’s our blog and our newsletters and our Facebook group and-
Roy Albers: 00:55:43 It’s been a great thing for our company to get involved and the divorce process is sometimes a very lonely process. And I think we’re here help them in this facet of their divorce. Hold their hand through it and make them feel secure and safe that they’re doing the right thing. They can reach out to any of our partners in that financial groups that we partner with or advice calls.
Audrey: 00:56:12 We have like Aaron Levine of Hello Divorce, so she’s like in the bay area, but she’s doing this kind of national thing now she’s talking about the legal process of divorce and we talked with a lawyer in North Carolina and we’re really trying to give them the 360 but we know that we’re the people on diamonds. So I’m so glad that we’re getting to do this episode because this is what it’s all about. And I think it would maybe not be the most interesting podcast every week, but this is the meat of our sandwich and we’re-
Roy Albers: 00:56:43 You’re right, I’m not that interesting in your segment.
Audrey: 00:56:46 No, you’re fascinating and the diamonds are so fun and we’ll take a closer look luck. But I hope that people feel that, that piece of it, but it’s not, yes, we’ve got the experts. Yes, we’ve got the security, but also there’s a lot of compassion that goes into what we’re doing here.
Roy Albers: 00:56:46 Yes, 100%.
Audrey: 00:57:02 And we’re trying to give them everything that we possibly can. So. Okay. We talked about the fees. We talked about how this provides solutions that you can’t really get locally. What items do we accept?
Roy Albers: 00:57:14 So we accept almost every type of jewelry as long as it is gold, platinum, palladium, we do accept some silver if it’s branded like David Yurman, but non branded silver really doesn’t have a lot of intrinsic value, but if there’s added value from a brand, we would accept some silver jewelry as well and we’re doing something exciting which is our new inheritor project where we accept jewelry boxes and so we accept collectables now, would do gold pens, gold coins, things like that, but any type of diamond jewelry is really our key niche. We’re really, really strong loose diamonds and then of course any kind of watch. We’ve had extensive list of watch brands on our site that we do accept. There are some lesser quality watches, Swatch or Timex. We don’t accept because there isn’t a big resale market for it or there’s no intrinsic value, plastic swatch watch, although it has a lot of collectors out there, but those are swatch collectors and it’s a very specific business. But as far as intrinsic value in a watch, pocket watches, pendant watches, antiques.
Audrey: 00:58:31 And we do men stuff too.
Roy Albers: 00:58:33 Yes, of course. Cufflinks and mens’ rings [crosstalk 00:58:35].
Audrey: 00:58:36 I’ve loved when we get men’s rings. I’ve never seen a man wearing these giant diamond rings, but they’re so cool and it’s always fun to see those kind of thrill. So we fell men’s and women’s jewelry and what kind of stones do we sell?
Roy Albers: 00:58:51 We do most of the big more common gemstones, ruby, emerald, sapphire, pyrite, tourmaline are the key ones that we sell. There are some more esoteric stones like Alexandrite, that we can do padparadscha.
Audrey: 00:59:10 Right. So we’ve got all of this information on our website and we’ll link to that so people will be able to find it. But we do sell more than engagement rings and we are growing and that’s one of the ways that if you have something that you inherited or it’s something that you’re looking to send-
Roy Albers: 00:59:25 We’d love to hear from you.
Audrey: 00:59:26 … It’s definitely worth checking with us because if we think we can help you, we would love to help.
Roy Albers: 00:59:30 Absolutely.
Audrey: 00:59:31 And we’ll let you know transparency is a core value, which is another reason that I was so excited to have you on because giving people the opportunity to really meet you and hear from you and to talk about the whole process and everything. Really just kind of opening the doors, we’re sitting at our New York office. So if you’re listening and you can hear a taxi every once in a while that’s the reason why. Okay. I guess my last question for you, and I will also let our listeners know that anybody who’s in the New York area or visiting or finds himself here. If you are not comfortable sending your ring in and you want to bring it in. We love having people here-
Roy Albers: 01:00:10 Absolutely, we see people every day.
Audrey: 01:00:13 And we invite them in securely, but, so people are welcome to be here and a lot of people do have the pleasure of meeting you and showing you their item and talking to you and learning all about what we do and they’re able to get started in house and sometimes even take them to the grading, but we can’t do that kind of handholding for people who are very far away. I know that you would love the opportunity to meet with every woman that’s selling through our site. And I wanted to give you an opportunity to kind of let them know the kinds of things that you would say to a woman who comes in here.
Roy Albers: 01:00:48 Well, first of all, explain what we did earlier, the process, to make them comfortable and explain to them what the value is, where we think it’s going to sell at the marketplace. And really to get them to understand like this podcast, what we do, what our value added is for them, and explain what the market is. This is a very, very blind item. It’s the most blind item and in a lot of cases the woman in the divorce, she’s there participating in the purchase. She’s not participating in the quality analysis. She’s given a ring and doesn’t know much about it. She may see the certificate, she may not see that the certificate upfront and so getting to understand what all this is and getting comfortable with it I think is the key.
And so that I think is the biggest thing that we can do is to help them get comfortable with the process, help them get comfortable with what the quality of the item is, what GIA adds, why we give out to GIA versus grading and in house and we do grade some items that are in house, but those items that we don’t feel have significant enough value to go to a lab. And like we said earlier, my team and myself have years of experience. We can look at a diamond right away, determine what the quality is, where we think is going to go. But having that GIA third party view of it at-
Audrey: 01:02:19 It’s like staging your house.
Roy Albers: 01:02:21 That’s right, that level of comfort that this is what it finally is. Especially let’s take the other example where you get an item that’s inherited. You don’t know what it is. Getting a certificate is the first step to determining the value, the true worth of something, and that’s what we want to get to.
Audrey: 01:02:41 Well, I want to thank you so much.
Roy Albers: 01:02:41 You’re welcome.
Audrey: 01:02:44 Not just for being on the podcast, but for making Worthy something that really helps these women because we have so much love for them and I’m just so proud of the things that we do.
Roy Albers: 01:02:44 Me too.
Audrey: 01:02:54 And the way that we’re able to advocate for them and give them that advantage and I also want to thank you for making this such a wonderful place-
Roy Albers: 01:02:54 Thank you.
Audrey: 01:03:02 … Where we can all be proud of what we do.
Roy Albers: 01:03:04 What you do is so important for us.
Audrey: 01:03:07 Thank you.
Roy Albers: 01:03:07 You’re Special.
Audrey: 01:03:09 Thanks again to Roy for joining us and to all of you for listening. Next week we’ll be joined by Leslie Jane Seymour, one of the most influential voices in media after years of writing for and eventually running magazines like Redbook, Glamour, and more magazine. Leslie started CoveyClub, an amazing virtual meeting place for lifelong learners. Her audience is women over the age of 40, but we talked about reinvention, the importance of community and female voices, and she shared some of her favorite celebrity stories with us. The context of this episode is as timeless as she is, so you’ll want to tune in regardless of your age. Make sure you subscribe so you can catch every new episode of Divorce and Other Things You Can Handle in your feed weekly. If you like what you hear, rate and review us to help other women like you find us.
Thanks for listening to Divorce and Other Things You Can Handle, a branded podcast from Worthy, dedicated to celebrating women like you as you embrace a new beginning after divorce, separation or whatever. Worthy is an online auction platform designed to help you sell valuable items like an engagement ring or a wedding set. When you decide to send your ring in, we pay for the shipping and insurance to ensure that it arrives safely to our New York office. Once we’ve received the ring, we have it professionally graded and photographed, which helps it sell competitively in our buyer network. One of the best parts of working with Worthy, is that you get to set the minimum on your item. After the grading, our gemologist will give you a recommended selling minimum, but at the end of the day you get to decide how much do you want to sell the ring for. If the highest bid comes in below that threshold and you decide not to accept it, we’ll send you your ring back and we’ll even cover the costs of the insured shipping again. Let us help you get the best deal possible for the jewelry you’ve outgrown. Are you ready to embrace your fresh start? Us too, go to worthy.com/podcast to learn more.
Divorce is the end of one chapter, but it’s also an opportunity to create the life you always dreamed of. You are the author of the story of your life, get some inspiration from “Divorce & Other Things You Can Handle!” The divorce podcast that will keep you thriving as you embrace your fresh start!
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