Diamond Merchant

Your day often involves evaluating stones, negotiating on both the buying and selling side, and maintaining the relationships with cutters, dealers, and retail buyers that determine your deal flow. The work is inherently bilateral — you're buying inventory or on-memo stones, holding price risk while you find the right exit, and presenting stones to retail jewelers or private clients who expect you to know exactly what they're looking at. A misjudged stone on the buy side is a loss you own entirely.\n\nWorkflow tends to center on relationship maintenance at the dealer level — phone calls with diamond houses, visits to cutters and wholesalers, attendance at trade shows like JCK or Basel. On the sell side, it's retailer calls, custom piece inquiries, and the occasional direct-client engagement for significant stones. Grading report literacy is table stakes; the ability to assess stones in person, under loupe, for characteristics that don't fully appear on a certificate is what separates experienced merchants from report-reliant traders.\n\nThis is a career where reputation compounds — both toward better deal access and better buyer trust. Those who stay long tend to have a genuine love of the stones, sharp instincts for market pricing, and a patience with the long cycles of relationship-building that lets them be selective rather than transactionally desperate.