Cheap TV jewellery - a polemic


Out of professional curiosity we follow jewellery offers on various German speaking TV channels since many years.
Besides, we often get requests to repair jewellery from these sources. Most of the times we decline because it´s not worth it or simply impossible...

Recently a jeweller asked us to supply him with arguments to prevent a dear customer from waisting her money.

We gladly complied, especially since we regard the marketing tricks of those companies as, mildly put, unethical.

First the (only) good news: mostly you cannot complain about prices. TV jewellery is produced cheaply and in large numbers in Asia and priced accordingly.

But, and here´s the (numerous) bad news, the stuff is not worth a penny more than what it´s sold for.

These are some of the things you should know when buying TV jewellery

Here´s an example of what these companies sell:

At the time of writing (November, 2018) the webshop of one TV seller shows a gold ring with a 10x8mm oval ruby in a prong setting.

The "ruby" is glass-filled and weighs 2.64cts. We use quotation marks on purpose because with glass contents as high as 75%, renowned laboratories do not call these stones rubies any more. Instead they use terms like composite stone or hybrid ruby. At international gem fairs these "gems" are sold for as low as $ 10 p.ct.!!!
Add 1.85g (!!!) of 9K "gold" and the costs for casting, setting and polishing.

Sales price € 199,00 incl. VAT

Sounds cheap? Well, it isn´t. On top of that it´s not worth a farthing more and the resale value is almost nil.