Johnny Come Lately

It seemed like yesterday when I was “the new guy” on the Island. That was then. It’s now over thirty years later when I first built a business, then a house and raised a family here. I think I can finally consider myself firmly planted here.

It all began in September of 1994. At that time, I wasn’t the only circus in town - there were a few small jewelry/gift shops scattered about the Island. Since the 1990s, I have seen so many jewelry stores come and go here in the tropics I honestly lost count. I believe Jewelry by Laura and I are the only survivors from that era.

The residents and visitors - both Marco-ites and Neapolitans - had gone through a really bad experience a couple of years prior to my arrival with a jeweler who was at first considered by Marco standards at the time “A Pillar of Marco Island Society,” a noted philanthropist and “the trusted Island jeweler “only to leave it all behind in the dead of the night disgraced after being accused of dishonesty and grand larceny. Apparently, he found a better way to finance his lavish lifestyle by removing his client’s large diamonds and replacing them with cubic zirconias. I guess for him it was the perfect scheme, this “illegal diamond mining operation” he had going until someone caught wind of his illicit operation. Once his deception was revealed, half of the island questioned if they were also his victims. 

How long and how many people he performed this dubious practice on is still unknown - I did hear he was never prosecuted for his actions.

I, for one, had an experience involving this guy with one of my customers in Boston; I had sold a very nice two-carat to her in the late 1980s. She needed a re-appraisal, and when she presented her three-carat ring to me to update, I laughed and said that’s a Cracker Jack toy ring (it was a two-carat cubic in the setting). Mrs. J., where’s the real two-carat? Her face went pale, and she nearly collapsed on the floor! “Richard, I have only trusted that ring with one other jeweler and his store is on Marco Island in Florida! The last time he cleaned my ring he kept it overnight, I thought that was odd!”That was the first time I even heard of Marco Island, when she went back to the jeweler the next season he was in the wind and found out she was not the only victim. There were several charges brought against him. What a scoundrel, apparently switching a diamond for a worthless cubic is a hard point to prove in court, especially if one has that same ring cleaned by every Tom, Dick and Harry that owns a jewelry store in the known world. Luckily, she had insurance, and I was able to replace the worthless cubic zirconia with the real thing.

Last I heard, he escaped prosecution and moved to another town in Northern Florida and opened another store. Needless to say, it left more than a bad taste in everyone's mouth around these parts! So, when this “Johnny come lately” arrived, it took more than extra effort and years for me to gain the islander’s trust after that major train wreck.

Johnny come lately’s who become fly by nighters. It’s always been a crazy business, most notably in the late 1980s -1990s. Many New York-based jewelry and diamond merchants refused to ship to Florida jewelers (especially Miami!) due to an almost certain possibility they would never get paid for their diamonds or merchandise. So many scams with false storefronts were a thing in Florida during those years. Some deliveries even went to sham home addresses and mailbox outlets.

Besides being guilty of grand larceny, they were also in trouble with Postal Inspectors for using the U.S.P.S. for these scams. It also became dangerous for many of my friends who were on-the-road wholesale sales vendors. Many refused to go to Miami or Orlando for fear of being robbed coming and going from their cars with bags of expensive merchandise. I know several who were robbed at gunpoint in other major cities - it was like the Wild West out there. 

I was told by many of my lifelong jewelry connections from here and abroad they would only ship to me on Marco Island because of our past history and mostly because they got paid for every shipment I accepted.

The jewelry and diamond business is built on trust and honesty; many million-dollar business deals are originally paperless and are completed with a mere handshake. 

That trust and reputation is all a retail/wholesale jeweler has. You squander that trust in the industry and your name becomes mud overnight. No one will ship to you; many will never do business with you unless it’s C.O.D., if at all.

Millions of dollars of diamonds are shipped back and forth on memorandum consignments. This requires trust and integrity. Payment is due when the diamond(s) are sold or they are returned to the diamond merchant within an agreed time frame.

I can get any size, shape and quality my customer requests in less than 24 hours. I learned it does not pay to have so many loose diamonds in stock and still never have the size, shape or quality that the client wants.

This code of honor certainly holds true as to how the retail jeweler treats his customers. I deal with hundreds of customers a week and many have been customers since I opened my door in ’94. They know our/my reputation when it comes down to honesty and integrity. Newbies come in all the time - they question our longevity and integrity and that is understandable; they don’t know me and I don’t know them. My answer is usually if we were not trustworthy, how would we survive 30+ years on this speck of sand in the Gulf of Mexico? I tell them to ask about our reputation around the island if they are uncertain. They always come back satisfied with what they hear on the street or on the beach.

For those of you Nervous Nelly’s who have a diamond ring in dire need of repair but the mere thought of leaving it somewhere terrifies the very fibers of your soul…relax. There are ways to “plot your diamond.” Plotting, simply put, is a way to map your diamond where it is magnified and all identifying characteristics are noted such as internal inclusions, surface flaws, chips…even scratches are noted and measured width and depth to the hundredth of a millimeter.

All this precise info is on the repair envelope so when the job is completed, the diamond is reviewed; all the diamond’s measurements and characteristics are compared with the prior info leaving not a single doubt that the diamond you picked up is the diamond you left for repair. I don’t do this procedure very often - one has to realize that trust is a two-way street, and I will personally plot a diamond and point out the damage to a customer if their diamond is in poor condition. When we accept diamond rings for repair, they are not always too clean. During the repair, the ring is boiled out, ultrasonic cleaned and polished…any prior “sins” are noted beforehand because they stand out like a sore thumb when the job is completed.

If, after I explain this completely failsafe and highly detailed procedure, this still leaves doubts about relieving your diamond related paranormal behavior, I’m afraid there is no help for you. Due to my past experiences, if I still sense doubt and insecurity about someone leaving the diamond, I will pass on doing the work; they will always have doubts about you and what you did to their ring even years after you complete “the perfect repair” for them.

I have run across many people who just don’t trust anyone; I once had a woman say, “I better get back the same Cubic zirconia I came in with!” (What did she expect? That I would replace it with a real diamond?) or “Don’t you steal the jewels out of my watch movement!” and my favorite…“What did you do with the gold that came off my ring when you polished it?”  What?

Yet these are the same folks that will buy $500 worth of “plastic emeralds” from a kid off the street in Bogotá. Go figure?