Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. Welcome to Marin Talk
Speaker 1: Your Money, the personal finance edition of Merin Talk's Money.
Speaker 1: In these bonus podcasts, we talk about the best strategies
Speaker 1: for making the most of your money. I'm Marin Sumset,
Speaker 1: web Editor at Large for Bloomberg UK Money, and in
Speaker 1: this episode we're going to talk about it slightly less
Speaker 1: conventional investment choice. Fine jewelry, vintage jewelry, antique jewelry, however
Speaker 1: you want to talk about it, Jewelry that you are
Speaker 1: not buying new now the time of market volatility and
Speaker 1: ongoing inflation. Jewelry is not only held as value, but
Speaker 1: in many cases it has appreciated more than many cases nicely.
Speaker 1: So if you are thinking about this in terms of
Speaker 1: real assets, how might it actually fit into your wider portfolio?
Speaker 1: With me today is Emma Discibil, a former banker who's
Speaker 1: now the director of Baroque Rocks, a company which specializes
Speaker 1: in vintage jewelry, which is a keen eye for there's stuff,
Speaker 1: and that has led to partnerships with various brands, including
Speaker 1: fashion retailer Jigsaw and the label Paul Smith. Along the Way.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Merin talks money.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's wonderful, wonderful to be with you, meren.
Speaker 1: Listen, let's just start back.
Speaker 2: Tell it.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about what you do and
Speaker 1: the type of jewelry that you are interested in and
Speaker 1: that you sell.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I sell predominantly vintage jewelry, and from those
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties to early two thousand's vintage is quite interesting.
Speaker 2: It's actually fifteen years old, the technical term for vintage.
Speaker 2: But it's fine vintage jewelry, which has intrinsic value effectively.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so when you say fine vintage jewelry, what you
Speaker 1: mean is jewelry with actual gems and pressures, metals.
Speaker 2: It's exactly. It's not costume jewelry. So it's anything from
Speaker 2: nine carrot to fourteen character eighteen carrot. I don't go
Speaker 2: any really higher than eighteen charrot because it just yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just there's not really the marketplace for that. But
Speaker 2: it's very much well. I love it because it's it's
Speaker 2: got intrinsic value. It's also really funky, it's very cool. So, yes,
Speaker 2: you've got your intrinsic metal value. You've got real gemstones
Speaker 2: in there, which also have another value. And they're sustainable.
Speaker 2: I think the second hand market is a bit like
Speaker 2: driving a car off a fore cord. You know, the
Speaker 2: moment you've driven a car, brand new car, it loses
Speaker 2: some of its value, but there's still your secondary market.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the same thing for Vince's jewelry.
Speaker 2: There's very much this big secondary market.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So looking back at the jewelry before the
Speaker 1: period when you're interested in buying jury, there are various
Speaker 1: things that you can't really get anymore. There's old cut diamonds.
Speaker 1: You sometimes see it auction, et cetera. I'm quite interested
Speaker 1: in those because diamonds in particular, when you look at
Speaker 1: the modern diamond world, do you think, why on earth
Speaker 1: would you go into a shop and buy a piece
Speaker 1: of diamond jewelry when we know that you that man
Speaker 1: made diamonds are identical exactly, And so the value of
Speaker 1: modern diamond jewelry like a little levy. But older diamond
Speaker 1: jewelry maybe holds its value.
Speaker 2: It very much does earn, especially old minecut diamonds. No
Speaker 2: two are the same, and then a lot of them
Speaker 2: were recut again in the twentieth century. So basically surviving
Speaker 2: old mind cuts are actually becoming scarceer, so again, so
Speaker 2: that's why the value's gone up.
Speaker 1: But they don't. But they don't have quite the same
Speaker 1: sparkle as a modern cut diamond.
Speaker 2: No, they really don't. They really don't. But I'm real traditionalists,
Speaker 2: so I don't touch lab growns. I will not touch them.
Speaker 2: And that's ridiculous really, because chemically they have.
Speaker 1: They are exactly the same.
Speaker 2: They are exactly the same, but one is grown in
Speaker 2: a test tube and the other one comes from the earth.
Speaker 1: You might not touch them, and other jewelers might not
Speaker 1: touch them, but nonetheless, it makes a diamond worthless, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: A mind diamond is still worthless because of the existence
Speaker 1: of lab grown dimonies. Someone told me about a decade
Speaker 1: ago that if you were going to buy a diamond,
Speaker 1: with the rise of lab grown diamonds, you should always
Speaker 1: buy a flawed diamond or a colored diamond, which may
Speaker 1: be one of the reasons why champagne diamonds, etcetera. Took
Speaker 1: off a few years back.
Speaker 2: Exactly they did, and actually, really the only diamonds that
Speaker 2: have held their value recently are the fancy colored diamonds, pinks,
Speaker 2: the blues, and they really are genuinely rare. I think
Speaker 2: we're going back to the lab growths. There's no resale
Speaker 2: market for a lab growner, So I'm going to go
Speaker 2: back to my emotional earlier argument of it was formed
Speaker 2: billions of years ago versus back in a laboratory.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The key point is that a labyrin diamond is
Speaker 1: never going to be an investment, but its existence devalues
Speaker 1: your investment in mind diamonds.
Speaker 2: Depends on when your diamond was. If it's an old mindcots,
Speaker 2: then that's value. Yeah, it has to be. Sadly, it has.
Speaker 2: I mean the prices are down fifty twenty percent, so yes,
Speaker 2: you're right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, let's talk about other gemsy other gems?
Speaker 1: What is popular? What is fashion?
Speaker 2: Mom?
Speaker 1: When I bought something the other day, I bought a
Speaker 1: zircon ring. Everyone said to me, why would you buy
Speaker 1: a man made them? Because people hear zircon and they hear.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: But actually, this is a beautiful gem. But I think
Speaker 1: it's really undervalued because no one recognizes it as being
Speaker 1: the equivalent of.
Speaker 2: A Selfhi, no, exactly, So zircons. I love a zircon.
Speaker 2: I'll talk about the blue one. So the blue circons
Speaker 2: really do rival the sapphires, and they are a fraction
Speaker 2: of the cost. Obviously, because saphars again have going back
Speaker 2: to dimons, diamonds, sapphars, emeralds, and rubies. With a big
Speaker 2: four and those are the big four, then everyone else
Speaker 2: is jostling for the next place. But within the jewelry world,
Speaker 2: you can no longer talk about the big four. You
Speaker 2: have to talk about all gemstones. But I'm still going
Speaker 2: to talk about the big four.
Speaker 1: Hang on, why aren't you allowed to talk about the
Speaker 1: big four?
Speaker 2: I think there are We can't call them the big
Speaker 2: four anymore. You have, okay, just put them into a
Speaker 2: slightly bigger bucket with everyone else, but zircons. If I've
Speaker 2: got a chipped diamond in there, for example, sometimes I'll
Speaker 2: replace it with a white circon, which again right balls
Speaker 2: for diamonds. For they're brilliant blue circons. They're vastly undervalued,
Speaker 2: So there I'd say they are a great investments. I
Speaker 2: am going to if I may just take us onto
Speaker 2: going back to the big four. Emeralds and emeralds are
Speaker 2: part of the beryl family, and the reason I wanted
Speaker 2: to talk about beryls are because going back to undervalued
Speaker 2: gemstones are aquamarines and morganites, because morganites and aquamarines are
Speaker 2: not an emerald, but they are in the same again
Speaker 2: chemical formula, chemical makeup the same family. But again they
Speaker 2: haven't had the marketing, they haven't had the history, they
Speaker 2: haven't had the folklore that an emerald has enjoyed. For example,
Speaker 2: because they were found discovered in nineteen ten, they don't
Speaker 2: have the same market value.
Speaker 1: Is it also about Is it also about rarity? It
Speaker 1: is an emerald, what we think of as an emerald
Speaker 1: and nice green color, etc. Is that more rare than
Speaker 1: an ach marine or a morganite, Because I think one
Speaker 1: of the big drivers here is rarity. No, really not no, So.
Speaker 2: They're really rare. They are rare, but they just haven't
Speaker 2: had the marketing around them. And that's why I always say,
Speaker 2: actually have a look at when you're if you're buying jewelry,
Speaker 2: look at the morganites, look at the acromarines. And what's
Speaker 2: really interesting going back to diamonds, because a diamond market
Speaker 2: has fallen so significantly, a lot of investors are pivoting
Speaker 2: now to the colored gemstone market, and that's been very
Speaker 2: interesting and people are asking me for different colored stones,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. Another fascinating undervalued gemstone, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: is a spinell. Now, I don't know if you know
Speaker 2: what a spinella.
Speaker 1: I don't visit you, okay.
Speaker 2: So spanell is really exciting. So in so, when King
Speaker 2: Charles had his coronation back in twenty twenty three, he
Speaker 2: wore out of Westminster Abbey, he literally strutted off wearing
Speaker 2: the black Prince's ruby in the Imperial straight crown. Right
Speaker 2: apart from that ruby in the State crown that hangs
Speaker 2: just above the visible just above the cross, is not
Speaker 2: a ruby. It's a spinel. It's still referred to as
Speaker 2: a ruby, okay.
Speaker 1: And is it the same chemical makeup?
Speaker 2: Is it no different, totally different gemstone? It's and it's
Speaker 2: found from Burma. But basically for centuries, miners didn't distinguish
Speaker 2: between the two, between a ruby or a spanel. They
Speaker 2: couldn't tell the difference. Then they went into the labs
Speaker 2: where they were properly assessed and discovered that they're very different.
Speaker 2: Why they're compelling now is that there's no lab grown disruption.
Speaker 2: They're very underpriced equivalent to rubies and auction prices again,
Speaker 2: the collector base of growing and the color range, just
Speaker 2: like diamonds, is quite large.
Speaker 1: Burmese rubies used to be all the raids, right. Is
Speaker 1: it possible that quite quite a few of the things
Speaker 1: that were flagged as Burmese rubies are actually spinels?
Speaker 2: I would say they probably are one hundred percent yeap interesting.
Speaker 1: Okay, Here's another gem that I've always been interested in,
Speaker 1: which is relatively new one. I remember when the first
Speaker 1: marketing campaign for it started about twenty years ago, which
Speaker 1: is tanzanite, which apparently only comes from one mine at
Speaker 1: the bottom of Kilimanjaro, et cetera. There is this huge
Speaker 1: Marilani Hill exactly huge marketing campaign around it about twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, and they then they seem to lose traction.
Speaker 1: But I saw an auction the other day. Quite a
Speaker 1: few tanzanites come up, tansanit rings, etctera come up, but
Speaker 1: what looked like reasonable prices in line again with I
Speaker 1: don't know, peridose or they're sort of not big four gems.
Speaker 1: What's going on with tanzanites.
Speaker 2: Again, going back to the rarity. I love wearing something
Speaker 2: that is rare, that has a story behind it. And
Speaker 2: so with the with tanzanite, as you said, it's only
Speaker 2: found in one space and one place on Earth, and
Speaker 2: that's in tanzaniair they are paled as a one generation gemstone.
Speaker 2: There's hardly anything left in the in the mines, So
Speaker 2: again the tanzanites are probably undervalued for where they are now.
Speaker 2: And again they've never been successfully synthesizer. So again this
Speaker 2: is another great stone to be buying, genuinely rare and
Speaker 2: genuinely rare.
Speaker 1: Let's move further up. We've talked about a lot of
Speaker 1: things that give jewelry gems their value. We've talked about rarity,
Speaker 1: We've talked about condition, We've talked about we haven't really
Speaker 1: talked about history and provedance. That's more antique jwelry. But
Speaker 1: that's all important.
Speaker 2: But actually, do you know what I think for what
Speaker 2: I do the bit like George and silver. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to go back to the nineteen seventies stuff. So
Speaker 2: early nineties, in seventies when gold was relatively cheap, I
Speaker 2: hadn't had the Nixon effect their gold. You know, jewelers
Speaker 2: were far more generous with their gold, and so you
Speaker 2: get in the seventies really heavy gold pieces, and what's
Speaker 2: happened now Because the gold price back in January twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six hit five hundred and eighty nine US dollars
Speaker 2: per Troy out everyone was like going, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: what's going on? Blah blah blah blah blah. A lot
Speaker 2: of the nineteen seventies early seventies stuff with any weight
Speaker 2: got smelted. So then we're going back into that vicious
Speaker 2: circle of there's not enough supply ye rarity value. So
Speaker 2: the gold nineteen seventies pieces will go up in value,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera, and in the same grace for silver.
Speaker 2: Silver again has gone up, not as exponentially high as gold,
Speaker 2: but it has gone up. But again, the smelting process,
Speaker 2: in my world is so painful and so heartbreaking. That
Speaker 2: is craftsmanship gone. People cannot make or don't make pieces
Speaker 2: like they really used because again the old antique jewelry
Speaker 2: to even mid century, the jewelers made their own, made
Speaker 2: their own implements to make the jewelry wise, so a
Speaker 2: lot of it and nowadays a lot of it's machine made. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So if you see like a pave diamond looks that's
Speaker 2: all machine made, and five part I mean like less
Speaker 2: dotted diamonds in a same ring, that's machine that's not handmade.
Speaker 2: And so the handmade stuff is really valuable and those
Speaker 2: techniques aren't being passed down because the jewelry world works
Speaker 2: in a silo effect. No one talks to the right
Speaker 2: hand or the left hand, and that's a real shame.
Speaker 2: I think that's the one thing in the jewelry world
Speaker 2: I think we could probably be better with and.
Speaker 1: Today what you say about things being melted down, because
Speaker 1: we often say when we're talking, when I've talked about
Speaker 1: and letting inventage, surry etc. In the past, I've often
Speaker 1: said that quite often you can buy pieces for not
Speaker 1: much more than the value of the precious metal and
Speaker 1: the gem itself. So it's very exciting you're getting that
Speaker 1: great craftsmanship for free, but you're saying that in many
Speaker 1: cases free and enough. No one wants a offsmanship, so
Speaker 1: they will melt it down and separate the pieces.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately. Yes, actually, because gold has dropped, I'm going to
Speaker 2: be taking myself straight back up to the Birmingham Jewelry Quarter.
Speaker 2: Any jewelry quarter in the UK is a great place
Speaker 2: to go and start looking for jewelry. I would be
Speaker 2: still while it's now low, what is it today? Today's
Speaker 2: live spot price is about I talk to US dollars
Speaker 2: four thousand and fifteen US dollars per Troy ounces about
Speaker 2: three thousand pounds and that's really come down from its
Speaker 2: heightened in January. So I'll be going to have a
Speaker 2: look what's around. I'll be buying now.
Speaker 1: And when you speak to all the jewelers, when you
Speaker 1: go up to the jury quarters, et cetera, are there expectations
Speaker 1: from them, given their decades of experience buying that mister,
Speaker 1: where the gold price might go next?
Speaker 2: Yes, they think it's still going to go up again,
Speaker 2: JP Morgan. I had a quick look at what their
Speaker 2: forecasts are. They still think it's going to go well
Speaker 2: over six six hundred and JP Morgan's conservative, They're not
Speaker 2: like Goldman's. Goldmans always give far larger forecasts. So I
Speaker 2: do think it's now going to go up, and I
Speaker 2: think in this little dip is a really interesting time
Speaker 2: to invest. And also because you'll go back to the
Speaker 2: craftsmanship which you are would be buying into again the rarity,
Speaker 2: there will be a secondary market I mean, and going
Speaker 2: back to rarity. What the luxury houses were very interesting
Speaker 2: at the moment.
Speaker 1: Oh no, this is exactly what I was about to
Speaker 1: ask you about when we got sidepacked on something else?
Speaker 1: Is the brand, the Chanelle, Tiffany, Cardier, etc. When you're
Speaker 1: buying a bit of jewelry, how much does that matter?
Speaker 2: Okay? So I would say nineteen seventy is going back
Speaker 2: to my normal. Nineteen seventy is the line Borgary nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy is great place to buy into. And guess what
Speaker 2: I was having a chat with the borgery guys down
Speaker 2: on Bond Street last year or the year before. Anyway,
Speaker 2: they have been busy buying back vintage pieces. So for example,
Speaker 2: when Elizabeth Taylor's incredible trousseau went to auction, they were
Speaker 2: in the market buying back. Now, if the luxury houses
Speaker 2: are buying back their pieces from those times like Bankkeep
Speaker 2: and Apples or Cartial Drifty, and they're all buying back
Speaker 2: their vintage mid century pieces, that is another indicator of
Speaker 2: a good investment, I personally think. So they'll be then
Speaker 2: releasing it trip feeding it into the market.
Speaker 1: God it really is or back to the seventies, isn't it?
Speaker 1: Do you know if Vinda story held its value well
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies in that inflation re environment, I.
Speaker 2: Think people found nineteen seventies jewelry really quite hideous. I
Speaker 2: think they were really preferred an art deco and all
Speaker 2: the rest of it. And again it comes down to
Speaker 2: jewelry in the eye of the beholder. Really.
Speaker 1: Okay, So here we are in the environment where we
Speaker 1: are feeling a little bit back to the seventies in
Speaker 1: terms of inflation, in terms of politics and all that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. We've talked about the various gems that
Speaker 1: you think of value at the moment, and we've looked
Speaker 1: a little bit at the various eras. But if you
Speaker 1: wanted to go out right now and by in your
Speaker 1: view opinion only not advice, in your view, what would
Speaker 1: be the thing to go out and buy now? It's
Speaker 1: just a little extra of your portfolio. We're talking about,
Speaker 1: not to your portfolio here, everybody, we're not suggesting you
Speaker 1: go out but ten percent into gems. If you wanted
Speaker 1: to have a time a little bit on the side
Speaker 1: and also wear it gridally, what would you go out
Speaker 1: and buy now?
Speaker 2: Okay? So I fight with my husband who's in the industries,
Speaker 2: not in the jewel industry, but in the financial industry.
Speaker 2: And I would say gold is so much more fun
Speaker 2: to wear, right, I don't want it in my portfolio.
Speaker 2: I want to be able to have the physical thing,
Speaker 2: and I also want to be able to wear it.
Speaker 2: I don't want to have to wait for someone to
Speaker 2: liquidate my shares, thank you very much, And I'm sure
Speaker 2: lots of other people do love that. But I want
Speaker 2: to be able to wear my pieces. I want to
Speaker 2: look like a Christmas tree. I want to have a
Speaker 2: trousseau of physical gold, physical silver where I know that
Speaker 2: goodness forbid. I could just take the whole lot, and
Speaker 2: I need a cash. I could go straight up to
Speaker 2: the bullion guys and get it. So I would go
Speaker 2: out now. While gold is low, silver is low, I
Speaker 2: still think both gold and silver are going out. My
Speaker 2: tips for you, if you've got deep pockets, I would
Speaker 2: buy vintage bullgery. I would purely because I love bullgery.
Speaker 2: I'd buy the big houses because they've held their value. First,
Speaker 2: EBS is a great place to look. Then I would
Speaker 2: go to antique shops. Grays Market is a fantastic if
Speaker 2: you're in London. Grays Market silver vaults. Go to these places.
Speaker 2: They're amazing. A lot of the secondhand kind of vintage
Speaker 2: antique places have been closing down. So there was one
Speaker 2: on the King's Road and they've just closed and that
Speaker 2: that's been there for the years and years and years
Speaker 2: and they just closed down. So again the whole market
Speaker 2: there is scarcity. People is it's more difficult to get
Speaker 2: your jewelry into jewelry. Of course you can go to
Speaker 2: the emporium which is Barock Rocks. But I would go
Speaker 2: have a look on first. AB's great place to look,
Speaker 2: and I'd say go and buy now, because that's what
Speaker 2: I'm going to be doing.
Speaker 1: Everyone's going to be bidding against you, Emma.
Speaker 2: I know at the auction houses. Oh there's a great
Speaker 2: auction website which I will tell everyone to have a look,
Speaker 2: and especially where called the sale Room dot And this
Speaker 2: is a disaster for anyone, and I mean anyone who
Speaker 2: who loves bidding, because the Sealroom is like a big umbrella.
Speaker 2: It hosts every single auction website all of the UK,
Speaker 2: sometimes in South African ones. It has European auction sites,
Speaker 2: so you could then effectively buy and sometimes they've got
Speaker 2: some American auction houses, but it just means that you'll
Speaker 2: reach so you can type in I don't know, nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy seven, Bulgary, and then you can start watching it
Speaker 2: and they'll give you a lot. So let's give me
Speaker 2: my tips. It's a disaster be able to buy anything.
Speaker 2: So Salum dot com, seerum dot com. Okay, it's amazing,
Speaker 2: it's amazing, look it up.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Emma. We really enjoyed having you on.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Moren an absolute pleasure, and probably
Speaker 2: weekly went totally off piece, but yeah.
Speaker 1: That's how it works. Thanks for listening to this weeks
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Speaker 1: at Marinus w and John Underscore step Back. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced by Some Society and Jennifer Seeley's sound designed
Speaker 1: by Blake Maples and Aaron Casper. Questions and comments on
Speaker 1: this show and all our shows are always welcome. Get
Speaker 1: in touch, let us know about your favorite gems. I'll
Speaker 1: show emails. Merrimaney at Bloomberg dot net.