So there you are, you’ve got a ring with a lab created diamond and you are looking to sell it. But will a pawn shop take a ring with a lab created diamond? Let’s find out…
Pawn shops are typically known for dealing with a huge variety of merchandise, offering to buy or make a loan against almost anything that comes in their doors.
I would feel pretty confident in saying that virtually everyone know that if you have gold, or a diamond ring, that you can take them into the pawn shop near you and get good money for them.
That having been said, one of the questions that I will get asked from time to time is is a pawn shops will take a ring with a lab created diamond.
That unfortunately is a much harder to answer question because it will largely depend on the pawn shop in question.
Unlike genuine diamond rings, rings with lab created diamonds may not be made out of gold or silver.
If it’s not, then the ring really has no value, meaning that it won’t mean much of anything to a pawnbroker.
On the other hand, even if the ring is made out of a precious metal like gold or silver, a pawn shop may still not want to deal with it simply because they don’t want to establish the reputation of taking items in that are not genuine.
However, in most cases, if the ring is made out of gold, most pawn shops will still be happy to work with it and make you a loan on it, or offer to buy it from you if you want to sell it.
That having been said, keep in mind that they will probably only pay for the gold itself, and pay nothing for the stone.
A lot of people wonder if pawn shops take rings with lab created diamonds and unfortunately, the answer is often no. If the ring is made out of gold or silver, they may consider taking it for the precious metal value, but they won’t pay for the stone since it has very little value.
Why Don’t Pawn Shops Pay For Lab Created Diamonds
At this point, you might be asking yourself why a pawn shop wouldn’t pay for a lab created diamond.
Well, for starters, what makes diamonds valuable to begin with is the rarity.
When you are talking about lab created diamonds, there’s nothing all that rare about them – they are man made. Man made this one, he can make more of them.
A diamond however is made by nature over the course of hundreds or thousands of years. It was created by forces other than man.
It’s why gold is more valuable than copper for instance. Even though both gold and copper are very useful, gold is much more rare and therefore more valuable to possess.
It’s for all of these reasons that diamond buyers really don’t want anything to do with lab created (or lab enhanced) diamonds.
There’s no demand. It’s fake, a fraud if you will.
If a diamond buyer doesn’t want them, then that leaves a pawn shop only one way to get rid of them, and that is hoping that someone walks in off the streets and buys it.
Well, pawnbrokers don’t like taking chances, and risking (or hoping) that some random person will walk in on any given day and buy a fake stone is pretty risky – too risky to put money on it – which is exactly what they would be doing if they made loans on them or bought them outright.
How To Sell A Ring With A Lab Created Diamond If No Pawn Shop Around You Will Take It
In the event that you find that you are stuck with this ring and no pawn shop or gold buyer in your area will buy it, then you are best off trying to sell it on a site like Craigslist.
I personally don’t advocate selling jewelry on sites like eBay where you have to ship it.
The reason being that anytime I’ve tried this, there’s always a problem of some sort.
Either they bought it, didn’t realize it was the wrong size and are too cheap (or lazy) to get it re-sized, or worse – they say that the box was “Empty” when it arrived.
I’ve had both of these happen and there’s not much you can do about it. In the later case, if they should happen to claim that it was empty, you might get some insurance money back if you insured the item – but that takes forever and is a major hassle.
So, for those reasons, I suggest trying to sell it locally.
That having been said, when you meet someone to sell it, do so someplace safe, like the parking lot of a police station.
Even though it’s a lab created diamond, people are still idiots and criminals are everyone… it’s just not the type of item that I would meet someone just anywhere to sell.
If they have dishonest intentions, they won’t want to meet you in the parking lot of a police department and you will know right away to move on to the next interested party.
Mandy Dormain started working for Pawn Nerd in 2020. Mandy grew up in a small town in northern Tennessee. But moved to New York for university. Before joining Pawn Nerd, Mandy briefly worked as a freelance journalist for several radio stations. She covers politics and economy stories.
