Diamonds are worse than cars when it comes to depreciation when they leave the store unless they are at least 1 carat or above solitary high quality (and they still lose value). Diamond rings will lose 30-50% just leaving the store and continue to fall. The mark up on diamond rings is also huge. A $2000 diamond ring might get you $300-$500 12 months later unless you find a friend who is looking for one, diamonds are a poor investment unless your talking solitary diamonds above 1+ carrot.
Huge mark ups on jewelry, especially diamond jewelry. I bought my wife a 3 carat diamond ring for our 20th anniversary, it was on sale through a national jewelry store. It was marked down from $7000 to $2200, (shows how much markup they have). I added a lifetime warranty for damage to settings and lost stones for $175, wife sister works at the store so I also got a 15% employee discount knocking another $350 off of it, with taxes it cost me about $2150 on a ring that normally retails for $7000 plus tax and they still made money on me. I bought my wife a 5 carat diamond bracelet that past Christmas that retails for $7500, I paid $2250 on Black Friday including the warranty and they still made money off of me so that shows you the mark up jewelry stores have on precious stone jewelry.
The value in your ring is the gold 99% of the time, remove the diamonds and save them, you can have a ring custom made later on with the diamonds you save from rings you find. Most jewelers unless they are small independents couldn't care less about your diamonds, they buy diamonds and jewelry in bulk. Unless the diamond offered is extremely rare for what ever reason there's simply is no reason for a jeweler to be compelled to buy a diamond from a private party when he can but an identical diamond in bulk for less from hundreds of wholesalers with better payment terms.
