Hello, happy Friday. It is November the seventh. We have an exciting episode today. If you are 25 to 35, or if you're interested in jewelry in general, we have Mary Khamis coming on to give a little bit of perspective on. Buying jewelry, whether you might be looking for that engagement ring, whether you're looking for, you know, a fancy necklace, a great, great holiday gift this year.
She gives us a rundown of what to look for when buying jewelry. if there's a, you know, 25, 30-year-old in your life, send them this link. At the end, you're gonna know you're gonna be an educated buyer. Really excited for that interview. Before we get into it, just a reminder, this episode of Get In is brought to you by ClusterTruck Indy's.
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Trust me, your stomach's gonna thank you. Reminder, that code is Indy INDY. Now, let's get into the episode, but first there is a ton of. Interesting Indiana News that has happened this week. Cheyne and I are gonna dive into some of that, give you three of the top headlines that we're seeing and we're gonna just kinda debrief that a little bit 'cause it's been a big week for the state of Indiana.
First things first, the Colts are acquiring Sauce Gardner coming to Indiana. Gonna be an Indianapolis Colt playing corner for us. This is, what do we see? This is a huge get for the Colts. I mean, we're trading our first round. 26, 26, 27, 20 seventh, two first round picks. and AD Mitchell. And AD Mitchell gone.
He's going to the jets off, off into the sunset with the, with the New York Jets. That's, you know, I, I wish you go from seven and two to what? One and seven? I'm wishing him the best. Yes. I think that hopefully he can find a good fit up there. It's gonna be interesting. I think there are gonna be some, some Indianapolis, some Carmel Monon real estate that comes up for sale, through the grapevine.
I had heard that he had a few cool spots, up in Carmel that are probably gonna go on the market soon. So if there's a realtor out there, you probably need to get in touch. there's, I think they're right along the Monon, right on the Monon prime property. So if there's a realtor, listens to this. There you go.
What do we see? What does this mean for the Colts season? That loss to the Rams was frustrating. I mean, AD Mitchell's role in that loss, but just, you know, on the road in LA it's tough. They go to Pittsburgh where they've struggled for decades. I think it's two wins all time. In Pittsburgh? Yeah, like, like two and 23 or something.
I saw something crazy that was like one in 16 since the eighties. Yeah. Maybe like something crazy like for whatever reason, even during the Peyton Manning era and Andrew Luck and, and now you're onto Daniel Jones, like the Colts just can't win in Pittsburgh. And it felt like maybe this year's team is different and Pittsburgh has, you know, Aaron Rodgers on maybe the sunset season of his career, but they go to Pittsburgh and the turnovers pile up six turnovers in the game.
Daniel Jones accounted for five of those two strip sacks, three ints, but he had pressure in his face, something he really hadn't experienced through the first eight games of the season. So the Colts it something he has a lot of experience with though, in general Yes. When he was in New York. Absolutely.
So the Colts come off of. Kind of a reality check that okay, we have an imperfect roster despite a seven and two record. And Chris Ballard, general manager, who made some big moves already in the secondary coming into this season, like just this past off season, shoves all his chips into the center of the table and says, all right, to heck with the draft picks.
You know, don't, don't care if it's first or second rounders, like ship those out the door. 'cause those are unknown. Those are college prospects that don't always pan out. And you've got a proven lockdown corner in Sauce. Gardner now pairing up with Charvarius “Mooney” Ward. On the opposite side, you've got Kenny Moore, who's been around for close to a decade in a Colt's uniform, still in the slot corner.
Cam Bynum, Nick Cross. That secondary is really good and the offense through the first nine weeks has gotten all the attention. They've scored, you know, 30 plus points in six of their nine games. Now the defense is all of a sudden like, hey. We're not just gonna put up points, but if we do maybe have an off game and only score 20, 24 points only the de the defense should be locked down.
I mean, I mean, they're, it's gonna be exciting. They're putting, they're really putting all their chips on the table. Heck yeah. when it comes to this, which is not necessarily the Colts that we've seen, no. Hasn't been their mo for the last, I mean, six, seven years. Stop. It's true. Since Andrew Luck, they really haven't.
Yeah. Like they, they've pieced together the quarterback position. They identified Daniel Jones as not just a stop gap or a replacement for Anthony Richardson, but now showing that, hey, you bring in a guy like Gardner who's under control for a few more seasons after this year. That it's not just about 2025 in the 2026 Super Bowl.
This is about the next two or three years to come in this roster. You've got Jonathan Taylor in his prime. You've, you've just got an exciting roster that Yeah. You want to compliment with, with pieces like sauce. It starts, it starts like, do it for Jim. It is win for Jim. It seems like win for Jim. They're going all in, we've said the term, you know, put their chips on the table, which is another interesting piece is we're talking about news across the state of Indiana.
Good transition. Yeah. Great. Come on. We're talking about the potential for a new casino in downtown Indianapolis. So I don't know if you've all seen the news here. This is what's going on down in Ohio County. There is the Rising Star Casino that has, it's kind of fallen out of favor down there, and they're looking for a place to move it.
And one of the front runners, I believe last year in 2024, they were thinking about taking it up to New Haven up just outside of Fort Wayne. I believe there was already renderings, although all this stuff, they're gonna put a casino up in the Fort Wayne area, now it's looking like Indianapolis. Downtown Indianapolis is the front runner to get the Rising Star Casino, which is currently in Rising Sun.
That license gets moved and we're talking about, bringing that to downtown Indy. And it is, some sides of the coins say this is a good thing. Other sides say this is a bad thing. What we're seeing is there's two potential locations. One is there's some parking lots on South Street across the street from Lucas Oil Stadium.
Could be a potential destination for it. The other is across those tracks, in the Pan Am Plaza. That's another location where we could see, which is off of Illinois and Georgia, Illinois and Georgia right there where they're putting in the new, Signia hotel. This is interesting. I don't know.
What's your initial thoughts to downtown Casino for Indianapolis? You get into the numbers and you see the, the tax money that comes in from that, not just the revenue from the casino, but we're talking upwards of $700 million pumped into the city annually. yeah, so like, I think the number projected impact this is, are we reading them?
Indianapolis Business Journal article. It says 490 million in gross annual revenue with 170 million in annual gambling tax revenue that would go into Marion County, that would go in. And we have all these big dreams and aspirations, but you know, you gotta figure out how to pay for this stuff. You talk about new, soccer stadium, you're gonna have to, you know, do some renovations to Lucas Oil at some point.
It was a new stadium back when it opened, I believe. Oh 8, 0 8 0 8 season. Right. It's like this is, this is not some, some. Some time. Lots, some juice to Indie, for sure. Yeah. And you talk about, you know, being able to pay for it. I think that that's an interesting piece. You also talk about, we welcome so many people in, this is a new attraction downtown, this whole yards.
what it does make interesting is you have Anderson just outside in the Donut county, you have Shelbyville. I don't know what it means for those. That's kind of a, a challenging predicament there for sure. And for Indianapolis, I mean, separating Anderson and Shelbyville's. Casinos in Shelbyville with the horse track like Indianapolis has, I, I think it was the Indiana Indiana Sports Corp, just saying that they want to become the mecca of women's sports by 2050, or they wanna become the sports capital of the United States.
This is a little linchpin that you could plug in and say, here's one more thing we can add to the city and the experience to become more than I would say, Indianapolis. We're known as great hosts. I mean, we host NCAAA Final Fours coming up next March. early April. We hosted the NCAAA College Football Championship just a few years ago.
We had the entire March Madness tournament in Indianapolis coming out of the COVID year. So we are a great host for a number of events on the sporting scene. a great host for conventions as well, that that convention center is pretty much around the clock every weekend of the year. So 52 weekends across the year, you've got something going on at the convention center and downtown hotels being filled.
I think the biggest thing is when maybe, a convention is going on in town, there're not always being enough options for entertainment. Or if you're only in town for a couple of nights and you're at the convention all day, say just from nine to five, where are you gonna go eat? And then what are your plans after dinner before you've gotta get back to your hotel room?
Well, a casino. Kind of helps fill some of those voids that, hey, you're out with your coworkers or your friends family, whatever, like you can burn some burn some hours. Is that way it, it could help bolster it not just being a convention town. Like people go, you think about, I mean the greatest example of this is like on, you know, times 1000, but it's Las Vegas.
You go there and you're touring, you're, you're doing tourism for the casino. This would be an interesting piece and I think that there's the opportunity, and I want to go through this thought exercise of how you would build the perfect downtown Indianapolis Casino. And I think it could also be the capital of watching sports as well as, you know, women's sports, amateur sports capital and how it could fit into sports Corps.
The CIB, like all these things plant. So if I were designing the ultimate downtown casino in Indianapolis, obviously you take the base stuff, you have the slot machines, you have the tables, but you have to think about an elevated sports. Experience. I'm talking, have you seen the Cosm? These are those like, I don't even know what, but you, they're like these massive screens that make you feel like you're at the game.
They're crazy. You've definitely seen, you know, clips of this on Instagram and there was one in Dallas and it could be an insane edition. It's almost kinda like the sphere in Las Vegas. Mm-hmm. But for watching sport, it makes you feel like you're in the end zone. The sound is there. And it could just be an awesome premium sports viewing experience.
'cause if you, let's say you come and visit Indianapolis, but it's, there's no Pacers games, there's no cold ski, there's no fever game. Or they're on the road. Yeah. Or they're on the road. You get people in town that know that this is a sports city and you create this, you know, maybe we have multiple viewing options where you could have, okay, hear me out on this.
On the rooftop of the downtown Indianapolis Casino. You've got our own version of the Stadium Swim. A heated pool, like four Seasons where people could get out there, even if there was snow coming down. We figured out the way. Obviously this is, you know, not necessarily a pipe dream. This is, I don't know exactly the engineering behind it, but imagine giant rooftop screens where you can watch sports here in Indianapolis.
Maybe a little swim up bar like that could be a power move. You talk about this new Signia hotel. People are, you know, traveling back and forth. They want to come be part of the Indianapolis Sports Swim. Maybe not. Stadium Swim. Sports Swim. I like Sports Swim. Yeah, the Sports Swim. Come on, you have a little 1933 cocktail lounge on the roof.
We might be onto something here. Cheyne, I, I think you're onto something for sure. And. Want, they wouldn't just market that across the nation as like, Hey, we've got this new casino and here's what it looks like. But the second someone comes in for a convention that isn't out of towner and experiences it, they go home.
And just the word of mouth, because that's what you do when you go to a Vegas or you go to a Nashville or you, you travel, you come back and you tell your friends and family about the trip, what went well, what didn't go well. And if you have a other worldly experience at Indianapolis is downtown casino and there are these elements to it that are unique or one of a kind, that would do the city very well.
Yeah. And it would just encourage people to come here. Yeah. And you think about like all the, like, imagine. Sports Swim, the Indy 500 experience for Sports Swim. Mm-hmm. You have 300 and, I don't know, 300,000 people coming to Speedway for the race. You figure out a deal there. You got people at Sports Swim, hanging out there.
Like it just creates this premium feel and you could market it as the greatest place for sports. Whether you're watching sports, live sports, you're watching sports at this new venue, it could really be powerful. I think that if we think big and market it as this is the sports capital, whether you're watching, whether you're playing youth sports up in, you know, Westfield, everything sports is Indiana is Indianapolis.
That could be pretty fun, man. And, and I think one thing, one other touch I would add just to that sports, either sports book or when you come in, come in through the casino, if you're leaning into the sports scene, is, I think of Caesar's Palace down in Vegas and there's all the, the sculptures and statues.
I would target like, Michael Mount Rushmore of Indiana athletes, whether they're from Indiana originally or had significant impact for any of our professional sports teams. Who's on your Mount Rushmore of Indiana athletes, Peyton Manning, Larry Bird. I mean, you gotta put Reggie Miller in there. Reggie, you going two basketball all, I mean, you just think of all time Indiana goats and it doesn't just have to be four.
No. Like you, you, but if they were just like these, you go through Caesars Palace, there's statues everywhere. If you had these statues all around, I mean, we have no shortage. I wonder like what, at, what criteria does it take to get, because it's like wonder we make, do we make a Caitlin Clark statue? But it's like I, you maybe, like, maybe, I don't know that I'll, do you wait until she's a hall of famer?
Yeah. Or, or do you like call your shot a little bit early? Like think about all the people you have, like John Wooden. Oh yeah. Like there are some insane athletes that have come through Indiana, Indianapolis that you could, you know, give a little tribute to 'em there. 1000%. You could make this just a spectacle.
I'm all in on spectacles. I think that there's a lot of potential here. At the end of the day though, when you think about like the economics and stuff behind it, there's a lot of big visions that the city of Indianapolis has from an MLS team. obviously, you know, the Capital Improvement Board, I'll let you do your own research on all that jazz.
but it's like the, the, I think in the article they said it's intriguing to see and they see the tourism potential. They have to fund a lot of these improvements. This is a way you increase tax revenue. Mm-hmm. Could be an interesting way to bring that to life. Yeah. Bottom line, this is an option. Fort Wayne is still an option.
Ideally though, this is what it is. There is an underperforming casino license down in Ohio County. The, we have to do a whole other episode about what losing that casino means to Ohio County. It's gonna be tough. I, I don't know. It doesn't seem great there. No, I think that there's definitely some, some stuff that has to be, that happened down there to bring industry to that place.
Because I would be curious on how many jobs are tied to the Rising Star Casino in Rising Sun? Couple hundred I'd think and maybe more. And I wonder how many households, like are loosely connected to that. Mm-hmm. So something to keep your eye on. This is not a done deal. We are not saying there is 100% gonna be a casino in downtown Indianapolis.
We're saying though, it's an option and I think it could be a very fun option. So you're, and if we market it right, it's like Dumb and Dumber. You tell me there's a chance. So you're saying there's a chance other Big Indiana news, locally here in Indianapolis, circle City Broadcasting that is the owner of WISH-TV.
They bought WISH TV. Oh man. 2019, I believe it was like 42 and a half million in 2019. Circle City Broadcasting just announced that they're acquiring WRTV for, that's the ABC affiliate here in town. This is a C affiliate, I believe. What was the number there? 83? 83 million. I believe that's 40 number.
So 82 and 83, I think it was. 1 25 was the, they have overall investment. Yeah. Over, so 83 million Circle City Broadcasting announces the $83 million acquisition of WRTV. This is interesting. Those are numbers, I believe three and four in the market. They're now gonna be under the same ownership group. So obviously, you know, you have our, what is it, the CBS, you got FOX59 CBS4 in the same building.
Yep. Same ownership group. Yep. WTHR-13. Yep. NBC affiliate. Yep. Also off Meridian, closer to downtown. And then Wish and WRTV. This is interesting. So I mean, I've seen a lot of, articles, 20 plus employees have resigned or were terminated due to this new non-compete agreement going on with which, which was earlier this summer.
Yes. Yeah. And it, that's continued to slowly in, in the most recent one. just Wednesday this week. Yeah. Who, Scott. Scott Sander. Scott Sander. 20 years. 20 years at which tv He, I think they, he kind of is calling this his retirement. Mm-hmm. interesting to see. I don't know the mix up of, you know, how many onscreen versus the production versus if you have two companies coming together, what that means.
All I know is this is gonna shake up local, traditional media here in the city of Indianapolis, a hundred and twenty five, a hundred and twenty 5 million on the line from both acquisitions. It'll be interesting to see how they, they move forward here. I dunno, what do you, what do you make of this? Well, I think you're seeing whether Scott Sander and I don't wanna speak for him, but you know, there's already bounce back emails coming from his WISH-TV, email address in the, the IB IBJ article that you were reading up on, on Wednesday.
And it's like, is that the first domino? To step down. And that, that's a staple. That is a guy who is, you are seeing on your TV every morning. If WISH-TV is the channel that you tune into. And you know, Monday through Friday, Scott Sanders bringing you local news coverage, good and bad. And he steps down and like you said, you know, early retirement, but maybe he had heard of this potential acquisition of WRTV, and you just think, okay, this is my chance, or this is my opportunity to wipe my hands clean of what's going on with Circle City Broadcasting.
Whether you like it or you don't like it, and it's just him getting out the other, will he be the, the first and last? I don't think so. Yeah. The other pieces that's interesting is nexstar, they are buying TEGNA, so Nexstar Oh my gosh. So, so Nexstar is, that's the THR? Yeah, that's, that's, no, that's FOX59.
Oh yes. CBS4. That's nexstar and WTHR is owned by TEGNA. TEGNA. And so I believe Nexstar Media Groups doing a $6.2 billion acquisition of TEGNA. So this would mean in Indianapolis that deal is set to close late 2026. But that would mean two companies, circle City Broadcasting and Nexstar Media own all five of Indianapolis major TV news outlets.
Kind of interesting. So Circle City Broadcasting might have wish WRTV and nexstar would have FOX59, CBS4, and WTHR-13, FOX59 and WTHR-13. They're the two big fish in the pond. That, that, that's your number one and two? Yeah. I think Wish and WRTV are three four. I'm not sure where CBS4 slot's in, but I know they're, their viewership is much lighter Yeah.
than the other. station in the building. So I know that there's this whole thing, there's some, some interesting stuff. Read the IBJ article get versed on this, but just know that there's something interesting happening with local legacy know news here in Indianapolis. And it's just something to monitor.
I mean, with two organizations have all five news outlets. That's just something, to keep your, keep your eye on as your, you know, as your resident of Indiana. Well, in both locations too, for the Circle City broadcasting stations in particular, WISH-TV and WRTV are almost side by side. They're off Meridian between about, oh, what would that be like 10th and 21st.
And they're on the same side of Meridian, within walking distance really of one another. I don't know how. They merge the two? Yeah. Or if they operate them as separate entities, I guess that's something you'll find out. Yeah, I'd be, I'd be eager to see how this all shakes out and what that means for Yeah, local media and for all of us.
As you know, I don't know how many people are turning on the news, but whether it's apps or you know, on social media, whatever it is there, keep your eye open there. So those are three headlines. Sauce Gardner's coming to Indy, potential new Casino either in downtown Indianapolis or in Fort Wayne. And Circle City Broadcasting.
The owner of WISH-TV ends up is acquiring WRTV. Is that A, B, C? Yes. Yeah. So those are that. That's that. There you go. now we're gonna get into our interview with Mary Khamis, where we're talking all things jewelry. If you are even thinking about engagement rings, this is the episode for you.
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If you're ready to upgrade your boots, your wardrobe, or even just your go-to jacket Cowpokes is a place that we set in people. Today I'm joined by Mary Khamis Rowee. She is our resident expert in the diamond business. Today. We're talking all things bling. We're talking diamond rings, we're talking maybe some jewelry questions.
So Mary has been in the jewelry business since 1978. There a spot up in the Geist area up, up there on the north side of Indianapolis, and she has been our, our resident jeweler here. her and Cheyne have experienced together from, actually, that wasn't engagement ringside. That was like award ceremony ringside.
But we're excited to have you on today. One thing we know about our audience, we have a lot, a lot, a lot. Of male listeners in that 25 to early thirties range that might be thinking about, popping a big question at some point in the near future. And what we wanna do is talk about how that process is gonna look, what that looks like, and what are questions that people are asking, and how can we help them avoid mistakes that guys around the world are making.
Mary, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm excited to have you here. So the first thing, right, we start with a relationship. Mm-hmm. And, you know, some guys start to think like, man, I think it might be time to, to pop that question. How long ahead of a proposal date? So let's say, we'll just use even New Year's Eve 2025.
Yeah, that was their date. How much in advance do they need to start thinking about, like, this isn't like Amazon two day shipping, is it? Well, it could be really, if it's December 28th, you know, at least a month, I would think. it, depending on what they want. If we're gonna have to custom make a ring that can take four to six weeks.
Okay. Or at least three weeks. Yeah. If it's something they pick out of the case and they pick the diamond within a week, we can have it set. So, okay. So that, so that depends on if you come in there and you're like, oh, that's the exact one that I want. Right. Versus you want one, like, so if you had to say typical timeline, say if you have a custom one.
Three to four a month? At least a month. At least a month, yes. Okay. Especially that time of year. That's Christmas. Oh yeah. That, that's true. But normally, wait, what time of year is like, where, where are there the most proposals? the holidays on into spring. Holidays. In the spring. Yeah. Spring's usually the engagement time.
So it's like summer in the summer. In the summer, yeah. And then it's all year, all year round. There's not like a specific time of the year though, where you feel like, oh, we're just swamped in engagements. usually the first half of the year. First half of the year. That makes sense. I feel like around Valentine's Day and then like going forward too, I feel like, you know, it's like, it's like New Year's, Christmas, Thanksgiving, like that time period.
Then there's a little bit of a break. And then it's like Valentine's Day, that timeframe. Yeah. It's like no one's, no one's getting engaged on the 28th of January unless it means something to them. That's fair. You're right, you're right. You're right. How should that process look? So should I walk into the store not having any conversations?
Well, maybe like I have the conversation that she's gonna say yes. Let's just assume that she's saying yes. Let's hope she does. Do I? Yeah. Right. Do you walk in by yourself without talking ahead of time? Like how does it, how does it work? Well, we get it all. We get the guy comes in by himself, the mother comes in with the guy.
Ooh. Sometimes the girl's, sisters or friends will come when in with the guy. It just depends on the relationship, you know, and their dynamics and everything. But usually it's the guy and he's out there getting the preliminary, okay, well she's told me before she wants an oval diamond or a round, and she's fine with lab.
What are the questions that you as the guy need to gather before you walk in there and when you walk up to the counter? What do I say? A lot of the girls will be looking on Pinterest and, and you know, putting things on their Pinterest board and stuff. And so sometimes the guys will talk to the friends or maybe he can access her Pinterest so that, so we need to get the Pinterest login a Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because that's usually where the girls are looking. Yeah. And or she verbally has told him, I just want a simple round diamond in a yellow gold mounting and that's it. What, what are the different types of, of diamonds, of stones? Like I, when I would, when I would go to buy shoes, let's say mm-hmm. I would know size.
Like color and style. Right. But for a diamond, I have no idea. When you're saying rounds, this, that's a good beginning. That's a good beginning. The, the round or oval is the actual shape of the stones. Okay. Or the cutting of the stone. It's a round or a marquise. So that'll be like the main gem in there, what that looks like.
Yes. It's like, what are the different types? There's round brilliant. Mm-hmm. There's oval Marquise. What's marquise? Marquise is pointed on each end. Oh. Like top, top and bottom's pointed. Yeah. Okay. Like this. a pear shape is like a teardrop shape. Yep. And usually we need to know what shape they're gonna want.
What's like the traditional, like when you think of the old school engagement ring from the 1960s? Well, it's usually the round, but it, but it depends like a lot in the nineties and, the early two thousands was marquise shape. Yeah. The one pointed on both ends. Yeah. All of them go in and out of style, like every 10, 15 years.
Yeah. Except for the round, the round's always, number one. It's always timeless. Yes. It's the most brilliant. Yeah. Out of all the other ones. So what's really popular? What are like the fads you're seeing in 2025? Simple mountings and a big diamond. What does, what does a mounting mean? The mountings, the actual ring, the metal that holds the stone.
Okay. So we have we have the stone and we have the mountings. Right. Are those the two different components of a ring? Yes. Yes. Okay. So you can get your stone, whether you said the teardrop shape, you said marquise, you said, round all the, over all the stuff. And then you have the mountings, which would be everything.
That's not the stone, right. Okay. Some people want little diamonds on the SIde, some want a swirl, some want it braided, you know, just the style of it. And some just want it simple. But lately it's been the SImple style. We have done several of the other ones. Mm-hmm. you know, 10 years ago it was a big wide mounting, some pavé look and all that.
We, it's all the small, simpler mounting species. So small and simple on the mounting. Okay. Big diamond, but small mounting big. Yeah, of course. Big diamond, small and mounting. Yeah. So you go in there, you collect this information. Do you know what kind of stone. What, what does that, how it's cut that, how you call that?
Well, how the shape of it. Of it. The shape. Okay. Yes. So we wanted to know the shape and we wanna know what kind of mountings those were. The two. And, and on the mounting, it's usually white gold or yellow gold. We need to know white, gold, yellow or white. Are there different like colors of diamond or color is one of the four C's Okay.
That you look at when grading a diamond. Okay. What are the four C's? cut color, clarity and carat weight. Okay. Let's go through there. What does cut mean? Cut can mean two things. Cut is the actual shape of the stone. Mm-hmm. And then it's the way the stone has been cut and, faceted. Okay. That's the most important thing.
Is the, the most important thing on a diamond is it's brilliance. You wanna be able to see it from across the room and it's sparkling at you. Yes. Okay. That's the number one thing is the brilliance. What gives it the brilliance is the cutting of the stone. Let's take a round because that is the most brilliant, the way the facets align with each other and at certain angles and the bottom of the pavilion, which is the bottom part of the diamond, the way everything aligns, it has to, what we call an ideal cut.
Okay. It retains the maximum brilliance. Diamond is like a prism of light. Okay. Light enters the stone, bounces off the SIdes, and comes out the top, and then when it, once it hits the air, you get all the fire and scintillation it's called, and the dispersion and all that. Yeah. Okay. Well, what happens if it's not cut proportionally?
Correct. Okay. Then it can, when the light comes down, if it doesn't hit this facet. Within its critical angle to bounce off, to hit the other side. And then again, the critical angle to come up through the diamond, you're gonna lose it through the bottom or the SIdes. Oh. So like you can have a one carat diamond that is this big, this big and this big.
They all are one carat because the carat weight is the actual volume of the stone, the weight of it, not the dimensions. Okay. Okay. So on a stone that's cut like this, it's gonna be deeper. Okay. You're gonna lose a lot of light out the SIdes underneath. You want it to come back up to the top because that's what you're looking at is the top of the diamond.
Yeah. If it's wide, you can lose a lot of it. Sides. Sides, and, and bottom. Okay. Okay. So the ideal make it's going to hit come up, come back up, and then disperse into the colors. Okay. Yeah. So it's the most brilliant. The diamond, you know, the cutting on it, the better, cutting the best, the better. The brilliant.
You're not necessarily judging the quality just by the SIze. Like you could go put a huge ri, but if it doesn't sparkle, if it doesn't catch your eye from across the room, like that's what you're looking for. Right. Okay. So we went, that's cut, cut cuts. The, to me, cut is the most important. Okay. Okay. Then you have, clarity and color.
Mm-hmm. And then the carat weight I kind of talked about is the actual weight of the stone, like two carat and someone like a half carat. So that has to do with density, almost like it could be It's the volume. The volume. Okay. But not necessarily how big it is. Right. How heavy It's six millimeters or 10 millimeters.
It goes by the, how much it weighs. Oh, wow. Okay. Because a six millimeter stone. Could have four millimeter depth or five millimeter depth, and so it would weigh more. What, how did they get to the, the name carat actually derived from the carob seed, because they were all pretty uniform. This is thousands of years ago.
Yeah, yeah. Hundreds of years ago. They would see how many carob seeds it weighed, you know? They would compare it. Oh, that's what I'm assuming. Yeah, that's fair. Okay. That's what we were taught 30 years ago. There you go. That was, that was the, the rules. Okay. Yeah, so you have carat, which is the weight. The weight, and then clarity is the amount of imperfections in the stone.
Okay. There are different types of imperfections and these all formed in natural diamonds. They all formed while the form the. A diamond is made of carbon. Yeah. Okay. And, and all it is is crystallized carbon under a ton of pressure. Right. Like that's the whole Well, high pressure. High temperature. Yes. High pressure.
So that's why they say no pressure, no diamonds. Right. And that's why it took millions of years. Well, there was like a little garnet next to that carbon when it was crystallized, and sometimes that gets locked into the stone. Mm-hmm. Or whatever the host rock, where the diamond was forming sometimes can do that.
And then sometimes with the pressure, it can create like little, I don't wanna use the word cracks, but little Yeah. Imp imperfections. We don't, we don't like that word. Yeah. Right. It makes it look, sound like a diamond's gonna crack. So there's inclusions inside the stone. Okay. The amount of those inclusions.
Will determine, like if it's clean to the naked eye, if you can see inclusions in it with your naked eye on the clarity, you start with like flawless and internally flawless. And then you have very, very slightly included. I'll explain this very slightly, slightly included. And then I, one, two, and three, which are more imperfect stones, we don't like to use that word either.
Included stones that you can see the inclusions with your naked eye. Okay, so some people want just size, they don't care about the clarity, you know, to the extent where you know, a nice I1 or an included stone that you can see the inclusion, it's perfectly fine with them. It's a way to identify your stone.
These inclusions? Yeah. Okay. Because natural ones, no two are exactly alike. Okay. Well, and then on, lab grown, can they be the exact same thing? Yes. Because you can basically dial it in, you know. Okay. It's, it's no romance. Yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Natural on a slightly included stone from slightly included into included the differences.
You can see it with your naked eye. 18 inches apart, 2020 vision. That's how we grade diamonds. Okay. So if you can see it with your eye, it's an included stone. And then just varying degrees. Like you can barely see it, but you can see it. Yeah. It's more noticeable would be an I2 and an I3. Looks like a roadmap.
You know, there's a bunch of stuff in there. Then going on the other way, the slightly included stones. Once you have the 10, we have to go to 10x magnification. Okay. A loupe. And if it, the inclusions are noticeable, they're an SI stone. If they're more difficult to locate, then they're vs. And if it's like a.
One little minute point pinpoint, then it's a very, very slightly included, and then you have internally flawless and flawless, no inclusions at 10x magnification. Some people say, well, I wanna get a flawless diamond because she's flawless. You know? Well, first of all, no she's not. And and second of all, why pay for something you can't see?
You know, when you get into the VVS and, and the flawless, you're paying bigger money for it. Yeah. Where if you go down to the VS, the SI or even a nice I1, you're gonna be able to go either bigger or better color mm-hmm. Or better make on your stone. Well, 'cause I think it's just like, there a lot of uneducated consumers like, this is why we're doing this.
Right. Yeah. It's like you, you, you're focused on like building a nurtured relationship. Yeah. And it's like, you know, I don't have any experience, I've never, never done anything like this. Never gone in there and, you know, talked even to a jeweler. Because I was like, oh, like one day you'll just have to go do that.
Yeah. So going in there and being like, okay, give me the flawless, like I, I only want the best. Right? Yeah. Right. And it's like, well, learning what the best means and Yeah. Do you want to go bigger size, bigger carat, bigger this, that color cut, like there's just so much to it. So first thing is in this, in this process, we collect shape and we collect mountings.
Yes. Once we have that, and then we need a budget, we need a budget. Yeah. Okay. So this is the age old question. What's the right budget to spend on an engagement ring? It's been around for, I don't know, 30 years or so, that it's always like two month salary. Yeah. Okay. I have people spending a week's salary and then I had people spending a whole year's salary.
You know, it just depends. Yeah. What they're gonna be comfortable with. I'd always heard, yeah. Three months salary. They were three months salary. Yeah. But where did that come from? Was that like a, was that made from a marketer, someone back in the day probably. Or de years or some, somebody, yeah. Okay.
So like if you had to say, let's say on average. The average 30-year-old, let's say 30 year olds are getting married. Okay. What's like the average 30-year-old spending on an engagement rate? You know what, I've got 30 year olds that are spending between 5,000 and 20,000. Okay. So I think it just depends.
Five. I feel like that was like somewhere in the range where it's like most of them are around 10. Yeah. You know, you end up like 10 when you tell, when you think about it, like 10 grand is a lot of money to put into a ring. Yes. But it's also for your future to not know. Like, again, this is, goes back to the whole ethos of this podcast.
It's, it's not that it's not worth it. You just like don't know what you're buying. Like, I just don't know. You don't wanna get ripped off. Yeah. That's like, I could have bought this for half the price, you know? Yeah. And it's like, do you want to go to the pawn shop and get the $2,000 ring? Like you can do, there are plenty, and let me say, plenty of failed marriages out there, and you can go get a ring from a pawn shop.
But like, I don't know, a, I don't want that juju. Like I don't wanna start with bad karma. Yeah. Okay. So we're, we're, let's just say 10 grand. Okay, 10 grams the budget. We say the average 30-year-old spending, somewhere between five and 20, we're gonna end a 10. When you go in there with a $10,000 budget and you have your, you have your shape, you know, your mountings.
Let's say someone's listening to this podcast that's not in Indiana. 'cause if they are in Indiana, they're gonna come to famous, famous Fine Jewelers. But if they're in Denver, we do long distance. Oh. So yeah, there you go. When they come in, what do they need to say to the counter? How do they get this process rolling and make sure that they are getting, a fair and honest?
Experience in, in stone and diamond and ring. Well, I try and discuss everything with them about the diamond, what they're looking for, you know, and all this and that. I get their trust. Yeah. Okay. You, you need to have, you trust in the jeweler. One of the first things I ask on the 10 grand is do you want to, do you know if she wants lab or natural?
Okay. Okay. That's a big thing. Yeah. Plus three years. And, and take us through what's the difference between lab and natural grown diamond? The $25,000, two karat, whatever shape, nice diamond is only gonna be, these days may be between two and 5,000 depending on what it is in a lab. Now the prices of lab are keep going down.
Okay. that's why I don't stock 'em. I know some jewelers that do, I don't stock them because of a business. Point, why would I buy this for 5,000 when two months from now it's only gonna be 4,000, you know? Yeah. I'd rather just buy it at the 4,000 at that time, you know, when I needed it. And then again on di having a lot of diamonds in stock.
Yeah, right. That's a lot of money. Well, talk to us though about the like mindset behind it. Like whether you grow, go with a natural diamond or you go with lab grown. What are the pros and cons that buyers are weighing when they're go, when they're going through that? Okay, so other than money aspect of it, it's like we're saying on a, on a natural, it, it's a symbol of love.
You know, your future, your relationship and all that. It's a one of one, right? Right. They're unique. You don't have two natural diamonds that are exactly alike on the lab groans. You can, and most of them are VS quality. There's hardly any inclusions in there. They're top of the line color. It's not rare, you know, there's.
Millions of 'em. Yeah. Which is one reason why the prices keep dropping. Yeah. You know, what, what do you see? Do you see the trend? I feel like for a while the trend was a lot of lab grown, and it might still be that way, but I do feel like there, there is a piece of you're only gonna do this one time, hopefully.
Right. Where it's like, I don't know, not going, I go who just love a good deal. But if, if she, okay, so your first time, but she just wants a big, big stone. That's what's important to her. Yeah. You don't have that big budget, then you do the lap. A lot of the younger adults don't, they think differently than all the, you know, it was a million years to make the stone and stuff like that.
They just want that, that big look. Yeah. Like go big or go home. Yeah. You know? So versus the thinking about the process that went into. Versus like growing it in a year, and I don't even know, how long does it take to grow a lab? Like a week, A week, a month. Oh gosh. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. versus like, you know, a long, long, long, long, long time.
Yeah. okay. So let's say we find out that the, that we're going, we're not going lab grown, we're going normal. What? So you come in there, you got your 10,000 budget, you know that you want a round and you know that you have a specific kind of mounting and then the, the gold. What color, right? Yeah. Like do you want yellow gold or white gold?
Yeah. Or platinum want, which also I always said, I thought it was silver's. Oh, you want gold? I know a lot people say, I want silver. I'm like, eh, no, you don't want white gold. You see either white gold, white gold, yellow gold or platinum. Yes. Yeah. Well, what's most popular, right now? Yellow gold. The last 10 years?
White gold. Now the past year or two? Yellow gold. Huh? It's like made a comeback. I don't think it ever left, but it's made a comeback. Yeah. Okay. A lot of the girls are picking yellow gold. There are some white gold still. Okay. But yeah, and it, it kind of depends on your skin color too sometimes. You know, when I was younger I have a, I'll always complexion and I thought, oh, I'll never wear white gold.
I'll always wear yellow. Most of my jewelry's white gold now. You know? So funny how that comes around full circle. Yeah. Okay. So we have all that. We come in with our budget and how do we start going through that process? Well then I start showing him the stones. Yeah. We had to pick out a stone and depending, you know, on the budget and everything, like you said, 10 grand or whatever we're looking at.
Maybe carat and a half, something like that. Okay. And what would be the difference where like you're, we're gonna say I need a $10,000 diamond. You're gonna bring out four different options for us. What are we comparing and contrasting there? What are we looking for? Okay. That's when we discuss the, the four Cs.
Yeah. You know, I can show him two carat. Diamonds and one of 'em, their inclusion's gonna be off to the SIde. The other one's gonna be smack dab in the middle, but they're both rated the same like an si stone. That's when, oh, that I can, sometimes I can see that in the middle. That may bother me. You know? So we'll go with the one with on the SIde.
So it's location of the inclusion. It's the way they're cut. Not only, the ideal make, but the symmetry of the stone. Do the facets line up the way they're supposed to is the girdle real thick, which is the outer circumference of the diamond. Real thick or real thin. 'cause that's a susceptible point for chipping.
Mm. Okay. So you gotta watch that. We look at the, the three or four different diamonds, you know, and sometimes the diamond will just speak to you. Yeah. He'll say, pick me, you know, I'm the one. And they'll say, oh, that's the one. When you have guys that come in there, what questions do the most intelligent or educated diamond shoppers ask?
When they already know the lingo? Yeah. You know, they know about clarity and color and everything. And I'll ask 'em where they learned it and they said, on the internet, I said, okay, so let tell you the real. Yeah, right. Like where'd you learn? Yeah. The only one online that I would like listen to or whatever Yeah.
Would be GIA, the Gemological Institute of America, GIA, not Blue Nile or any of those places that are selling diamonds. No, you need to get Yeah, from GIA. Yeah. That's where you can do research on diamonds. Yes. You can look up all the stuff. Yeah. I'm a graduate Gemologist from GIA. Okay. My graduate gemologist degree is from there.
So Yeah. I mean, you have some experience when it comes to diamonds. Yeah. Okay. So we come in there, we're looking at color. You're gonna see if you're going now, there's going to be. Imperfections, but it doesn't mean, I guess, imperfections again, you said you don't really like that word or like it, but there's gonna be uniqueness to each of these diamonds.
Yeah. that's for it. Yeah. Right. And it's your job as the consumer to feel like, well, what's the story behind that? Do you like it? Does it speak to you? All those different things, because that uniqueness is what helps tell the story. Right, right. It's what helps know that there's no other, it's like a snowflake, right?
Like there's no other one of these Exactly. That exist. Yes. Okay, so you go through the process. Let's talk about like actually putting the rubber to the road. Am I like walking in there? Am I bring all this information? How do I find out like what size ring to, like, how do you do that without like alarming anyone?
What are the SIzes? Sometimes, sometimes they know and if she knows that it's to the point in their relationship, she will hint to him. I'm a size seven, I'm a size six, you know? Okay, so it's a nu this is a numbered size. Anyone out there that's not small, medium, large? There are numbers. There's numbers, yes.
From what to. one to, so there's a one, there's like someone have, they have tiny, tiny one is teeny tiny. Yeah. Okay. You know, most average size in the US is between six and seven. Okay. So a lot of our stock rings Yep. Are between a six and seven, but we can go down or up usually two sizes without remaking the whole thing.
Is there a way to like sneakily Yeah. Find out her this size? Her. Well some, like if she wears a, a ring already, you know, some, a guy will say, oh, let me try it on. I don't wanna say this. 'cause then the girls are gonna know what he's doing, but Well, oh no, don't worry. No women listen to this podcast. Right.
Okay. This is, I do. Yeah. Right. No, majority of it is, dude, let's be honest. Okay. So, you know, kind of compare her hands to yours. What I've done before is they're like the guy. Picks out a ring and then we're talking about the SIze. Okay. Yeah. And I said, okay, so this comes to here on me. Okay, so let me put it on your hand.
And a lot of times it's to his pinky, you know, or somewhere that'll kind of give us an idea what his finger is. And he can compare his finger to hers. Sometimes you gotta ask her mom, sometimes you gotta ask the friends. Okay, yeah. You, you gotta do a little due diligence. Do a little work. Or we try not to size it if we're not exactly sure.
'cause at least the amount we're sizing the ring the better. Okay. But we also want it to be big enough for her to put on during the proposal. Yeah. Because that would be so bad. Yeah. That it goes right here. It's like, oh. You're like, oh yeah. And she's like, wait, did, did you just call me fat? Like, is that, and then, and then you were in like a whole new can of worms.
Okay. So talk to mom, talk to friends, do the self, some self sizing. I like that. the other piece. Okay, so we get there, we know the SIze, we know all the information, we have all the details. Is it like, okay, now I write you, I swipe my credit card, I bring you cash in a duffel bag. Like how do you pay for a $10,000?
Like, because I've seen all of the above. Well, 'cause like, you know, you think whether you buy like a house or you buy, like you wire money for a house, you, you don't, I don't know. And like some people's, like, I don't know if their credit card limit is $10,000, you know? Right. so we, we offer or honor all the credit cards.
Yeah. You know, all the different cards out there. We can do check, we do cash, we don't have our own financing. Yeah. you may try that at your own bank. I don't know if that'd be real good, but, we, um. Have before putting on like three different credit cards. 'cause they wanted the points on all their cards.
Oh yeah. You know. Well, and you gotta, like, sometimes we call that creative financing. If you have creative fi and if you're like, you know, if you like have blended finances or like someone's like looking at you, you gotta make sure Yeah. It's hidden. Yeah. You gotta be careful. Okay. that's good to know.
But is it like, okay, you don't have to usually you don't have to pay out right then and there. Okay. But some people do. Maybe if I do, sure I'll take your money. Yeah. Right. But, once we pick out the diamond and the mounting, sometimes we'll get like half down. We gotta get something down for us to actually put it into the mounting.
If you're gonna start going well, 'cause the interesting pieces that you. So your store is in like, you know the Geist area? The Geist, yeah. But you're, where you actually produce the rings isn't, didn't you say it was down by Bloomington? No, that's one of my jewelers. Oh, one of your jewelers. Okay. I have two jewelers.
I have this jeweler in store and I have, yes, a friend of mine who's a jeweler in Bloomington, she just has her own workshop. Oh, that's awesome. So sometimes I'll send things to her and then other things we do here at the store. Wow. So yeah, I mean that is just, I don't even know how you would go about like creating a ring.
I just think that that's like the, the one of the craziest professions pretty cool to be able to like assemble that and like keep everything secure in there and make it look so elegant. Incredible. Okay, so we get to the point now. How do you get the ring without alarming your significant other? Like, do you have advice or suggestions?
How do you see people? Do friends pick it up? How does that work? Well know, usually the guy picks it up. Okay. some guys have us hold it until it's. The time. Okay. We have a lot of husbands that do that, like a Christmas presents, you know, they buy it in actually like in November and it's like he'll give it to her that night.
So we keep it and we call him on the 23rd of December. Mm-hmm. You know, come get your thing. Yeah. We can do, we do that with the guys, usually the guys will have a good hiding spot. Yeah. Or they may have their par his parents. Yeah. Hold it for them. That's interesting though. It's good to know that it's like, okay, let's say I, let's say you could order it a month in advance.
Mm-hmm. And then pick it up, let's say 28 days, like two days before Sure. Versus having to keep it for six months or whatever timeline that is. That's good. That's really good. Usually when, when, when the ring is done. We, we call 'em to come in. Yeah. And that's usually when they pay the balance, if there is one.
And then if we need to hold it, we hold it for 'em. Yeah. I once hold a ring for over a year. For over a year. Wow. Mm-hmm. How did that work? well worked out great. They have two kids. They're living the life. Yeah. Good for them. But they were just a little bit, that's the story for another day. Yeah. I was gonna say, was it, was it because that the guy was just so eager and it just took him a while to do, like, have to build up some confidence.
Well, di different things happened in their life and he was waiting for the right time. There you go. You know, but his mom kept asking me, Hey, did he get a ring yet? You know, and I'll say, you know, he. He was in the store, but he didn't walk out with anything, you know, which I didn't lie, it's still in the safe, you know?
Yeah, exactly. That's crazy. Yeah. one of the other interesting pieces that I know that you particularly specialize in is kind of like the incorporating the family heirlooms into these modern pieces. Yes. a big thing that's popular right, is, you know, maybe your grandmother had a specific piece or maybe your, I dunno, your mom or whoever might Right.
And that gets to pass down through the family down. Yes. Yeah. And then how do you take that and honor this legacy family piece? Okay. With. a new modern, like, because, because it's like, I mean, I feel like the, the comparison is like a lot, there are a lot of really cool looking older wedding dresses that not every young bride wants to wear.
Same with the rings. Yeah. Right. Okay. Especially from like the sixties and seventies and eighties. They're these water old waterfall rings and everything, and they're like, yeah, it's not my style. Well, so we have a saying the diamond is forever. The mounting is not, yeah. Okay. The ring is not, yeah. So we, and you can do this for an engagement ring too.
Actually, we just sold one couple weeks ago, they had a, it was a larger diamond and it was from her family. Mm-hmm. Her grandmother I think had it. And so, um. The guy came in with his mom and with her mom, she still did not know about it. And that's, she offered, she offered to use that diamond if it was good quality, you know, and everything.
And I looked at him, I'm like, yeah, I would want this. You know? Yeah. So all they bought was the mounting, you know, when we set her diamond in there. Yeah. So, but on the, a lot of, we get a lot of customers coming in with, I inherited all this jewelry. It's not my style, but I love this ring or with this stone in it, what can we do?
And then that's when I say, well, we, we can pull whatever stones you want to use and we'll make a new ring. And we, we talk to them, what kind of ring do you want? Do you want something going straight across? You want a curve to it, you know? Do you want earrings to match and a necklace? Yeah. Depending on how many stones you have.
I mean, we've had one customer, we've made four different pieces so far. Totally. For the daughters and the wife, you know? Yeah. So let's say you brought in a ring. Will you like melt down the old mountings or you just like get rid of those? How does that. If they request us to, we try not to just because the gold remelting the gold sometimes can create porosity, which are little pits in the metal without having it refined first and it's not worth it.
This little amount of gold to have it refined to do. Yeah. So we can, we give them credit for it. Ah, and use new gold because then yeah. Or we will use their gold, but tell 'em if there's porosity or something, we can't do anything about it. You know, sometimes we can't, but. Still. And they're like, no, just gimme new gold.
Yeah. You know, they're gonna wear it every single day and this is gonna be very new. Do you see a lot of, you know, maybe you have some different family heirloom pieces from either side and coming together and then picking up a new piece. So like, one new thing and some something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.
Yeah. Right. Yes. Come on. Yeah. Yeah, we do. And sometimes my jeweler that's in the store, in house, she's really good at, like fabricating, taking this part of this ring and this part of this necklace, and we could put this part of this ring and make a bail, you know, for the necklace or something. She's good at putting parts together.
So instead of just creating a whole new piece, it is a new piece. It's. From your parts? Yeah. Where if they don't want any of the metal, then we start out by sketch and then we do a wax or a CAD and a wax and then cast it and set it and everything. Okay. Wow. That's the more custom I was gonna say. What do you feel like, the majority is the majority of, jewelry, like engagement rings, stuff like that, that you sell.
Is it guys come in, look at a, look at something off the shelf and say, that's the one I want? Is it they bring an idea and they create it from nothing? Or do they bring these components in and say. Let's build a car. usually the ones that sees on the car. Okay. That's the ring right there. They're usually a little older.
Older guys. Yeah. On the occasion ring, it's kind of easy where we don't usually build all the parts. Although the one customer, it was his grandfather's ring. And so we kept a part of his, the shank, which is the bottom part, the, of his ring. We stuck it into her engagement ring. Oh wow. And he wanted to use the whole thing.
I said, no, let's cut it in half. That way you'll have the same half matching for the wedding band. Oh. So, and because it meant very much to him and her to the grandfather as part of it. That's super cool. So yeah, so we'll do stuff like that and I think that's like the most, valuable piece of. Like jewelry in general is like the story behind it, right?
Like having that Right. Sentimental family heirloom. Yes. Speaking of, are there like other little ideas or like sentimental value things that you've seen customers do that, like how can, how can some of these guys get some brownie points if they come together with like a really creative idea? Sentimental.
It depends if they have any family diamonds. Yeah. Okay. But you may wanna check with her because your grandmother's marquise ring is 90 not what she wants, you know, to that, that's what she gets. Yeah. But then, you know, we could take your grandma's, marquise and put it in the necklace as a wedding present, you know, or something like that.
Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, that is true. How do you balance, like this is net new. Yeah. And. Your thing versus like, oh, this is sentimental. I guess it depends on the brand. I want the customer design. Yeah. Right. Not that's, she gonna be happy with this. Yeah. Right. We want her to say yes. Yeah. It's like, oh sweetie, I love you, but you're gonna have to go back and try this again.
No, thank you. no, I'm sure like what a fun time. Yeah. in people's lives to be a part of. Yeah. Like pulling off the big surprise and being a part of that. I think it's awesome. we're gonna go through, as we kind of wrap up, we have a few other things. It is, we're gonna answer some commonly asked questions when it comes to jewelry shopping.
Okay. And talk about outside of engagement in wedding rings, like fine jewelry. Like we have some listeners that maybe already married and maybe you've been married for 20 years and you want a creative idea on how to really win, how to wow. This Christmas. We're gonna give you some answers there. So, we went through how much did you spend.
How, I guess as you see, like determining, we said somewhere between the five, you see like the average 30-year-old spending between five and 20 grand prob. Yeah. It's probably in there at like Yes. You know, 10 grand, somewhere in there. Yeah. I, the, the thing we looked up is like, yeah, I think that was a marketing ploy built back in the day, which is such a good marketing joke.
Yes. When you say size, how should we be thinking of size? Like what size, what size diamond should you get? Well, if you're getting close to proposing, surely that has come up in conversation with her, you know, or talking to her friends. Most guys will say, I want at least a carat. Most of our sales are over a carat, whether natural or lab.
Okay. When 30 years ago. We were lucky from a half carat to a carat really? You know? Yeah. And so that's why there's a lot of trade-ins. You know, they're now 30 year anniversary or whatever, and they wanna trade that in on a bigger diamond. Most of them are at least a carat. Okay. Enough. We do sell a little bit smaller.
We, we kinda start the, start the process at one carat. Yeah. Okay. If they can, that's a weight. Right? Right. Do you remember, we talked about this earlier, that's, that's a weight, not necessarily. 'cause you could have a one carat diamond that's, you know, x millimeters versus y millimeters versus like all different like size.
how, like how long or tall or whatever it's is not the same as how many carats it is. Right, right. And, and it also depends if she's a bigger girl, whereas like a size seven or eight you wanna go a little bit bigger. It's gonna look real small on her. Yeah. Or she's this real tiny girl, you know. right under a carat it's gonna look like a carat and a half, you know, or something like that.
There you go. So we were out here measuring hand sizes. Gentlemen, let's go. next we talked. What should you choose for the band? White gold. Yellow gold. Not silver. Don't go into your jewelry and say, give me the SIlver one. 'cause it's not silver. Yeah. The white gold looks like silver. Yeah. The color is silver, white, gold, yellow, gold, platinum.
Yes. How, what's the difference and how do they wear over time? Okay, so gold is. Yellow, it's gold. Okay? Mm-hmm. So, but it's gold is also soft. We had three different alloys to the gold to make it more wearable. So when we add more alloys, if it 14 karat gold, if you heard of the, you know, 10 karat, 14 karat.
Mm-hmm. 18 karat gold in its pure form is 24 karat. Mm-hmm. Okay. So 14 karat is actually 58.5% pure gold. The other percentage is the different alloys. So like 18 karat is 18. Parts of the 24 are pure gold. The rest are the alloys that comes out to 75%. Mm-hmm. Okay. They want white gold. What we do is we add more nickel, which is one of the alloys to the yellow gold.
It gives it more of a silver look. Okay. But it always has a hint of yellowness to it, because gold is gold. Yeah. It's yellow. So what we do is we rhodium plate it, which rhodium is part of the platinum family. Okay. We rhodium plate it to give it a more shiny silver look Eventually. You have to do that maybe every couple years or something.
Everybody's used to it. Yeah. so that's your yellow and my gold. The platinum is a more, denser, pure metal because usually on platinum we use 90% or 900, or nine 50, of platinum. And the other alloys are all part of the platinum family. Mm-hmm. So it is a, I'm gonna get this confused, but one is tougher and one is stronger or harder and stronger.
Yeah. Okay. Than gold and platinum. Yeah. So, because gold you said gold is softer, it's a again, right. This goes down, down. But we add the alloys to it. Yeah. So it's, it's durable every day. Well, what if you got, but if you got 24 karat gold, no. Would that, would that be soft? Yeah, we'd be able to bend it. No way.
So you really don't want a 24 karat gold ring. No. Now in the Middle East they do, they use 18 karat and enough, anything below 18 karat is not gold. Really? Yeah. They use a lot of 21, 22 karat. Yeah. It's very soft and you can bend that. Yeah. Wow. Because some of it we're talking super thick. We're we're talking, the periodic table there, like of elements.
Yes. You know, you think about about like where they, the density, right, right. Where they line up there. So that, that's a common misconception I would say. Like, I would say, oh, you didn't get 24 karat gold. Like Bruno Mars made a song called 24 karat, and now everyone wants the gold pinky ring. Right. but that's not, that's not actually practical.
Right. So you want somewhere between not for everyday Yeah. Piece that you're wearing on the, so what's like the typical yellow, if you got yellow gold, what carat do you want? Usually 14. 14. Standard 14 is a standard. Okay. Yes. That's good to know. That's a, that's a common misconception. Yeah. So when you're, what would be the difference?
Like what goes into buying? Yellow, gold, white, gold, platinum. How do you decide is just color? Well, it's allergic to a lot of stuff. Usually we go with platinum, 'cause platinum, all of them are non-allergic metals. Gold and platinum. But it's the alloys we add. Okay. One of the alloys is nickel. A lot of people have nickel allergies.
Mm-hmm. So they have to go with platinum. What are the ones that like turn your skin a different color when you get, like I've heard people talk about cheap. Yeah. If you get cheap, don't get cheap. Yeah. No. Okay, good. And that's just in general? Yeah. Now there can be reasons why they are and it is gold because, you know, they have soap scum up inside.
It's too tight on their finger. they are around chemicals. Yeah. And stuff like that. And also don't swim in your jewelry because it eats the alloys and then it'll pair up the rain, don't swim. okay. The chlor chlorine will eat the SImple question. How do you know as the buyer, how do you know if the ring is good quality?
Oh, there's lots of things to look at. Like if you were just had to give like a top three or whatever, like if you wanted to walk into there and maybe let's say your, your father soon to be father-in-laws, like, oh, I have a family jewel. You really need to use this person. Mm-hmm. So they show up there and obviously, you know, besides the fact that you're taking their word for it, how do you know that you're not getting fleeced when we're talking about the diamond, you know, the stones or the mounting, you know, 'cause things are marked Yeah.
On the inside of the ring. 14 K or 14 kt. Yeah. If you see the HGE after it, that's heavy gold electroplate. That's costume on the diamonds. That's costume. Yeah. It's junk. When it says HGE Wow. Or something like that in, is that where you're like looking through the little thing? Yeah, we buy a lot of, of over the counter?
Yeah. Okay. We buy a lot of scrap gold because all the pieces that they, they're not using to do a custom or something. We buy them to give them credit. Okay. Or, or cash. And so the stones, we test them if they're diamonds, we have the new diamond testers that tell between the lab and the diamond. I look and I, I just do basically the four C's, you know, I look to see are there inclusions, how nice it's made, you know, et cetera.
And color stones, you don't get that much for on the secondary market, you know, unless it's something really fabulous and, yeah. Naturally colored, not heated, you know, stuff like that. That's, they have to go to a jeweler that you trust. Right. You gotta build the relationship early. Right. Don't show up saying I need a ring tomorrow.
Because I'm proposing tomorrow you gotta get out ahead of this. I think we could, but yeah, you could make it happen, but we could happen. You can build some trust along there. Yeah. Talk about jewelry for guys. You know, like I think a lot of 'em go in there and they just get some, they don't even know what they're getting.
It's just like, oh, everyone talks about the girls ring. No one talks about the guys, right? Yes. What do you see? The guy gets five minutes. Yeah. Right. Like what do you see? What does that process look like? What's popular? well right now the black zirconium is really popular. Is that a little like black ring?
yeah. It's kind of like blackish gray color. black zirconium. sometimes they go with tungsten, titanium, there's cobalt chrome, or they go with yellow gold or white gold. We've done a lot of just plain bands lately, either white or yellow gold. For the last couple years, usually guys have been going with these alternative metals.
Yep. Okay. But I've seen it kind of coming back to using yellow gold or white gold. I feel like the timeless yellow gold ring is just like. Yes. That's just what it's, yeah. but you can, you know, have it not just the half domed style that everybody has, you know, you can do flat with beveled edges. Yeah. Or you know, some grooves in it.
And I feel like, getting gems in your, like, I feel like guys are starting to get gems in their range. Got some diamonds. Yeah. Yeah. Which is kind of interesting. Yeah. Used to be very popular back in the eighties. Really? Oh yeah. Oh, that, that's an eighties thing. Okay. I think that's interesting. I know a few my friends, but you know, it comes back around just like everything else.
Yeah. It's like, I want to get some, I need some bling uhhuh. the last piece would be. Outside of engagement rings, that whole wedding scene, what are some pieces that are timeless that could really light up a Christmas morning or a Valentine's Day? And what are things to keep in mind? Well, we have a lot, we, you ha have diamond jewelry, like diamond bracelet, necklaces, earrings.
We have a lot of color stones since I'm a gg. I know color. And what is G? graduate gemologist. Graduate gemologist, yes. Yeah. So I know what to look for when I'm purchasing the stones, the gemstones. And so I always get the nicer quality. Yeah. And we try and buy things that are different that you're not gonna see everywhere else.
Yeah. And we get that a lot from our customers. Oh, this looks so cool. You know, I have never seen this, et cetera. One of the stones is opal. Opal. Okay. Opal from Australia. We actually do a, our opal has gotten so popular in our store. We are actually doing a trunk show again for the 17th year in, in October.
It's October's birthstone. Oh, oh opal. So we, yeah. Our, all our cases will be full of opal and that's all we do for two days. So, but another thing, like sapphires, rubies, emeralds, all of these stones have birth months. Okay? Mm-hmm. So like the birthstone for May is emerald for September. It's sapphire. So a lot of people like their birthstone.
Yeah. A ton of, you know. Yeah. And some do, some don't. Another thing is push presents. Yes. Okay. Those are popular. A lot of those will be the birthstone for the baby. Oh, that's a good, yeah. Yeah. If, if you had to give one recommendation on how a guy could really wow their significant other. On this upcoming Christmas, what would, what would that be?
What do they need to get? That would be having a package under the tree wrapped in Khamis Fine Jewelers wrapping. Yeah. Right, exactly. Would, do you guys wrap gifts? Oh yeah. Free wrapping, free gift. You hear that? Yeah. What, what? Like what would the thing be? some women went diamond studs. You know, someone, a necklace or a tennis bracelet, a burst stone.
It just depends. Some women would love a pair of gold hoops. We carry all of that to get everybody's needs. Yeah, you just have to like kind do do a little bit of research. Yeah. Ask some questions. Well, hey Mary, thank you so much for coming on. Sure. And sharing as our resident Indiana expert in the diamond industry.
if people wanna learn more about Khamis Fine Jewelers, if they want to, maybe they have a big question coming up down the road. How can they find you? How can they get in contact? The store is at 82nd and Fall Creek. The store number is (317) 841-8440. That's usually the best. That or my cell there.
Right. So look at that. And if you look on our website, obviously yes. All of our hidden gems are, are brought to you by Khamis Fine Jewelers. they're an awesome partner of ours. And I have to ask the city of Geist, the city, all of Geist, there's a spot, the restaurant, there's a spot right by you that it would be the ultimate hidden gem.
Which one's that? The ice cream joint. Oh, across the street. Yeah. That is a good one. That's, I could, there's so many good ones in that area. I could not pick a restaurant. That's fair. Because there's AJ's, you know, there's just everybody around. We go to the hill, we go to Wolfies, you know, even El Lago Mexican restaurant.
Yeah. They're the best. We went to, I went to Sundae's right there. Yes, yes. And it was fantastic. Yeah. They're, they have really good ice cream. Yes. well, hey, we appreciate you. We appreciate the info. I think this did a great job of, of at least setting expectations. Yeah. You know. That way. I feel like it could be, maybe a reason that it kinda like some guys like drag their feet a little bit is like, that's an overwhelming experience.
You're gonna go in there, you're gonna make this huge purchase. You have no idea what they're selling you and talking about even right now, you least, you know, the four Cs. You know, like what to expect, what the process is gonna look like, and you have a, a trustworthy friend in your, in the diamond industry.
We'll take that. Right. We appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much. Thank you. And, we'll talk soon. Alright, that's a wrap. That's all we have for you today. I'm eager to see if Sauce Gardner's gonna get any action on Sunday kickoffs at nine 30 across the pond. also let us know. Shoot me an email, drop a comment.
What do we think about the casino? How would you make the perfect casino in downtown Indianapolis? What do we think about the TV deal? If you like more of these styled episodes, let us know. Drop a comment, leave us a review. Hopefully we are gonna come in on Fridays. Do more of this new style, breaking these down as long as you guys like it.
And of course, you can't forget our exclusive interview all about buying fine jewelry with Mary Khamis. If you wanna get connected with her, let me know. Again, shoot me an email, nate@natespangle.com. We can make that happen. We appreciate y'all listening. I hope you have the greatest weekend that you've ever had in your entire life.
We'll see you back here on Monday.
