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DIAMONDS COME TO AMERICA
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the
importers are worried because it is not merely a part of a
war-inflationary move. It is due to a shortage of the small stones. You
can laugh off high prices, but you can't laugh off the shortage of
goods to take advantage of those high prices.
The
importers today are whittling down on their inventories, drawing more
and more on their stocks. They are depending upon the breaking up of
great jewelry collections in order to get diamonds to turn back into
the retail market and thereby realize a profit. But they have little to
look forward to, until there is peace, in. the way of importing any
considerable amount of cut stones, which is their life blood. They can
expect some from South America and South Africa, a few from England,
but the great cutting centers are in a state of suspended activity so
that the importers find themselves now slowly being drawn into a field
they once would have disdained—investment.
It
is not that there is anything of opprobrium to be identified with
diamond investments. Trading in diamonds was one of the most popular
forms of investment in the seventeenth century. In his diary Samuel
Pepys (who is quoted about anything and everything, anyhow) entered,
under date of November 16, 1664, this item:
To
Eriffe; where Madame Williams did give me information of Wm. How's
having brought eight bags of precious stones, taken from about the
Dutch Vice-Admirall's neck; of which there were eight diamonds which
cost him four thousand pounds sterling, in. India; and hoped to have
made twelve thousand pounds here for them. So, I on board; where Sir Edmund E. Pooly carried me down into
the hold of the India ship, and there did show me the greatest wealth
he in confusion that a man can see in the world—pepper scattered
through every chink, you trod upon it; and in cloves and nutmegs I
walked above the knees; whole rooms full.
(133)
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