Ch. 15: How to Buy Diamonds

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	CHAPTER XV

	HOW TO BUY DIAMONDS THE first thing that one should do when he intends to buy diamonds, is to disabuse his mind of the idea that he is about to purchase another form of current exchange with his greenbacks. Notwithstanding the elaborate advertising they have had as an investment, diamonds are not an investment, in a business sense, for the consumer, but a luxury. They are probably the most economical form of luxury in existence, for they do not wear out as sealskin sacques do, nor go out of fashion as fine clothes do, nor do they have to be fed like horses. They do not require chauffeurs and a good income for up-keep. They can be used as collateral without a search or a lawyer's fee, and will bring nearer cost at a forced sale, on an average, than any other form of wealth, except the stock of corporations in which the directors invest their own money. They raise a man several hundred per cent, in the estimation of the woman to whom he gives them, but their money value seldom rises above the price he paid for them. One wearing diamonds will be more generally recognized as a person of some means than he would by carrying about with him the price of them out of sight in his pocket, but if he thinks they will buy as much money as it took to buy them, he deceives himself. 339

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