The Emerald Ring Story

                                                                   The Emerald Ring Story

Written 4/2013 and Rewritten and condensed 8/2019

                                                                                  Howard Yasgar

     

It was a Sunday morning in June of 2000.

We were having a cup of coffee, when my wife noticed a large ad in the Miami Herald announcing a confiscated drug dealers jewelry auction to be held that morning at a hotel in Coral Gables.

I knew that most of the jewelry auctions were phony, they always stated that they were auctioning off jewelry confiscated from drug dealers, but in fine print they have a disclaimer stating the jewelry may come from other sources.

Knowing that, didn’t mean that a jewelry auction couldn’t be entertaining, and it also didn’t mean you couldn’t find a bargain if you knew what you were looking for.   

All one has to remember is that the people running the jewelry auctions aren’t doing it for fun, they are doing it to make money, and they have several ways of ensuring that they will always make money.

One of the oldest methods that is still used, is by planting a “Ringer” or a “Shill” in the audience.

The shill’s job is to raise their hand to get the bidding  prices to go higher, while making sure that no one in the audience knows who they are.

Even after knowing all this, we decided to attend the auction in coral Gables any way.  

All my life I have been interested in gemology and precious and semi precious stones, so  by now I was somewhat knowledgeable on several popular jewels, one of them being Emeralds. 

I can now pretty much recognize the different shades of Emeralds and what countries they come from. Over the years, I have looked at so many Emeralds, I have a pretty good idea of the best colored ones and their value.

We arrived at the auction at 10 AM,  about an hour early.

There were already set up about 70 metal folding chairs, and six or seven  long glass jewelry display cases. 

I could see they had several hundred pieces of jewelry  for us to look at.

I was very surprised at how few people had shown up. 

The system the auction used was pretty simple, you looked at all the jewelry, and if you liked something they put a small piece of colored paper next to it, that ensured that the auctioneer would put that item up for sale.

As we looked at all the jewelry I also studied all the people in the room. I was trying to determine who the shill was, I knew there had to be one.

There was one well dressed gentleman with silver hair who appeared to be in his sixty’s.

He had on an expensive white dress shirt, neatly creased slacks, and loafers with no stockings. I was dead sure it was him, he was the shill, he was possibly the owner of the auction company.  

As we looked over all the jewelry I called my wife over to look at the emeralds, I wanted to point out the nice ones to her, and if she liked one, perhaps we would have some fun and bid on it.

I was surprised to see that sitting there was a large 7 carat Colombian Emerald ring. It had excellent color, and It had a ring of small diamonds all around the Emerald cut  stone.

It was A beautiful ring, but who needed a big 7 carat Emerald ring, it was way too big for my wife. 

I said to my wife that  the Emerald ring in a jewelry store would probably sell for over $25,000.00. 

That’s when I noticed a small piece of colored paper next to the ring, which meant someone in the room wanted the auctioneer to offer it.

As it got close to auction time, we sat down several rows from the front, and I watched as the silver haired  fellow sit in a rear row, exactly where a shill should sit.

There were now several people sitting,  and a young lady came by offering glasses of champagne. I mentioned to my wife how this auction company knew how to soften their customers up.

Once the auction started, a few items were quickly sold, but  it seemed that quite a few items had no bids.

All of a sudden, I saw that  the auctioneer was holding up the 7 carat Emerald ring.

He said, “Do I hear $25,000.00”, there was silence, “Do I hear $20,000.00”, again silence, so he kept reducing the price to $15,000.00, $10,000.00 and $5,000.00,  until he finally said “Do I hear $2,500.00”?  

I knew that if I bid, the shill sitting in the back was going to jack the price up. 

But that didn’t happen, I raised my hand and  bought the 7 carat Emerald and diamond ring for a bargain price of $2,500.00.

I knew something was wrong, the price was way too cheap.

I turned to look for the shill, because I knew that he hadn’t done his job. But he wasn’t there, whoever the silver haired guy was, he had left.

It was several months later when we were browsing in a Key West jewelry store, and to my surprise they had an almost identical ring on display, it was in a glass case mounted on a pedestal.

The asking price was, $25,000.00.