I have been running diamond auctions on eBay for 5 ½ years continuously. Stopping these auctions is quite a big deal for me. It’s an emotional because there is still a little profit left, I have been doing it for so long, and I guess because it was my first profitable business. It’s hard to know when to pull the plug. Averaged out, I have broke even on too many months to care. My time has to be spent on my new career in executive search and IT talent. I want to move on and learn new things. Probably the biggest reason is I want to do business face to face. The jewelry industry has been in recession for years. I am not emotionally invested in jewelry, this would be a dumb industry to start a new business in where I am working face to face.

Financially it was a bigger deal when I pulled the plug on making jewelry. That was easier because it was basically bust all the way. Not listing on eBay any more is emotional. It’s not like I am selling my eBay ID. I think it will have substantial value one day. Started in Dec of 1998, it’s 9 years old. The ID GemHunt.com is Grandfathered in. eBay has not let people register domain names as eBay ID’s.

I am still going to sell diamonds, but I am not going to pay to advertise them. So for the past 5 ½ years I paid eBay $224K. It’s like I gave them a house. I sold $5.4M in diamonds, but many were repeat sales and referrals. So I paid them 4.1% of sales. Compared to a retail store this is not bad. It started out 1-2%, and is now up to 7-10%. The margins on the sale over the years have shrunk. It was easier when I was one of the first in the business. There is no room left to pay eBay. With no profit there is no business. I knew this in the beginning, and have spent the past 5 years fighting it. This is called the “evils of discounting”. I got into this business because information became available to consumers on how to buy diamonds at a wholesale price. I am one of the people that taught that information. But you never win at this game, there is always someone fighting harder for the last percentage point of margin. Diamonds have suffered because of this. Diamonds have valve because they were promoted. With less people promoting diamonds, their demand drops. The value stays the same because the dollar is dropping and demand is coming from outside of the US. People want stuff from Best Buy instead. Will the demand pick up like it did in the 1970’s because of inflation? I am not going to try to guess that. I can always get back in the business. This time I will have a network build out locally.