The most recent issue of Harper’s Magazine has an article by Clancy Martin titled “All that Glitters.” It’s an account of a visit Martin made with his brother to the JCK show in Las Vegas back in the 1990s. Martin describes the massive jewelry show (and the entire jewelry business) as a shifty demimonde stocked with tough guys who speak their own macho argot and hold to their own peculiar codes of honor.
I went to JCK 10 days ago. And while it is full of all sorts of people, some of them indeed quite strange, I didn’t recognize Martin’s characterization. I’ve been going for years, and what I like most, in addition to seeing all of the beautiful jewelry, is to see all of the people I have known for so long. The jewelry business is one of the oldest out there, and in many important ways it remains a business where personal bonds are important. Trust between a wholesaler and a dealer is measured in the years the two have known each other, not in credit scores. What I love about buying jewelry is what I love about selling it: the people.
