How to sell Neil Lane Jewelry

Make sure you get the best price when you resell your Neil Lane Jewelry

Neil Lane’s love for vintage style and craftsmanship has defined the aesthetic of his brand. From relatively humble beginning sourcing and selling antique gems, Neil Lane has cemented himself as a legendary jeweler to the stars.

But tastes and circumstances change, and we don’t need to hold on to our Neil Lane jewelry forever.

If you are looking to sell Neil Lane jewelry and want to make sure that you get the fairest price for your piece, this blog will show you how.

The bottom line when selling your Neil Lane Jewelry:

The key to getting the best price when you are reselling your Neil Lane jewelry is to work with someone who knows the true value of the jewelry and eliminate as many layers as possible between you and the buyer.

Auction houses, online marketplaces, etc act as middlemen and take a cut, reducing the amount they will pay you.

Our recommendation is Alon at The Diamond Oak – a fine jewelry specialist who will give you the best price possible, avoiding middlemen and fees. Get in touch with Alon here

Why Neil Lane is so prized

In order to understand why a brand is so revered now, it’s interesting to take a look back on how they rose to prominence.

After college, Neil Lane moved to Paris, where he developed an eye for vintage jewelry and began his period collection, while also building a successful antique trading business.

In the late 1980s, Lane moved to Los Angeles and opened a counter in an antiques mall, which would shortly attract the attention of Hollywood stars. After an acknowledgement in Renée Zellweger’s Golden Globe acceptance speech (she had been wearing his jewelry that night), Lane was catapulted to stardom.

He is now perhaps best known for creating the rings on “The Bachelor” and its spin-offs, with each ring tailored to the personality of that season’s bachelor/ bachelorette – demonstrating the consummate craftsmanship of the brand.

Over the last two decades, countless Hollywood celebrities have asked Neil Lane to design their wedding jewelry or to lend them dazzling pieces from his collection to sport at illustrious events. In fact, the $10 million worth of diamond jewelry featured in Taylor Swift’s bathtub in her iconic music video “Look What You Made Me Do”, was all loaned from Neil Lane.

He revealed in an interview, “I had to go to the vault for this one. They wanted an over-the-top, glamorous look so we gave them unprecedented access to my collection. And wow what an amazing turnout, diamonds have never looked better!”

The Neil Lane brand continues to remain synonymous with vintage Hollywood glamour, while now also allowing jewelry lovers of all kinds to experience it through the partnership with Kay and Zales. From high jewelry pieces such as the Platinum Chandelier Earrings below, to the more attainable ones such as the 1 ½ ct Pear Cut Engagement Ring, Neil Lane stays true to its ideal of beautiful design paired with top quality craftsmanship.

Neil Lane Renaissance Revival Brown Diamond ring

Neil Lane 1 ½ ct Pear Cut Engagement ring

Neil Lane Platinum Chandelier Earrings

What type of Neil Lane jewelry can be sold?

Over its prolific history, Neil Lane has produced a variety of types and styles of jewelry, and if you’re looking to sell your Neil Lane jewelry, then that’s good news for you. No matter what piece you may own, you will be able to find an interested buyer, somewhere.

One thing to know though, is that the price you receive for your Neil Lane jewelry when selling can be dependent on a couple of factors:

  • Condition
  • Provenance

Condition

Even if something has been lovingly cared for, it’s likely that any jewelry that has been worn will have picked up the tiniest flaws associated with age. It’s part of owning something that has a history.

Commonly used terms to describe pre-owned jewelry are:

  • mint condition
  • excellent condition
  • good condition
  • fair condition
  • poor condition

If you are selling to a jewelry professional, it’s likely that they will try to improve its condition and then sell it on, but the better condition it is in, the higher the price someone will be willing to pay will be.

Provenance

There are multiple reasons why it is important to be able to demonstrate the provenance of your Neil Lane jewelry:

  1. It proves ownership over the piece, and that it is therefore legally yours to sell.
  2. It proves that the piece is genuine.

Possessing items such as your receipt, the box, jewelry bag, and other appropriate accoutrements that were included with your Neil Lane jewelry purchase will raise your buyer’s confidence in the provenance of the piece:

Your options whens selling your Neil Lane jewelry

Once you’ve made the decision to sell, it’s understandable that you would want to get the best price possible for your Neil Lane jewelry.

But it can be hard to know where to start.

In this section, we’ll look at the different options for where you can sell, and some things to take into consideration when deciding which is the best fit for you.

When selling your Neil Lane jewelry, there are a few things to consider:

  • What you are selling
  • What is more important for you – price or speed of sale
  • How much you value certainty

Understanding what your Neil Lane jewelry is worth

One of the first things to understand is how much your jewelry is likely to be worth when selling it.

You may have a jewelry appraisal stored away with a value attached to it, which you have used for insurance purposes. While there are a few types of appraisals, it’s likely that yours will list the price that it would cost to replace the item with a new, or equivalent, piece.

Unfortunately, the value on your appraisal isn’t the same as the amount that someone would actually be willing to buy the jewelry from you for. The reason being, that anyone who would buy it from you now, would then be looking to sell it as ‘used’ for lower than the price of a ‘new’ replacement item and still make a profit.

The amount that someone is actually willing to pay for an item is known as the ‘fair market value’.

Determining the fair market value of something can be tricky, and many people look online to try and understand how much their Neil Lane jewelry might now be going for.

One of the most famous sites for high quality vintage jewelry is 1stDibs.com, which specializes in selling from professional jewelry dealers to the public.

Many jewelry lovers enjoy browsing the wares on 1stDibs and it’s not uncommon to assume that if you see a comparable piece of jewelry being sold on there, then you may be able to receive a similar price for your own piece.

Unfortunately, however, the prices on 1stDibs are not a good guide on how much you are likely to get when you sell your jewelry, as the prices advertised are the prices that a jewelry dealer is selling them for, including making a profit once 1stDibs’ fees and all their other costs have been taken out.

However, it can be useful to get a ballpark figure of how much a jeweller may be willing to pay for your item.

For example, this Diamond Floral Band Ring may be listed for $2,200:

However, as with buying many vintage pieces, prices aren’t fixed and dealers are usually open to negotiation.

Underneath the ‘Purchase’ button, you can see there is a ‘make an offer’ button, which says that sellers are most likely to accept offers of 5% – 20% off the $2,200 price:

A 5% to 20% offer below the listed price is a $110 to $440 reduction on the original $2,200 price.

This reduces the amount that the jeweller is likely to receive for the ring to between $1,760 and $2,090

Then 1stDibs’ commission fee needs to be taken into account. This is a 15% commission fee plus a 3% processing cost, which would reduce the price that the seller actually receives to between $1,443 – $1,713.

Most jewellers will look to buy jewelry for around half of what they are sure they can sell it for, so in order for this to make sense for the dealer, it’s likely that they would aim to buy a ring like this for around half of the $1,443-$1,713 figures.

This would mean that a jeweller is likely to pay around $721-$856 for this particular ring.

Selling using online auction sites

There are two types of online auction websites that deal with high quality jewellery:

  1. Auction sites that sell to consumers e.g. 1stDibs.com
  2. Auction sites that buy from consumers e.g. worthy.com

Neil Lane and Worthy.com

Worthy.com is a marketplace which works the opposite way to 1st Dibs.

Instead of connecting professional jewelry traders to customers, it connects ordinary people who are looking to sell jewelry with a network of nearly 1,000 jewelry traders who can bid on their items.

Worthy is much faster than selling through a traditional auction and it does put you in contact with a range of jewelry buyers who could bid the price of your item up, if they like it.

The cost to access these buyers is Worthy’s ‘success fee’ commission, which is only payable on the completion of the auction.

These fees are:

  • Up to $5,000 = 18%
  • 5,001 – 15,000 = 14%
  • 15,001 – 30,000 = 12%
  • 30,000 and above = 10%

Worthy can be a good option as it means that your jewelry can get out in front of as many people as possible, who will then bid against each other to increase the possible price you receive.

Neil Lane and IdonowIdon’t.com

I do now I don’t operates on a similar business model to Worthy.com, but has a slew of bad reviews on Trustpilot with reports of them not paying sellers for the goods that have been sold.

As a result I would not recommend that you use their service.

Selling Neil Lane direct to a jewelry dealer

The best way to get the most money for your Neil Lane jewelry is to eliminate as many layers between you and the person buying it as possible.

In essence, to talk directly to the type of people who are buying through worthy.com, but without having to pay Worthy the commission and reduce the amount you make.

Our recommendation is The Diamond Oak. 

The Diamond Oak is a family run business with multiple generations in the jewelry industry, based out of the Diamond District in New York.

Best of all, working with Alon you will get a fair price extremely quickly, instead of having to wait for an auction to run its course and then pay the fees out of the sales price. Alon’s process is:

  1. Complete a form on The Diamond Oak’s website
  2. Alon will get back to you with an estimate, usually the next business day
  3. If you like the estimate, Alon will provide a pre-paid and insured shipping label
  4.  Once he’s received it, Alon will check that all looks OK, and then pay straight away.

Alon of The Diamond Oak

If you have Neil Lane jewelry that you are looking to sell, Alon at The Diamond Oak will guide you through the process and ensure that you receive the very best price possible – just click through and fill out the form and he’ll get straight back to you with an offer for you to consider.

Even if you don’t end up working with him, you will receive a guide price back extremely quickly, which can then help you understand whether you are getting a better deal through other avenues.