Earlier this year, Jeffrey Post of Gem Platinum in New York City was sorting through old inventory when he came across a parcel of beautiful marquise-cut diamonds that were about 0.20 ct. apiece. He laid them out end to end and wasn’t impressed, but when he laid them out next to each other, his aha moment occurred. “I though, ‘Geez, these would make a nice pair of earrings’,” he tells JCK.

So he set 8 cts. t.w. of them into a pair of inside-out hoop earrings made in platinum. He first showed them at Centurion in Scottsdale, Ariz., in February, and again at JCK Las Vegas, where three buyers—from New England, the D.C. area, and Texas (no surprise, they really love their big diamonds)—took interest. However, the pair, which features F-G color, VS-quality goods, is still for sale.

“The parcel had been in our safe for a very, very long time—before I started working here,” explained Post, who joined the business 25 years ago when he married wife Jane, whose family started Gem Platinum about 100 years ago. Back then it was common to make wedding bands with marquise shapes. Today? Not so much.

But interest has risen in shapes like pears and marquises in the last couple of months, likely because of the synthetics scare happening in small diamonds, driving up prices of rounds, ovals, and cushions, in general.

“People are sending their parcels of small stones to GIA to find out if they’re real or synthetic, and that ties up a lot of those goods in GIA for months,” he observes. Plus, small ovals and cushions “don’t face up” as well as marquises, he adds. “They look an average of 10–15 percent smaller because of the way the stones are made.”

No matter the reason Post set these old rocks, their beauty and brilliance is undeniable—and eternal.

“They shimmer in the light, that’s for sure!” he says. “And they’re still for sale.”

Inside-out hoop earrings in platinum with 8 cts. t.w. marquise-cut diamonds, $34,000

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