When Jeff Lamb decided to pop the question, he didn't know the first thing about diamonds. He googled "engagement rings" and learned he was supposed to judge a stone by its size, cut, color and clarity — but that only made him more confused.
So Lamb, now a graduate student at Shida University, asked his future sister-in-law for help. They looked at several stores, then she suggested Tiffany & Co, the New York-based retailer made famous by the 1961 Audrey Hepburn movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. "What's so great about Tiffany's," Lamb asked his girlfriend's sister. "It's Tiffany's," she said.
Lamb felt she had a point. "You can look on the Internet and arm yourself with this knowledge," he said. "But then when you walk in a store — unless you're actually trained — there's no way you're going to know how much the value [of a ring] varies depending on how yellow a diamond is, or how much one minor imperfection is going to affect the cost."
He went with the name brand because "I knew that I got a good-quality diamond," though he admits he paid a premium for that kind of certainty.
Popular in Western countries since, so the story goes, the Archduke Maximilian of Austria bought one for Mary of Burgundy in 1477, the purchase of diamond engagement rings as distinct from and in addition to traditional wedding bands is becoming increasingly popular in Taipei, staff at jewelry stores say.
Catering to this market are international luxury boutiques, family-owned jewelry shops and countless counters in department stores. It's a wide array of choices that, depending on one's point of view, can make engagement-ring shopping a bargain-hunter's dream or a confusing nightmare.
"If you compare the same quality goods I think it's cheaper in Taiwan than in the States or Hong Kong," said Katy, a saleswoman at Yeng Sang Jewelry store (裕生銀樓), at 21 Hengyang Road, Taipei (台北市衡陽路21號). (Katy's employers called after the interview to request that her full name not be printed in the newspaper, citing security concerns.)
Her store has been in business for four decades. In addition to diamond jewelry, it stocks precious stones like emeralds and rubies.
Katy studied at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), a nonprofit group that certifies the quality of diamonds and trains diamond appraisers. She has worked in the jewelry business for 15 years, including 10 years in the US, and chooses stones and setting for the store's jewelry.
Like similar stores clustered on Hengyang Road, nearby in Ximending and further away on Yenping North Road (延平北路), the family-owned Yeng Sang Jewelry is a holdover from a time when Taipei residents relied on word-of-mouth, rather than advertisements in the media, for consumer information.
These stores keep prices low by buying their diamonds directly from the mines and working with their own manufacturers. They have few employees and do not purchase advertisements in newspapers, thus keeping overheads low. Their prices are lower than stalls at department stores, which pay a premium for their location and tend to focus on jewelry with smaller stones.
One of the best features of a place like Yeng Sang is that these jewelry stores act like tailors. Customers can bring an old diamond to be set in a new design, or they can bring a picture of a ring they like and ask the store to make something similar.
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