Dez Bryant being sued for $850,000

[Pappy13]

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/29/2139604/bejeweled-cowboys-wr-bryant-sued.html

Dez has been taking quite a beating in the Dallas media the last couple days and although I'm not really a fan, I think I have to defend him just a bit.

If you haven't read the story and don't care to, the short of it is he's being sued for not paying for a lot of Jewelry he's purchased in the last year or so.  Dez signed something around an 11 million dollar contract with the Cowboys last year depending on how you figure it, but Dez is only scheduled to make like 1.5 million each of the next 4 years in salary, the rest is all bonuses and incentives. The general consensus seems to be that if he's already skipping out on $850,000 worth of bling, that 11 million dollars is gonna go up in smoke pretty quickly.

What's not being taken into consideration in my humble opinion is the value of the bling. Let's assume for a moment that Dez isn't just giving the jewelry away, that he's actually holding onto it. Let's also assume that at least part of the value of the jewelry is tied to the jewelry itself, the gold, diamonds etc. The jewelry must be worth something, doesn't it? Couldn't he just sell the jewelry and make back at least half of what it's worth? And if the diamonds don't just spell out the word DEZ, isn't it possible that the jewelry is worth a lot more than that?

If that's the case, I don't see any reason to believe that Dez is exactly being stupid. Maybe Dez considers Jewelry a type of investment. It is possible to sell Jewelry at a profit if you know what you are doing. Now I'm not gonna say Dez is that smart, but I also don't think spending $850,000 on jewelry is as dumb as say buying lunch for the whole team for around $50K that he did just recently to make up for the fact that he wouldn't carry a teamates shoulder pads in training camp like rooks are supposed to do.  Now THAT was dumb.

Granted that not paying the bill is stupid, but the purchase of the $850,000 worth of jewelry is what most people are pointing to saying that Dez is just throwing his money away. Not that I would spend that much on bling, but then again I didn't just sign an 11 million dollar contract with the Cowboys either. Dez is no genius that's for sure, but I don't really see this as a sign that he's an idiot either. Unless of course he IS giving all the jewelry away.

[Sunstroke]

I didn't need this situation to tell me that Dez Bryant is an idiot and a headcase... All evidence leading up to today pointed toward Dez being a numbskull gangsta-rapper wanna-be of the first order.

I like the "jewelry as an investment" angle though...that's smooth.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

Pappy,

I think you are greatly overvaluing the value of jewelery as an investment. 

Yes, jewelry can appreciate in value over decades of time.  But mark up on jewelery is absolutely unbelievable.  At the department store I worked we would sell earrings with a list price of $99.99, that we would pay less than $6 for. (I wasn't suppose to see that paperwork).    At a pawn shop he might get less than 5% of his investment. 

While not every buyer of jewelery overpays for jewelery....


do you think Dez was ....

A)  a smart buyer who got the absolute best value at only slightly over the wholesale price

OR

B) the sucker who they marked up the prices even further cause he was the type of guy who wanted to buy the most expensive bling in the store. 

My guess is B. 

[Spider-Dan]

Diamonds have crappy resale value.

[Pappy13]

I think you are greatly overvaluing the value of jewelery as an investment. 

Perhaps I am.  I don't buy a whole lot of jewelry, especially the kinda that Dez Bryant is buying.

At the department store I worked we would sell earrings with a list price of $99.99, that we would pay less than $6 for. (I wasn't suppose to see that paperwork).

Yeah but you are talking about cheap stuff. He's buying Rolex watches and stuff like that that's worth a lot of money. That's 2 different animals.

At a pawn shop he might get less than 5% of his investment. 

Pawn shop yeah, but if he wanted to get a fair price he could at say another jeweler or perhaps he could have an auction and sell the jewelry and get much better return.

do you think Dez was ....

A)  a smart buyer who got the absolute best value at only slightly over the wholesale price

OR

B) the sucker who they marked up the prices even further cause he was the type of guy who wanted to buy the most expensive bling in the store. 

My guess is B. 

I don't know, that's my whole point. I think everyone is assuming it's B based on other stuff he's done, but I'm not willing to make that leap. If he's buying Rolex watches for instance, you can get decent money for those if you sell it to the right buyer. They're not worthless.

Worse case, maybe he only gets $200,000 for the stuff he paid $850,000. While that's pretty bad, he can afford to do that after getting paid 11 million. I'm not saying he's not going to go broke, I'm just saying I don't think this alone suggests he will.

[Pappy13]

Diamonds have crappy resale value.

But not non-existant.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

The deprecation on a rolex watch is worse than on a car.  Buy a new car, drive it around the block, sell it back to the car dealership, you will get a better return than you will for wearing the watch for 5 mins. 

Bottom line.  Dez borrowed money and is a deadbeat.  The "assets" he collected along the way while not worthless and not as stupid as blowing the money in Vegas, are NOT investments.   

[Pappy13]

The deprecation on a rolex watch is worse than on a car.  Buy a new car, drive it around the block, sell it back to the car dealership, you will get a better return than you will for wearing the watch for 5 mins. 

Bottom line.  Dez borrowed money and is a deadbeat.  The "assets" he collected along the way while not worthless and not as stupid as blowing the money in Vegas, are NOT investments.   

Fair enough, but then again no one is pointing at the new Bentley that he bought as being the reason he's gonna go broke. If he keeps the Rolex for 10 years and then tries to sell it, he might get a fairly decent return.  Can't say that for the Bentley.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

^^^ is he behind on the payments on the Bentley? 

He isn't gonna get his money back on the Rolex in ten years. 

[Pappy13]

^^^ is he behind on the payments on the Bentley? 

He isn't gonna get his money back on the Rolex in ten years. 

I rethought that comment before I saw your post, and I agree he won't get his money back, but it will be closer than the Bentley will be.

Whether or not he's behind on payments on the Bentley is not the point, because the media in Dallas is not really beating him up for not paying back the loans, but for purchasing the jewelery in the first place. They're making him out to be an idiot because he spent that much money on jewelry, some of it before he even signed the contract with the Cowboys. While I don't disagree that getting the loan before even signing a contract was probably a dumb thing to do, I don't think it has anything to do with him being particularly dumb.

We just had a discussion not long ago on these forums about how we would spend the money if we won the lottery. While I think we would all like to believe we would behave responsibly if it happened to us, the fact of the matter is that many don't. Athletes are especially bad at this historically speaking.

So my opinion is that Dez is pretty typical and yeah I think if some of us would have had an 11 million dollar windfall, we might act pretty irresponsible as well. Rolex watches may not be a particularly good investment, but it's not spectacularly bad in my opinion either. Not nearly as bad as deciding not to carry the shoulder pads of a veteran player during your rookie year and ending up having to buy the entire team a lunch to the tune of $50k.

[bsmooth]

I didn't need this situation to tell me that Dez Bryant is an idiot and a headcase... All evidence leading up to today pointed toward Dez being a numbskull gangsta-rapper wanna-be of the first order.

I like the "jewelry as an investment" angle though...that's smooth.

Keith Stone smooth?

[masterfins]

And this is why the NFLPA will eventually have to cave in to the owners.  Too many Dez Bryant's in the league with no sense of money.

[Frimp]

Dez doing this as a nest egg investment is more of a stretch than Rush Limbaugh bankrolling a Michael Moore movie.