It’s Friday afternoon and Jim Baca of Lafayette is walking from one store to the next looking for the right piece of tiffany & co jewellery for his girlfriend. He wants something simple, elegant, nice, attractive and delicate — just like her.

This year, he is giving himself a few days to shop, unlike last December, when he hit Davidson & Licht at 8 on Christmas Eve.

“You know how guys are, we don’t like to shop and we wait until the last minute,” Baca said. “Then you get stuck spending a lot of money. … You just want to make everybody happy.”

Year after year, men crowd into jewelry stores to find gifts for the women in their lives and often don’t have an idea what that item will be when they walk in the store.

“Men really want to be told what to buy for their wives,” said Shmuel Gniwisch, chief executive of Ice.com and Diamond.com, two online jewelry stores that feature gift guides and tutorials on jewelry. The online help “takes the guessing out of giving and it really is a guessing game.”

Jewelry stores on average bring in $9 billion or about 33 percent of their annual revenues during the holidays, more than any other type of retailer, according to the National Retail Federation.

Jewelry may be a typical last-minute gift, but unlike a chunky sweater or a gift card, it requires more thought because it can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Just in time for the holidays, tiffany elsa peretti ring in Walnut Creek has a special line for people who “need help” such as Daniel Drake, who drove three hours on Friday to Walnut Creek from Valley Springs, a town in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Five months ago, his girlfriend had showed him a photo of a necklace she liked from the store and he decided to make the trek to buy it for her.

“It’s a silver necklace that looks like pearls,” he said. “I know what it looks like.”

He approached the counter and quickly pulled out a wad of hundred dollar bills. A saleswoman asked him if he wanted one with beads of the uniform size or graduated in size.

“Say that again,” he replied. He eventually walked out with the store’s signature blue gift bag feeling relieved.

“I told her I was going to drop off a friend at Oakland Airport,” he said. “She has no clue. That’s why sometimes it’s OK to lie to your girlfriend.”

Some men just enter a store, point at an item and say, “I’ll take that,” without a second glance. Others ask for help but remain indecisive.

“We ask them questions, but sometimes they don’t really know how to answer,” said Vartan Toutikian, owner of Master Diamond in Walnut Creek. “Some men get intimidated or they think it’s too expensive.”

Brad Milner, owner of Milner’s Jewelers in Walnut Creek, said about 90 percent of the merchandise he sells this time of year is for women.

This year, popular items include diamond stud earrings, circle pendant necklaces and the journey sterling silver bangles , which features a trail of diamonds set in a curve shape.

He gets plenty of men coming in without a clue about what to buy and he knows that without good service, he’ll end up with a lot of returns in January.

“We don’t try to force anything on anyone,” he said. “We make sure it’s what they want. … We don’t want to say, ‘Take this and if she doesn’t like it, bring it back.’ We don’t want anybody coming in here grabbing something just to give her a piece of jewelry.”

Blanca Torres covers retail and consumer issues. You can reach Torres at 925-943-8263 or btorres@cctimes.com. Read her blog, Shop Talk, at cctextra.com/blogs/shoptalk.

Today is traditionally one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Read updates all day at our Shop Talk blog at www.cheaptiffanyjewelry.com.

Credit: Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif.