Does a domain name with a hyphen work?

[Lyolya]

HI,
I was offered a domain name for our business. It's $1500 but it has a hyphen as in http://www.diamond-broker.com Is it worth it? I don't know if hyphens are useful especially we'll be doing SEO. Can you guys help me with it?

[Torrent]

hyphens are fine, I don't like them out of personal preference - I find when a person is made aware of a website verbally they tend to assume domains are all one word.

FYI, beyond the momentum carried from the previous website a domain name itself has absolutely no bearing on SEO. People seem to think that it matters that your keywords are in a top level domain but this is incorrect, your site is "graded" on the semantics of your pages themselves.

People who trade in domain names are vultures - it's a practice that should be forbidden. I especially wouldn't trust a party that approached you first, It's extremely rare to buy from these squatters and have it actually benefit your business - in some cases, depending what was on the domain before (if it's black listed or has dodgy inbound back-links) it could be detrimental to your own ranking.

Update:

Just so you are completely informed: There hasn't been a legitimate site on that domain since 2001, there after it has been parked. It has no page rank, no traffic, no brand, no existing customers - absolutely no value what so ever. Please do not throw your money away.
http://web.archive.org/web/2001080100000...broker.com