This is the second of a three part series all about diamonds and how to understand the value of diamonds and so the price of diamonds.
Here we go into the subject of diamonds a bit more.
The way to check a diamonds quality or grading is by what is known as the 4Cs. Cut, Clarity, Color and Carat. This is done by an independent gemological laboratory who use sophisticated electronic equipment and established diamonds for comparative purposes to grade a diamond.
The cut describes how the diamond is cut from the rough. This can take some time with the bigger diamonds. The current is working with a stone that might perhaps be worth several thousand or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some diamond cutters have been know to consider his to cut a diamond for months before making the first cut.
The popular cuts of diamond, and these can be seen at the top of the website, are:
Round BrilliantEmerald Cut
Princess Cut
Heart Cut
Oval Cut
Marquise Cut
Pear Cut
Round Brilliant
In addition some of the more popular diamond cuts include Heart, Emerald, Marquise (Oval with pointed ends), Oval, Pear, and Princess with the Round Brilliant (R/B) probably being the most popular.
The clarity of a diamond refers to the purity of the stone. Most diamonds have impurities in the form of minute imperfections or “inclusions”. A perfect stone would have no inclusions and these are very rare and very expensive. At the other end of the scale a lower quality diamond would have inclusions one could see with the naked eye.
A diamond can also have external flaws such as blemishes. These can be caused naturally but also by poor polishing.
Some people think that diamonds are white or rather clear translucent. In fact diamonds can come in many colors. Pure white is the more sought after and the rarest and of course the most expensive. Then there is a grading all the way down to yellow tinted color.
These are worth much less. Industrial diamonds are usually brown.
The carat of course refers to the weight. A carat is small in stone or pebble size but big in terms of diamonds. A carat is .2 grams, i.e. one fifth of a gram. So 5 carats would make up a gram in weight.
Diamonds are measured in points and as there are one hundred points to a carat, a point is what you might call small!
All these qualities go to make up a diamond grading. A pure white princess cut diamond with no inclusions and weighing 2 carat could be up to 10,000 dollars or more even.
A very poor quality diamond of the same weight might fetch 1000 if your lucky.
So it pays to have a proper certificate that exactly describes the diamond and gives details about all its qualities.
But where do you get these diamonds?
This is in part 3 coming soon!
Part 2 of a 3 part series
To read Part 3 go to All About Diamonds - Part 3
