Facts about Diamonds
Diamonds have long been tagged as a girl’s best friend like the famous song goes. It is undoubtedly the best and one of the most expensive material gifts that a man can give a woman.Diamonds have been very popular since the olden times. There have been many legends and tales surrounding its history. The Greeks used to believe that they were actually splinters of stars that fell to the earth while the Asian people swear that there is a carpet of diamonds in an inaccessible valley hidden in Central Asia.
Fact is diamonds were formed billions of years ago around the time of the earliest stage of earth development as a result of great heat and pressure inside the earth. Volcanic eruptions that took place over the years carried the precious diamonds to the surface and scattered it around.
Today, DeBeers Consolidated Mines still monopolizes the world of diamonds as they determine the prices for the most part. Prices and value of diamonds depends on several things –color, clarity, carat, and cutting proportion.
The Famous Four C’s
If you have bought a diamond before, you most probably know by now the great importance of the famous four C’s along with authenticity certificatesjust like what have been explained by your jeweler. Most big retail stores in the country today are readily able to present their authenticity certificates especially to the ever meticulous buyers.
However, if you happen to be new in the diamond buying business and simply looking for the perfect one to give as a present either to yourself, your wife, your mother, or even someone special and dear to you, there are some important things that you have to understand.
Diamonds are very precious and they do come with a hefty price tag more often than not.Prices can range from anywhere between $100 to as much as over $60,000. This is another reason why you would have to determine your budget way beforehand because the jeweler would most probably ask you what your budget is.
To give an overview of how a diamond is evaluated and priced, here are the famous four C’s that each and every jeweler usesas a basis:
- Color
Diamonds are set in groups of different colors because they do come in a variety of colors and shades.The usual diamond color scale is from D, which means the best blue white to Z that pertains to dark-colored diamonds. This way of scaling is being used up until now and is widely accepted in almost all countries.
Chemically speaking, diamonds are supposed to be colorless. It should be able to sparkle on its own without a multitude of colors. You will know the distinction when you see a genuine colorless diamond sparkle.
The diamond color variations result from chemical impurities and structural defects found on the crystal lattice of a diamond. Crystal lattice refers to the geometric arrangement of atoms in space of a crystal.This is why the color of a diamond has a very big impact on the price tag it will have.
Most common impurity is nitrogen. This gives diamonds a yellowish or brownish color to it. However, if a jeweler detects a yellow hue on the diamond, this will increase its prize and a blue hue makes it even more expensive. Rarity plays a major factor as well.
The rarest diamond color is red and you can expect its price to shoot way above the prices we commonly see today.
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- Cut
This is a diamond aspect that is most commonly confused and used interchangeably with shape. You have to remember that a cut of a diamond depends on the skill of the master cutter.Cut refers to the symmetry, proportion, and finish of a polished diamond.
Cut is important because the maximum sparkle can be brought about through this difficult technique. Experts make use of mathematical guidelines for angle and length ratios in order for the diamond to be able to reflect maximum amount of light.
Here are among the most famous diamond shapes:
- Round brilliant diamond –This is the most popular and most expensive shape because cutting it is much harder and it yields the highest diamond loss among the other shapes.This shape is also much sought after because a well-cut round brilliant diamond reflects the maximum light. Remember that achieving maximum light makes a diamond sparkle the most.
- Princess cut –This square-shaped design is the second most popular though used rarely.
- Clarity
There is simply no other gemstone that can produce the same amount of clarity like a perfect diamond can. However, diamonds are known to have internal defects called inclusions.
Inclusions can either be a foreign material or another crystal as well. They impact a diamond’s value for the reason that light cannot fully pass through a diamond that has inclusions. They block the light, therefore, making it less shiny. This is why diamonds with known inclusions are relatively priced cheaper than those with no inclusions.
A diamond’s clarity is most commonly determined either through a hand held loupe or a microscope based on 10-power magnification to see any imperfections not visible to the naked eye.
There are two types of inclusions that everyone should know about:
- Internal inclusions –Impurities found inside the diamond.
- External inclusions –Impurities found on the diamond surface.
- Carat
This is how jewelers measure the weight of a diamond. One carat is equivalent to 200 milligrams and the usual practice is that the bigger the carat, the more expensive the diamond should be. Truth is that the price per carat does not have to necessarily increase with its size but since heavier diamonds are very hard to find and the demand is great, prices simply shoot up the charts.
Demand also plays a major role in determining the price per carat of a diamond. Depending on which carat is totally in demand for any given time, you can expect diamond prices fluctuating every now and then.
These can be quite hard to apply all at once when you are already at the jewelry store with all the amazing sparkle around you. But knowing these basic and important things about diamonds do pay off in the end. You do not have to be a full-pledge diamond expert to know these by heart, you just need to be totally interested and pay attention to every particular detail.