Consumers are expected to buy about $18 billion in diamond jewelry this year. But concerns about paying too much can often take the luster out of the purchase.
“There is a tremendous amount of fear out there, and it’s justified,” says Glenn Rothman, president of Di-Star Diamonds & Services in Boston. “Many diamonds are misrepresented.”
While Rothman maintains that few jewelers and diamond dealers would go so far as to pass off a cubic zirconia (a diamond look-alike) as the real thing, it’s not as unusual for an unscrupulous dealer to misrepresent the quality of a stone.
That quality is pivotal when determining a diamond’s price, experts add. Where a high-quality one-carat diamond costs about $6,000 to $10,000 these days, a flawed stone of the same size is worth one-third to one-quarter as much. For the average consumer, it’s tough to know the difference, which means you could be paying thousands of dollars too much.
How do you know whether a diamond is worth the price? Here’s a guide to everything you ever wanted to know about buying a diamond but didn’t know how to ask.
The cost of a diamond hinges on four factors: cut, color, clarity and carat weight. While carat weight is easily determined by putting a diamond on a scale, the other factors are both subtle and subjective. However, consumers who are buying relatively large–near or more than one-carat–stones should know that there are a handful of laboratories that issue reports on individual stones. If you are buying a large stone, the jeweler is likely to have such a report on any diamond you are considering. If he doesn’t, he should be willing to get one.
These reports are valuable on two counts, says Victoria Morrison, a spokesman for the Gemological Institute of America, one of the primary report-issuing laboratories. First, they give the lab analyst’s seasoned opinion of the quality factors (the “four C’s”) that affect the diamond’s price. They also provide a “fingerprint” for your diamond. A good jeweler should be able to trace that fingerprint for you, from report to stone, so you know you are getting precisely the diamond you are paying for. Moreover, if your diamond is ever lost or stolen, the report can prove pivotal in getting adequate reimbursement from your insurance company.
Here is a breakdown of the four C’s:
– Carat weight is simply the weight of the diamond in “points,” which translate to hundredths of a carat. A diamond’s weight is rarely misrepresented, but what few buyers realize is that they pay a premium when they go above certain threshold weights, says Rothman. For instance, jumping from 49 points to 50 points (an exact half-carat) can cost you about 20 percent more even though you probably couldn’t tell the difference between the two stones without a scale, he says.
However, because that incremental difference allows the diamond dealer to charge significantly more, there’s a tendency to cut diamond “fat,” experts acknowledge.
– The cut of a diamond will provide a good portion of the “fire” or sparkle. When cut properly, light bounces off the facets at the bottom, back up toward your eye. While diamond experts quibble over the exact dimensions that make a cut ideal, they agree that if a diamond is cut too deep or too shallow, light will escape, leaving the diamond less brilliant and pretty, says Morrison of the Gemological Institute of America.
Still, if you do cut a diamond too long or wide, it will weigh more, says Peter Yantzer, lab director at the American Gem Society in Las Vegas. Because carat weight is one aspect of a diamond’s value that most consumers do understand, the retailer may charge more for a less valuable stone.
– A diamond’s color is given a letter grade from D to Z, with D being the best and Z the worst. These color variations are subtle, to say the least. Grades ranging from D to F are all considered “colorless”–the most valuable–while letters farther down the alphabet indicate the the diamond is taking on a yellow hue. That can have a big impact on the price.
Consider the diamond prices posted on the Internet by Diamond Brokers International. A colorless one-carat diamond may go for $7,000 or more, while a yellow-tinted diamond would cost roughly $4,000. (Exact price comparisons are impossible because no two diamonds are precisely alike.)
– Diamonds are given “clarity” ratings that gauge the flaws. An IF rating indicates a stone that is considered flawless, while the more common designations of VVS1 and VVS2, VS1 and VS2 indicate that the diamond has flaws or “inclusions,” but small ones that require a trained eye–and often a jeweler’s magnifying glass–to notice. Severely flawed diamonds, rated SI1, SI2, I1, I2 or I3, have flaws that can be easily spotted. They are also vastly less valuable than better diamonds.
Again, holding most other value measurements constant, a one-carat stone rated VS1 might cost about $1,000 more than a nearly identical one-carat stone with an SI2 clarity rating. Meanwhile, a flawless stone is likely to cost twice as much as a noticeably flawed stone of the same color and carat weight with a similar cut.
What does it mean when a diamond has been “clarity enhanced”? It means a silicone gel has been injected into the stone, which obscures the flaws and makes the diamond sparkle more. By law, jewelers must disclose when they’re selling a clarity-enhanced stone. Why? The process is reversible, says Lloyd Jaffe, chairman of the American Diamond Industry Association.
If the diamond is heated, to reset the stone, for example, or even cleaned, the gel can leak out, leaving the diamond significantly less brilliant than before. In some cases, the difference can be so apparent that a consumer may think the diamond has been “switched”–something that only a uniquely unscrupulous jeweler would ever do, adds Rothman.
On the bright side, most companies that do diamond enhancements guarantee their work. If the gel leaks out, it can be replaced, Rothman adds. But, naturally, you need to know whether the stone has been enhanced and how to enforce your guarantee if you buy an enhanced gem, he says.
Notably, there is a wealth of consumer information, ranging from price lists to buying guides, on the Internet. Experts suggest that consumers who are considering a big diamond purchase take some time to review them. (Most large public libraries now have computer systems that are hooked to the Internet, if you don’t have one at home.) Although prices for anything that is sold on a retail level can vary substantially, the posted price lists can give consumers a good feeling for an acceptable range, adds the American Gem Society’s Yantzer.
