Diamond: Quality, Grading, Value and Certification

India was producing much but consuming less in recent past but Indians are now consumuing huge quantity of diamonds.

How to evaluate and buy  the diamonds and diamond jewelry?

Some agencies provide certificates for quality and grade that determines the value of a diamond. Number of new consumers are growing very fast. Non trustworthy sellers may take chance and cheat these new customers. This article is written with a purpose to educate them to get full value of their money. It is betetr to go to trust worthy Jewelers. It is also advisable to know grading to determine its value before buying a diamond or a diamond jewellery. People prefer investing in diamonds. It is extremely necessary to know the realistic value of the purchased diamonds or diamond jewellery.

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Value of diamond is dependent on 4 C's.

1. cut 2. color 3. clarity and 4. carat weight.

Cut: There are different types of cut e.g. Flat cut (parav and polki, rose cut) michael cut, single cut and brilliant or double cut.There are also different shapes such as round, square, octagon, oval, marquise and various fancy shapes such as pentagon, alphabets, star etc. Beads, drops, briolletes are also available in diamond.

Diamond cuts are certified as excellent (the best), very good, good and fair (cut quality in descending order).

Color: Diamonds are found mainly in colors ranging between white and brown or yellow. Some fancy colors such as green, blue, pink, red are found rarely in the nature. These natural fancy colors fetch enormous price depending upon its quality.

As per international standard of diamond grading it is graded in 'D' to 'P' colors. Best white color is graded as D and then E, F, G, H, in descending order. Grade upto H is white. Grade I, J, K and L represent shades light to medium brown or yellow. M, N, O, P grades represent deep brown or yellow color. Grades from 'P' to 'Z' is for fancy yellow, golden, orange or brown.It is difficult for laymen to determine minute differences in shades.

3. Clarity: Diamonds are graded for clarity as IF (internally flawless), V VS-1, V VS-2 (very very small inclusions), VS-1 VS-2 (very small inclusions) and SI-1, SI-2, and SI-3.The purest is IF and the least purity has a gradation of SI-3.

Fluoroscence is one of the inclusions of diamond which lessens brightness or glitter of diamond.This inclusion is separately mentioned in the certificates as fluoroscent or non-fluoroscent. Fluoroscent diamond has a lesser value.

4.Carat weight: Diamonds are found in various sizes. it is weighed in carats. One carat is equal to 200 mg. Further a carat is divided into 100 parts and it is called cent. One carat is equal to 100 cents. In general more the weight more the price, less weight fetches lesser price.

There are synthetic and treated diamonds. Synthetic diamonds have very low value.Treated diamonds too have a lesser value.

More and more people buying diamonds are dependent on certificates. However they generally do not know about the insiders that determine value of diamonds. More dangerous is of certifying agencies.There is no system of authentication of certifying agencies. Many laborataries grade diamonds ingenuinely. Some traders use these ingenuine certificates to cheat their customers. Just one grade up in color enhances value by ten to fifteen percent on an average. Similar things happen with clarity. If a certifying laboratory grades an H cplor diamond wrongly to G and VS1 purity to VS2, it will enhance price by 25 to 30 percent or so.

GIA certfication is much better than others according to the Jewellers, I talked about.To the best of my knowledge they are strictly adhere to the standard. A good news is that Bureu of Indian Standards (BIS) Is now coming to grade diamonds.

Now onwards, whenever go to buy a diamond refer to abovementioned features to get the full value of your money.

( This article is written for laymen / general customers. This is an attempt to aware the consumers. It is not meant for technical purposes. Please feel free to mail me for any relevant information).