Diamond Purchase: Playing the diamond game.



Posted: Saturday, April 28, 2007

by
worldgems

You're diamond buying experience usually starts when you walk into the store that you have chosen to visit first. You should observe everything that you can before you are greeted by a sales person: Showcase arrangement, lighting, cleanliness. Do you feel comfortable being in this store? Are you greeted by a sales person in a reasonable amount of time?

Once you are greeted you should be taken to the diamond viewing area. Ideally this area should be in a quieter part of the store. This area should have a different type of lighting from the rest of the store. Preferably daylight type fluorescence lighting. If not, you should ask to see each diamond in natural light. This does not mean direct sunlight. However, you should see the diamonds in indirect sunlight. The use of halogen lighting (exclusively) to view a diamonds is not acceptable.

The store should have adequate equipment with which to show you the diamonds. A binocular microscope with 10X magnification capabilities is a must. This will allow you to see inside of the diamond in order to see the inclusions or lack of inclusions located within the diamond. You should be shown how diamonds are color graded. A good presentation should show you the difference between a "D" color and an "I" color. The sales person should be able to answer any reasonable question about the diamonds that you are being shown.

In recent years their has been an influx of new equipment designed to grade and view diamonds. A few stores have this type equipment. If you are shown diamonds through any of these new machines you should try to learn as much as possible. However, you should base your buying decision on what the diamond will look like in every day lighting conditions while being worn on your finger.

If you have access to the internet you should spend some time studying some of the many tutorials that can be found there. While reading these tutorials you should take notes on everything that you don't understand. The color and clarity of a diamond is very easy to explain and most sales persons should be able to explain these quite easily. However, the cut of the diamond is a little harder to explain.

The cut of a diamond is the most important part of the 4Cs. The ideal cut diamond is cut to very precise angles and percentages. The closer a diamond is cut to ideal proportions the more brilliance and dispersion it will have. The brilliance and dispersion is why you want to view the diamond in various lighting conditions for it is here that you will see the true difference between a well cut diamond and a poorly cut one.
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