Behind the scenes at most jewelry stores, the diamond buyer usually buys diamonds the same way that people buy jewelry in the front of the jewelry store… They shop by price.

I’ve never met a client without a budget, regardless of our economic status; we all have a budget that we must work within for everything that we buy from the bare necessities of life to the luxuries.  So when I say that “they shop by price” I am not inferring that people should not consider price when buying something as significant as a diamond; but rather that buying a diamond is much more involved than merely comparing prices and buying the diamond which seems to be the least expensive.

Most people buying a diamond have heard of the 4C’s of Diamond Grading:

• Cut
• Color
• Clarity
• Carat Weight

I’ve listed the 4C’s in the order that I consider them to be important, but most people probably rank them in this order:

• Carat Weight
• Clarity
• Color
• Cut

This being the case, the average guy walks into a jewelry store and says “how big of a diamond can I get for $” and the jeweler responds accordingly by showing the customer diamonds within his price range.  If the customer is a little savvy, he might ask about whether the diamond is “certified” and the jeweler will whip out a lab report and say this diamond is a 1.20 carat, G, VS-2 and the customer will ask “is that good” and the jeweler will say yes and the customer will buy the diamond, present it to the girl and live happily ever after.

In a perfect world… Three months pass by and the happy couple is dining in their favorite dimly lit restaurant and the blushing bride happens to notice a diamond “all the way across the room” which is sparkling its little heart out… she asks her fiancé “why doesn’t my diamond look like that?” and all he can say is “I don’t know, maybe your diamond needs to be cleaned.”
The next day the couple returns to their favorite jewelry store to have the ring cleaned, but the diamond still looks dull and lifeless.  In truth, the diamond looks the same as it did the day it was purchased, but having seen what a diamond is supposed to look like, the couple is now questioning the quality of their purchase.  The jeweler doesn’t have any answers; he just says “well maybe the lighting was better on the other side of the restaurant.”  Maybe it was.

Or maybe the diamond is just poorly cut and by “cut” I am referring to the “cut quality” of the diamond and not the “shape” of the diamond.   Ask most jewelers “what is the cut of this diamond” and they will tell what shape the diamond is cut to.  

Two factors control 98% of the amount and type of light that will be exhibited by a diamond, those two factors are “Cut Performance” and “Cut Precision” and they have nothing to do with the shape of the diamond.  “Cut Performance” refers to the Cut Quality of the diamond in terms of the overall combination of proportions, meaning the measurements of the primary sections of the diamond and the consistency of facet shape, size and alignment within each section.  

The term Cut Precision is used to indicate the degree of Optical Symmetry to which the diamond was crafted.  Quite simply, it is how precisely the diamond cutter aligned the facets of the diamond opposite of each other.  Since these subjects are discussed elsewhere in the web site in depth, I won’t get into it here beyond defining the terms to the extent that we can agree that diamond “cut” is not “shape” and have a better understanding of the 4th “C” Cut than most retail jewelers provide their customers at the sales counter.
With the understanding that “Cut” is the most important of the 4C’s because Cut Performance and Cut Precision control 98% of the light return… And why else do we buy a diamond if it is not for the light return?  Let’s compare the 1.20 carat, G color, VS-2 clarity, GIA graded, round brilliant cut diamonds which are currently available in the market:

Without knowing very much about diamonds, the odds are that most people would be inclined to look at this list of 1.20 carat, G, VS-2, diamonds and pick the first one which is selling for $7,970.00 “because it is the same as the other diamonds and less expensive.”
But the total depth of the diamond is too steep at 62.9% which means that the diamond will face up smaller in outside diameter than it would if it were cut within my preferred range which is between 59 – 61.8% and unfortunately from this listing of the basic 4C’s we can’t determine why the diamond is cut too deep… We can’t determine which of the primary sections of the diamond is cut too deep, or whether all of the sections are cut too deep.  Is the Crown Angle too steep?  Is the girdle edge too thick?  Is the Pavilion Angle too steep?  It is bad enough if one section of the diamond is out of balance, but if all three sections are out of balance; this diamond might be a real dog.

There are 12 diamonds represented in the list of diamonds pictured above.  Armed with the knowledge that a properly crafted round brilliant cut diamond should have a total depth in the range of 59 – 61.8% we can look at the list and quickly eliminate all but two of the diamonds which both have a total depth of 61.2% and table diameters of 56% and 57% which is a good start, but not enough information to justify purchasing the diamonds.

At this point, we know that the basic framework of the two diamonds warrants a look at the diamond grading reports.  When I pull down copies of the lab reports, I see that the crown angle is 34.5 degrees and the pavilion angle is 40.8 degrees, for both stones… Nice!  This is between my preferred range of 34.3 – 34.8 degrees for crown angle and 40.6 – 40.9 degrees… To be clear, there are other combinations for the offset of the crown and pavilion angle measurements that “work” but the odds of finding a diamond with the light return I crave increases dramatically within my preferred range without much thinking on my part.

The girdle edge of one of the diamonds is thin to medium, faceted and the girdle edge of the other diamond is medium, faceted.  I don’t have a preference between a thin to medium and a medium girdle edge, I just want the girdle edge of the diamond to be somewhere between thin to slightly thick and I prefer that it be faceted or polished as a finishing touch.

Looking over the  plotting diagrams of both diamonds to get an idea for the type of inclusions within the diamonds and the extent of those inclusions, I don’t see anything that I don’t like… “By the numbers” we’re off to a good start with these two diamonds and if I were shopping for diamonds right now instead of writing an article, I would bring them in for physical evaluation.  If I had conducted a search for diamonds within this range for an online client and after sharing the information collected thus far, the client said “sounds good, I’d like to buy it, what is the next step?” the answer would be “I’ll contact the cutter and have the diamond shipped to me for physical evaluation so that I can look at it and determine whether I like the way it performs… And if I like what I see when I open the parcel paper, then we’ll run it through a battery of tests and provide you with the results…”

Right about now, the average online diamond retailer is thinking “why make things so difficult, if the paper looks good and the client wants to buy the stone, sell it to them.”  I suppose that this is one way to conduct an online diamond business, but I prefer to actually know that the diamond we’re selling meets our expectations, so I’m going to take the extra time and pay a few dollars to have the diamond shipped in so that I can actually determine whether the diamond meets our selection criteria or not.
Assuming that the diamond is available when I call the cutter, I’ll have it shipped over and it will arrive within a day or two depending on whether it is located in the U.S. or overseas… I like first impressions, so when the diamond arrives, I’m going to sit down at my desk, pop open the parcel paper and see what this puppy has to say.  Sometimes I open the parcel paper and think “well, that was a waste of overnight shipping” and other times I’m like “Wow! Aren’t you pretty… Want to come out and play?”

When I evaluate a parcel of diamonds, I start with two boxes on my desk, one for the ideal cut diamonds which I reject and one for the diamonds that I want to run through the evaluation process… The first step is simply to sit there opening up one parcel paper after another and just look at the diamonds.  This is kind of like the first step of wine tasting where you simply take note of the color, clarity and transparency of the wine.

The next step is to take the box of “I want to know more about you” diamonds and place each diamond one-by-one on to the platform of our Sarin machine to get a computerized proportions analysis.  You might wonder why I use a Sarin machine to measure the proportions of the diamond when the lab has already determined that the diamond has ideal proportions.   The measurements indicated on the diamond grading reports are average measurements comprised of eight measurements per section and there should be a certain level of consistency between the individual measurements and they should not be far apart.

If I like what I see in the details of the proportions analysis, the diamonds stay in the box, if I don’t like what I see, the diamonds go into the return box.  Next I’m going to look at each diamond with a standard 10x hand held diamond grading loupe and if I like how the diamond looks, I’m going to study the diamond as viewed through a microscope using various levels of magnification ranging from 10x up to 70x to get a feel for the inclusions.  If I like what I see, I’ll photograph the inclusions to be included in the diamond details page.  If I don’t like anything about what I see or the impression that the diamond leaves me with at this point, you guessed it, the diamond finds its way into the box of rejected ideal cut diamonds.

Next I’m going to look at the diamond through several different gemological scopes to evaluate the Cut Precision or Optical Symmetry of the diamond… I’ll use a Gems Fantasy scope to determine whether the diamond exhibits a pattern of Hearts & Arrows and if so, to what extent, and photograph the diamond as seen through this scope for inclusion on our diamond details page.  I’ll also look at the diamond through a SymmetriScope (which is similar to a Fire Scope or Ideal Scope) and an AGS ASET scope.

Assuming that I like what I’ve seen up to now, I will turn off all the lights in the room so that I can evaluate the body color of the diamond and the fluorescence under the controlled light of a GIA Diamond Light and if I agree with the grade stated on the lab report, it’s time to build a diamond details page so that our online clients can have a reasonable impression of how the diamond looks from a gemological perspective via our web site.

I wonder, while you’ve been reading this article, did it dawn on you that the first step of our physical evaluation process was to simply look at the diamond and determine whether it met my expectations for how an ideal cut diamond should look?  Perform?  To determine whether the diamond offers a balance of brilliance and dispersion and a high degree of scintillation… I don’t start out by using the gemological equipment to quantify the technical details of the diamond, I start out by looking at the diamond and I do this because beauty can not be measured by any means other than with our eyes.

It’s true that as an experienced diamond buyer of 25+ years, I can tell a lot about a diamond by looking at the technical data… I can look at a lab report and determine whether a diamond has the ‘potential’ to be a nice looking diamond… I can look at the results of a computerized proportions analysis and determine whether a diamond has been cut ‘right’ for optimum visual performance in terms of the proportions…  I can look at a few clarity photographs and get a pretty good idea of the inclusions within a diamond and to what extent they cover the diamond, but I also understand that I can not determine whether inclusions are visible to the naked eye from just a photograph… I also understand that I can not determine whether an inclusion faces up light or dark from a photograph because the light used to highlight the inclusions will alter the appearance of the inclusions… I can look at a photograph of a Hearts & Arrows pattern and determine whether the pattern is crisp and complete… I can look at an image of a diamond as seen through an Ideal Scope and determine whether it is leaking light and if so, to what extent and where… I can look at the image for the ASET and get a good idea of where in the room a diamond is likely pulling light from, with the understanding that ‘the room’ is a perfect dome and does not remotely resemble any room which I’m likely to encounter and view a diamond in during the normal course of my day…

It is true that we use data collected during our evaluation process to provide our online clients with the technical aspects of the diamonds which we offer, but we only go to the trouble of doing so after I have met with the stone and decided whether I like the look of it or not… It’s kind of a strange way to sell diamonds online, I know.

I’m Todd Gray, the President and CEO of Nice Ice, Inc., if you want to know more about the diamonds that we offer online, pick up the phone and we’ll talk about it.  I might even pick up the diamond and take a look at it for you