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DIAMOND COST

Market research suggests cost and carat weight are the primary concerns of most diamond buyers. The numerous lists of diamonds on jewelry store websites, whether online or in traditional brick and mortar venues, influence many of today’s buyers to reduce diamond values to a series of letters and numbers. This process influences diamond buyers to rush through quality analysis; the inevitable result being that they reduce both the beauty and the value of their purchase.

How are diamonds priced? After all, when they are removed from the earth they are ice cube-looking raw crystals, some with dirt attached and certainly not beautiful. Cost is based on the following factors:

Time and labor to find diamonds, remove them and sort them
Labor to study, cut and facet the crystal into polished diamond
Weight of the crystal and size of the polished diamond
Rarity of the crystal and rarity of the polished diamond
Brilliance, Fire, Scintillation (Cut) of the polished diamond
Marketing costs
Seller’s commission

Size and rarity of the rough crystal are the most important factors in cost. Brilliance, fire, and scintillation are the primary factors which produce beauty. Because nature provides far fewer crystals of greater carat weight, diamond prices rise quickly with increases in the weight of the stone.

Most customers have a budget in mind when they begin the process of searching for a diamond and a ring to hold it. By providing the budget to your jeweler, you should expect your jeweler to concentrate on the best combination of size and quality within that number. This also allows customers to spend more time examining the quality of a diamond, which almost always results in a diamond of better value.

Remember: the cost of a diamond is always important. Yet, like other features of the stone, it’s ultimately a statistic that fades over time. What remains should be a gorgeous sparkling diamond, what the woman first sees when she looks down at her hand.