[Jewelry making - Article 00745] - Re: [Orchid] Natural-color yellow Diamonds

[Mark Defrates]

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    I am not an expert on the history of fashion in diamonds and my
    opinion is colored by a fair dislike of the effect of the industry
    but to my knowledge yellow diamonds were considered less valuable
    until Australians started mining vast quantities of them and the
    Indian cutting industry developed. This near simultaneous (and for
    the diamond industry highly propitious) event resulted in a flood of
    very affordable small stones, making diamond jewelry attractive to
    Big Box stores like Wal-Mart and to customers who would previously
    have never dreamed of owning a diamond tennis bracelet. Without the
    Indian cutters, who will cut 1 and 2 point stones for pennies, and
    the major American retailers the Australian diamond industry would
    have probably been blocked by De Beers in much the same way De Beers
    persuaded the Soviets to sell their output to them. Demand from
    strata of American society for diamond fashions that would
    previously have only bought one diamond in their lives... a diamond
    engagement ring, forced a reevaluation of yellow diamonds (and other
    shades, like brown). These diamonds are now valuable in carat and
    above sizes, known, I believe, as fancies. 

    Of some relevance is the fact that man made diamonds (I mean real
    stones made by new industrial technology, not cubic zirconia or
    moissanite) currently can only economically be manufactured as
    yellow stones. I understand these can be manufactured with great
    clarity. How many of these stones have entered the market and are
    being sold as natural de to sloppy provenance or deliberate fraud is
    a guess but I do not see how this can fail to happen and happen
    increasingly. I do not know what the industry will do once
    manufactured colorless diamonds become affordable to create but I am
    not impressed by De Beers current strategy of insisting on some
    ineffable and impossible to determine metaphorical superiority for
    natural stones. 

Mark Defrates

 
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