Welcome to the Diamond Helpers blog, where I will be posting and commenting on current diamond engagement ring trends and tips for people buying a diamond. Nuff said, please read on!

JCK-Jewelers Circular Keystone – De Beers approves Snap Lake financing

Interesting developments definitely happening in the diamond industry in the next few years. Soon there will be a major player in Canada, and this is no small matter. This will not affect buyers looking for a diamond engagement ring today, but it is something for people in the trade to track over the next decade.

I will post news and the lastest diamond industry here in this blog as often as I can. Please use this form to email your questions for a personal response from me or my specially trained staff. We usually answer all emails within 24 hours.

Robert Hensley
President, Diamond Helpers, Inc.
http://www.diamondhelpers.com/ask/ask-experts-form.shtml

AGS is soon changing the entire landscape for the diamond market, from cutters of the rough all the way up to the final consumer that wears the finished diamond on her hand. This is going to be announced to the public in August I think, but we are hearing about it already in the trade.

The change has to do with the way they are going to grade the cut of a diamond. Actually, what makes it such a big change, is that they are not going to grade the cut now. Rather, they are going to measure the performance of the diamond in the way it returns light to the viewer. This means they are going to evaluate ACTUAL brilliance of the diamond, instead of trying to PREDICT brilliance based on so-called ideal parameters for the stone’s measurements and proportions. This is truly revolutionary, and only possible with the advent of modern computer-driven laser measurement and modeling techniques developed and refined in recent years.

More about this later, but this is bigtime stuff. And it’s exciting.

It will change the way people educate themselves, because you won’t have to worry about crown angles and depth percentages anymore. If it has a high performance rating, who cares what the proportions are? Those measurements are only important now becuase they allow you to GUESS a diamond’s beauty in the absence of true measurement of the the beauty. Now those details will become less important, and we will start to compare based on simple meausurements of brilliance.

Cool! But it will change the way diamonds are cut, bought, and sold. More later….

Great article on diamond cut, if you are into all the scientific approach. The big surprises are the so-called ideal cut proportions that have been hyped so much, don’t always outperform all other proportions for light return.

GIA: GIA Research: Article Detail:

“August 30, 2002–The GIA Diamond Proportion Module: Illustrating How Changes in Individual Proportions Affect the Appearance of a Round Brilliant Cut Diamond
Barak Green, T. Scott Hemphill, Mary Johnson, and James Shigley”

“De Beers rough diamond sales rose 3% in 2004
South Africa’s De Beers said that diamond sales during 2004 were boosted by Asian demand and a weakening dollar, sending net profits soaring by 25% to $498 million, Agence France Presse reports.”

Nice to know they are doing well. Now if only the jewelers could find a way to increase their profits. Of course, I am not talking about the mall stores, they have a huge markup in most cases. But the stores I like to find are the ones that give low prices but don’t give in the pressures to cut services or the time they spend with customers. They aren’t many left, but I am hunting them down. It’s a challenge, but I like a good challenge once in a while.

This can be a scam or not, depending on whether your jeweler is truly honest and skilled at grading diamonds. Please do not make the mistake of thinking that a store’s local reputation, or how long they have been in business, makes a difference. In fact, in my experience it is often just the opposite. Old style jewelers always told customers the quality of the diamonds they sold, without any third-party grading of the diamonds. They are used to doing things that way, and it is NOT in your best interest to trust a jeweler to grade his diamonds accurately.

It would be silly to trust a jeweler to grade his own diamonds. That’s just like asking a fox to guard a chicken coop. It gives the few dishonest jewelers the perfect opportunity to cheat you and sell you whatever they want. Instead, educate yourself to a degree, but most importantly, only look at diamonds with “certificates” as they are called, from respected third pary laboratories. The most respected in the diamond industry are GIA-GTL (Gemological Insititute of American Gem Trade Laboratory), and AGSL (American Gem Society Laboratory).

Here are the pages you need for each:
GIA: http://www.gia.edu/gemtradelab/110/reports__services.cfm
AGS: http://www.agslab.com/products_services.html

This is one reason why jewelry stores are difficult and costly to operate. I had a 30-06 rifle pointed at my face by a 17-year-old suicidal pregnant girl when I was managing a store in Austin. Needless to say, the owners finally listened to my advice to spend the money to get a security system and keep a guard on duty. Diamonds are very attractive to the criminal mind. And insurance on diamonds is much harder to obtain and a lot more expensive than it is for most other retail merchandise.

JCK-Jewelers Circular Keystone – Husband and wife store owners killed in robbery: “Husband and wife store owners killed in robbery

Anthony DeMarco, JCK Senior Editor
JCK-Jewelers Circular Keystone — 2/3/2005 1:56:00 PM

An armed robbery of a Fairfield, Conn., jewelry store on Wednesday ended with the shooting deaths of the couple who owned the store. “

Be careful about people that really emphasize that their prices are better because they buy direct from Antwerp or Israel or other centers. It’s not necessarily misleading, but it can be. The trick is not where they buy, but how well they buy.

The price a jeweler pays depends on many factors. These factors affect the price much more than where they buy. A jeweler will pay more than they could, UNLESS they have all these important elements going for them:

– they pay cash or on very short payment terms
– have excellent credit rating in the Jeweler’s Board of Trade
– have a long-standing loyal relationship with that supplier
– buy for stock and not just taking goods on “memo” to show for a while
– knows exactly what they are buying, and most jewelers do not
– expert negotiators in the trade, but always fair
– buys intelligently for their customers’ needs, and don’t accumulate excess goods
– buys in large volume from 1-2 suppliers and not just a few stones from many
– have earned the respect of that supplier as someone who they cannot overprice
… well you get the picture by now. It is not WHERE you buy, but HOW you buy that counts in this business.

AND… the price you pay still depends (mostly, in fact) on how much they mark up the diamonds before they sell them to you. And usually this final markup at the local level is the largest markup in the chain of suppliers that all have to make a profit, however small.

So don’t be fooled with the mystique of diamonds from Antwerp. It doesn’t make that much difference where they come from. What matters most is the way a jeweler does business, and the respect they command in the trade. And respect in this business is not easy to earn.

Solution? Find the jewelers that have earned the respect of their peers and suppliers, and proudly display their qualifications more than how many times they take a vacation in Antwerp.

In two related articles, gold prices seem to be rising for manufacturers, and will soon be seen on the retail shelves where consumers buy.

Jewelers Circular Keystone: “Rising gold will affect prices, sales
Jewelers are bracing for higher gold jewelry wholesale costs next year, following the recent rise in the price of gold�costs they�ll have to pass on to customers.
– 12/3/2004

Gold strikes 16-year high; Passes $450 an ounce
Gold rushed passed its 16 year high to more than $450 an ounce Thursday, before pausing as players began to eye the next big target of $455.
– 11/26/2004″