Posts By: Al Broberg

In my last blog post, I discussed how, contrary to popular myth, diamond prices do not always increase. In 2014 and 2015, diamond prices were down.  But what does the future hold for diamond prices. There was an article in Rapaport magazine last November which addressed this issue. It reported on the expectation of DeBeers’… Read more »

Many of my customers think that diamond prices always increase.  And for much of the history of the diamond industry, that was pretty much true.  When I first started in this industry in 1992, Debeers controlled about 80% of all the rough diamonds coming into the market.  For decades,it was Debeers company policy to manage… Read more »

People sometimes use the terms cut and shape synonymously.  But cut means more than shape and the Rapaport Price List has different price matrices for round and fancy shape diamonds.  The Price List is actually for well cut diamonds.  That has a more exact meaning in the case of round diamonds than it does for… Read more »

This is another piece on the world’s famous and historic diamonds, although not reprinted from Rapaport magazine, as the blog on the Hope Diamond was.  This information comes from the GIA course materials that I happened across when looking up a diagram that I wanted to use for a facebook post. The Orloff, like so… Read more »

The Rapaport Group banned certificates from the European Gemological Laboratory (EGL) on its RapNet trading network (an interdealer online market) several months ago.  The purported reason for doing so was the supposed widespread, consistent overgrading of diamonds by EGL. Now it is important to understand that EGL USA is not the same company as EGL… Read more »

Most people have heard a diamond described as “certified”. What does it mean to say that a diamond has been certified. Do only the best diamonds get certified? Surely a certified diamond must be better than a diamond that is not certified, right? No, not necessarily.  What it means to say that a diamond is certified is… Read more »

I am going to reprint some short pieces out of Rapaport Magazine on some of the world’s oldest, most famous and historic diamonds.  In Europe, these were historically owned by royalty.  More recently, in the United States, fabulous and famous diamonds have been owned by Hollywood types or captains of Industry.

There is no SI3 clarity grade in the clarity grading scale of the Gemological Institute of America (GIA).  The GIA lab does not issue lab reports with an SI3 clarity grade.  But the Rapaport Diamond Report, which is the most widely used price sheet in the industry publishes prices for an SI3 clarity grade and… Read more »

Clarity is a complex and problematic issue when it comes to defining loan value and I will write at least 2 blog posts on it.  Much of the difficulty lies with the SI3 clarity grade but I will deal with that next time. For now, let’s go back again to the 1.50 carat round diamond… Read more »