Posts Categorized: Blog

For many decades, the DeBeers Corporation funded an ad campaign that was intended to create demand for diamond jewelry, engagement rings in particular, as a symbol of eternal love and beauty. The “Diamonds are Forever” campaign went through many iterations in TV ads and is something baby boomers grew up with.

But, times change. DeBeers no longer controls the 80 to 90 percent of rough diamond supply that they did in the 1980s and before. In fact, the top three diamond producers, DeBeers, Alrosa and Rio Tinto, together control only about 60% of the supply of rough diamonds. DeBeers has opened its own retail operation and now manufactures their own brand diamond named Forevermark, echoing their ad campaigns of decades ago. They run ads for their own brand now, but not to create demand for diamonds generally for the benefit of everyone in the industry.

And now we have the Millenniels. Millenniels are less religious than previous generations and less devoted to the institution of marriage. And it has been marriage that has created demand for diamonds, not only for engagement rings but for births, anniversaries, graduations and maybe even penance.

But it turns out that Millenniels are still interested in buying diamonds. The desire is just more delinked from marriage than it has ever been. And they have a fascination with lab created synthetic diamonds (see my blog posts below) because they are high tech, sustainable, environmentally friendly and conflict free.

So into the void left by DeBeers steps the Diamond Producers Association with “Real is Rare” ads about to hit the air targeting Millenniels. The ads focus on the results of research that shows Millenniels have a desire for real and lasting connections with others but feel that they struggle to make them and feel insecure about the authenticity of those connections. The ads reposition the natural diamond not as a symbol of engagement or marriage but as representative of real and meaningful things, such as relationships that matter and last, whether in marriage or not. Look for the ads

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust as the good book says.  Or, maybe ashes to carbon, carbon to diamond.  Uncle Lester may have been a drunken lech in real life, but now he may be able to provide beauty and pleasure in the afterlife.  At least according to several companies like LifeGem and Cremation Solutions, which advertise that they will create a High Pressure, High Temperature (HPHT) diamond from your loved one’s ashes.

Well….., buyer beware.  The International School of Gemology looked into these claims and issued a report in 2007 which cast lots of doubt on them.  To begin with, both companies used a picture of a row of BARS diamond presses on their websites and promotional material claiming explicitly in one case and suggesting in the other that these presses were owned by their companies.  In fact, neither company owns these presses.  The picture was taken off the internet and the presses belong to New Diamond Technology, a Russian company.  When LifeGem receives ashes from someone wanting a diamond created of their loved one, they claim to send the ashes to Russia where the diamond is created by NDT.

According to them, you can tell them how many diamonds you want from Uncle Lester, how big, the shape of them and their color.  But the major diamond synthesis labs consulted by the International School of Gemology said it was not technologically possible to do this to the extent claimed by the cremation diamond sellers.  Moreover, it seems that the cremation process itself burns virtually all of the carbon.

According to the ISG, there is no proof that the ashes you provide are ever sent to Russia or that, if they are, they are used in creating the diamond you buy.  In the best case, ISG says there is only a miniscule amount of carbon from your loved one in the diamond you get, and in the worst case, there is none at all.  You might just get conned and sold a lab created diamond with none of Uncle Lester’s carbon in it and for a price that can be about double the normal price of a lab created diamond.

So, was the diamond you see below once Uncle Lester or did you just get suckered?

To follow up on my March 30th post on D color, Flawless diamonds, the number of these stones sold, most of them at auction, is tiny compared to the volume of diamonds sold worldwide each year or even just at auction. But their impact is huge. The sale of these diamonds makes news in part because they are almost always for millions of dollars and the demand for these diamonds from wealthy private clients exceeds the supply of them.

To illustrate, the 76.02 carat, Archduke Joseph diamond is a D, Internally Flawless stone which originates from the Golconda region of India where several other of the world’s oldest and most famous diamonds come from. It sold at Christie’s November 2012 Geneva auction for $21.5 million. Six months later in May 2013, a 101.73 carat pear shaped, D, Flawless diamond sold again at Christie’s Geneva auction for $26.7 million. That set a record as the largest D, Flawless ever sold at auction. The record lasted until October of the same year (2013) when a 118.28 carat D, Flawless was sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong auction for $30.6 million.

Historically, alluvial diggings in the Golconda region has been the source of the world’s finest diamonds going back to the 15th century. In the 20th and early 21st century, the Cullinan Mine (renamed from Premier) in South Africa has been the source of many D, Flawless stones as well as the Letseng mine of Lesotho. The Karowe mine in Botswana is the most recent addition producing many large diamonds, including a 1,111 carat diamond which looks to D potential.

D, Flawless diamonds are naturally scarce, especially when combined with large size. But the number of clients wanting them is constantly on the increase creating a situation in which increased competition will bid prices to fabulous levels and create great excitement in the auctions of Chrities and Sothebys. Seventy percent of the word’s wealthiest 1 percent made their money in the last 10 years and are looking to invest at least part of it in art, real estate and diamonds. That has made D, Flawless diamonds the glittering stars of the auction world.

I did a blog post in January on synthetic diamonds moving into the jewelry pipeline. Both Gems and Gemology (the publication of the Gemological Institute of America) and Rapaport are full of articles lately on synthetic diamonds.

It seems that synthetic diamonds are very appealing to Millenials for several seemingly good reasons. “Lab created diamonds resonate particularly well with a Millennial audience…because they are beautiful, responsible and affordable,” say Lara Ewen in Rapaport magazine. She is correct, they are cheaper than natural, mined diamonds. The discount at the present time is 20 – 25% and that could mean paying $15,000 for a 2 carat diamond rather than $20,000. Also, there is no mining involved and so there is no environmental damage involved in producing the product.

Buying a lab created diamond also gives one certainty that the diamond is not a “conflict” diamond, meaning that it was not mined in an area controlled by African rebels and the profits from the sale not used to kill women and children in a civil war.

And then there is the technological wizardry. Millennials seem to like the idea that a diamond can be made specifically for them in an 8000 degree reactor; that they can dictate the shape and form it will take and watch the process from inception to final product. It is high tech, sustainable and environmentally friendly.

AH, and therein lies the rub. Synthetic gem quality diamonds are a very new TECHNOLOGICAL product. And like all new technological products, the price is certain to fall. So, if you pay $15,000 for a synthetic 2 carat diamond instead of $20,000 for a natural one, and 5 years from now the same synthetic diamond is selling for $5000, how will you feel? Martin Rapaport thinks that synthetic diamond prices will fall by 50% in 2 years and that there is no reason why ultimately the price won’t decline to the levels of cubic zirconia or moissanite.

The reason for this is that there is a potentially unlimited supply of synthetic diamonds with new players rushing to get into the business and rapid technological improvement decreasing the cost of making the product. On the other hand, natural diamonds will retain their value and continue to be a store of value not only because they are beautiful but because they have natural scarcity. The rarity of beautiful, natural diamonds relative to demand will cause prices for these stones to remain high.

For more on the future of natural diamond prices, see my blog post below on the subject.

It is not uncommon to hear people say that there is no such thing as a perfect diamond. But there is such a thing as a “D” color, Flawless diamond. A “D” color is the highest color grade in the color grading scale of the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), by far the most widely used diamond grading scale in the world. A “D” color diamond is, by definition, a Type IIa diamond, having no nitrogen or boron impurities because such impurities would impart some color to the stone. And only 2% of all natural diamonds found in nature are Type IIa, giving you some idea of the rarity of such a stone.

“Flawless” is the highest clarity grade in the GIA’s clarity grading scale. A Flawless diamond has no visible imperfections at 10X magnification. In reality, it has no visible imperfections at much greater magnifications since the labs power way up to see what they can find and then power down to see if it is still visible once they know where it is.

The GIA annually takes in for grading half a million diamonds over 1 carat and says that less than one half of 1 percent are either D, Flawless or D, Internally Flawless. The American Gem Society says that less than one quarter of 1 percent in their laboratory get graded either D, Flawless or D, Internally Flawless.

These stones are as perfect as the existing grading system can accommodate and obviously exceedingly rare. Christie’s and Sotheby’s each list only about 25 to 30 stones, 2 carats or above, sold in all their venues worldwide for each of the past four years. They are in huge demand from people who want to buy the very best and sell for tens of millions of dollars. More on that in my next post…

Several months ago, I wrote a blog on the large diamonds being discovered by the Lucara Diamond Corporation at their Karowe mine in Botswana.  It is now being reported by several media outlets that they have discovered the 2nd largest gem quality rough diamond ever found.  Pictured in my facebook post on this, it is 1,111 carats and is 2nd in size only to the Cullinan I which was 3,106 carats.  This new gem is the largest rough diamond found in 115 years.   It is roughly the size of a tennis ball, measuring 65 x 56 x 40 mm.  It was too big to fit in Lucara’s in house scanner and will require a larger 3rd party scanner to render into 3D.

Plus, it is reported to be a Type IIa diamond.  Only 2% of all natural diamonds are Type II.  So here is the difference: Type I diamonds contain impurities of either nitrogen or boron which give the diamond different amounts of color depending on the number of these trace elements replacing carbon in the crystal lattice. Type IIa diamonds contain none of these trace elements and so, unless there is distortion of the crystal lattice structure, the diamond should be colorless.  It certainly looks so in the picture.  The possibility exists here to manufacture one or more diamonds of fabulous size and quality that will sell for tens of millions of dollars.

Lucara’s stock price increased 32% on the news of the discovery, adding $150 million to its market value.  Plus, that wasn’t the only good news for Lucara.  During the same week this diamond was discovered, they also unearthed rough diamonds of 813 carats and 374 carats.  The 813 carat diamond is the 6th largest gem quality diamond ever discovered.

Synthetic diamonds are diamonds grown in a laboratory rather than being found (i.e. mined) in nature.  They are real diamonds.  They have the same chemical composition and crystal lattice structure as those found in nature.  But they are grown in a laboratory using one of two different methods.  The High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT) method mimics the way diamonds are grown naturally in the earth’s mantle about 100 miles beneath the surface of the earth, where high temperatures and pressure transforms carbon into diamond.  The HPHT laboratory method uses big presses to create the heat and pressure necessary to do the job in a much shorter period of time.

The other method is called Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD).  It uses microwaves to bombard a carbon infused cloud which causes carbon to rain onto a natural seed crystal and grow into a diamond. This is a relatively new technology.

Diamonds have been grown in laboratories for both experimental and industrial uses since the 1970s. These diamonds were industrial grade and the labs had difficulty growing diamonds that were large enough and high enough quality to be used in the jewelry trade.  Growing diamonds in the near colorless range that the jewelry trade demands was especially challenging. That, however, is changing.

Rapaport magazine reports that the New Diamond Technology facility in St. Petersburg, Russia produced a 60 carat rough diamond in 2015 using their HPHT method which set a record as the largest laboratory grown diamond ever. They also produced in 2015 a 32.26 carat, colorless, high quality rough diamond from which was cut a 10.02 carat square emerald cut diamond which has graded out at E color and VS1 clarity.

The NDT facility has over 50 HPHT presses which can produce 5000 carats per month. Up to 16 colorless crystals weighing 6 to 10 carats each can be produced in each press in a cycle taking 10 to 12 days on average according to the Rapaport report.

In addition, there are many new players in the diamond growing business.  Labs in China, Germany, India, Russia, the United States and Taiwan are growing diamonds up to 2 carats polished and in very good qualities.  These diamonds are now moving into the jewelry trade pipeline and will present challenges to jewelers who will need to be able to identify them. Obviously, there will be big trouble for any jeweler who unwittingly sells a lab grown diamond without identifying it as such.

The latest issue of Rapaport magazine has an article on diamonds that are known to be 100 carats or more.  Rapaport maintains a Registry which lists the diamonds known to be 100 carats plus, along with other known information such as the mine it came from, the size of the rough it was cut from, where it was sold and for how much, who owns it, etc..

There are 65 diamonds on the Registry. The oldest is the “Koh-I-Noor” which dates to 1304 and is part of the British Crown Jewels.  There are 2 over 500 carats, the “Golden Jubilee” at 545 carats and the “Great Star of Africa” at 530 carats. There is one at 407 carats, one at 317, 6 at 200 plus carats and the rest are between 100 and 200.

Laurence Graff, the London jeweler owns or has owned 12 of the 100 plus carat diamonds. Robert Mouawad, the Lebanese jeweler has owned 5 of them. Several are in the British Crown Jewels and several are in the Iranian Crown Jewels.

The modern era of colossal diamonds (the 5th “C”) dates only to 1990 and the sale by Sotheby’s of a 101 carat modified pear shaped diamond which was purchased by Robert Mouawad for $12.7 million (named the Mouawad Spendour).  This sale set off a “stream” of sales of colossal diamonds over the next 25 years, usually for millions of dollars, and made the auction houses of Christies and Sotheby’s the preferred venue for such sales.  These diamonds are usually named to establish the “provenance” of the stone.

There are large diamonds being mined at the Letseng and Karowe mines in Africa and there are wealthy individuals, especially Russian, Chinese and Arab, who wish to own “trophy” diamonds.  This portends a future of more sales of colossal diamonds for fabulous prices at spectacular auction events in the houses of Sotheby’s and Christies.

I have customers who confuse laboratory certificates with appraisals and that is entirely understandable.  A laboratory report is independent, third party verification that the gemstone in your jewelry (ring, for example) is, in fact, really a (for example) diamond; that it has the measurements and carat weight specified in the report as well as the color, clarity and cut specified.  The laboratory report usually describes the single most valuable part of the piece of jewelry being appraised but it does not assign a dollar value to it.  Some laboratories do have partnerships with appraisal firms and provide an appraisal for the gemstone by itself as a separate document.

But most appraisals are for finished pieces of jewelry and so there is always the mounting  which adds value and sometimes side stones which do as well.  If the piece is designed and manufactured by a famous and popular designer, that can add significant value, especially if the piece is signed.

So, a well done appraisal includes most of the information that is on the laboratory report but includes additional information as well on the mounting, side stones, designer, etc. and assigns a dollar value to it.  That dollar valuation can vary significantly depending on the purpose of the appraisal; but that will be the subject of a future post.

Rapaport is reporting that the Lucara Diamond Corporation has very recently uncovered a number of very large diamonds at their Karowe Mine in Botswana.  The largest is apparently the 336 carat irregularly shaped diamond pictured below.  Also, uncovered over the weekend of August 18th were diamonds weighing 184 carats, 94 carats and 86 carats as well as a 12 carat diamond that appears to have a pale pink color.

The Lucara Diamond Corporation is a relative newcomer to the diamond industry, tracing its origins to an oil and gas company in Colorado in the early 1980s that merged several times with other companies and reorganized in British Columbia in the early 2000s. It then acquired several diamond mining properties in southern Africa.

The Karowe Mine is the most promising and productive thus far. Rapaport reports that, “since the recovery of the first large diamond from Karowe in 2013, Lucara has found 216 other diamonds that have sold for more than $250,000 each; 12 of them for above $5 million each.”