Decoding Fine Jewelry Purchasing: The Four C’s Simplified
A helpful way to learn the basics of choosing a diamond jewelry piece like an eternity ring is this guide to understanding diamond quality. Learning about diamonds can be confusing for consumers new to jewelry shopping, and this information can make the process easier.
Diamonds are formed by carbon atoms that, after being subjected to intense heat and pressure within the earth over a long period of time, crystallize into a specific arrangement. The Mohs scale, used to measure the hardness of different substances, is a 1 to 10 scale with talc rating a 1 and diamond representing 10. The next hardest substance is corundum, which is the main component comprising rubies and sapphires. However, with a rating of 9, corundum is significantly behind the diamond on this scale.
Diamonds have many particular characteristics that make them special; in addition to their unusual beauty, diamonds are the hardest naturally-occurring material on Earth.
Cut is the most important of these factors, as proper cutting of a diamond is essential in bringing out the sparkle and fire that made this gem famous. Cut is often confused with shape, the form into which the diamond is cut.
After cut comes color, which is something many people can learn to see within a few grades. Diamond color grades range from D-Z, but it’s rare to find fine jewelry utilizing anything beyond K color. After K color the quality steadily declines because these stones will have yellow or brownish tints. Of course, diamonds with very pronounced natural colors including bright yellows, pinks, and blues are the rarest of all and actually more valuable many types of white diamond.
Clarity is the next step of the four Cs, which measures a diamonds internal and external flaws. Flawless and near flawless diamonds are the best quality, but it takes several grades down from that level for inclusions to be visible to the naked eye, so some of these mid-grade diamonds are a great deal!
Carat weight, the last of the four Cs and the trait that almost anyone can spot immediately, is the unit of measure applied to diamonds and other gems. While searching for the right piece of diamond jewelry, you may have noticed that pricing for diamonds of comparable cut, color and clarity grades increases exponentially rather than proportionally with the carat weight of the diamond. This is because finding large, good quality diamonds is less likely than finding small diamonds suitable for jewelry, or large diamonds that need bad areas cut away to form multiple smaller gems, so the value of a gem increases as the supply of gems like it decreases.
What is a diamond? Learn this & more by visiting the diamond & fine jewelry experts atEternityRingsAndBands.com! Their in-depth jewelry website presents a number of amazing rings and an education section offering a diamond clarity chart & many other helpful resources.. This article, Decoding Fine Jewelry Purchasing: The Four C’s Simplified is released under a creative commons attribution license.
June 9, 2011 | Posted by Christine Lila Davies
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