There’s some confusion about diamond quality, certificate and price comparisons that’s creating a lot of misunderstanding amongst the bros. To make it easier for everyone, let me try to summarise it as best I can to clear the air.
First off, there is different diamond quality. You can categorise them into,
Tier 1 - aka Super Ideal Cuts
Tier 2 - aka Ideal Cuts
Tier 3 - aka Excellent Cuts
Is there a visual difference? Yes, especially when you compare them (or at least to me). I won’t go into details about this as its better that you discover it yourselves.
On paper (certificate), these 3 different Tiers can have the same details on paper, as the certificate gives only basic information. Choosing a diamond solely on the certificate info is plain buying blindly. It’s like asking a Doctor to diagnose a patient with a stethoscope. Is it useful? Yes. Can it diagnose a patient fully? No. The Doctor would need a MRI scan, blood test, etc. to get the full information of a patient to give an accurate diagnosis. Same thing as diamonds, where the ASET, Hearts and arrows scope, etc. is needed for a fuller analysis.
These different Tiers can affect the diamond’s price too. We use a 0.5ct D VVS1 for example.
Tier 1 (Super Ideal Cut) 0.5ct D VVS1 - $5,000
Tier 2 (Ideal Cut) 0.5ct D VVS1 - $4,000
Tier 3 (Excellent Cut) 0.5ct D VVS1 - $3,000
These 3 diamonds have same certificate but the cost is different. In essence, quality can affect price.
But the crux of the matter is that there is no universal law or rule of what is a Ideal Cut, which makes things very complicated.
For example, Shop A uses a Tier 3 (Excellent Cut) 0.5ct D VVS1 diamond, calls it a ‘Super Ideal Cut’ and sells it for $4,000.
If you compare it with another Shop B selling a Tier 1 (Super Ideal Cut) for $5,000, you would think Shop A is a good deal, where in fact, the true price is only worth $3,000.
*This is purely an example, and I’m not labelling any shops.
Basically, don’t blindly trust all these labels and what the any shops calls them, and do your own research on whether your diamond truly belongs to which Tier.
Even if you don’t care about the quality, by knowing which Tier your diamond belongs to, you can use it to gauge what’s a good price you should be paying for it.
The next point is finding the same diamond being offered at different shops. Why are different shops able to sell the same diamond?
Shops can sell diamonds in 2 different ways.
1. Own inventory
2. Floating goods
Own inventory is basically owning the diamonds that they sell. Usually, these are the better quality ones as which shop would want to use their own money to invest in lousy diamonds?
Floating goods is when the shop doesn’t own the diamonds, but borrows it from the suppliers to sell. Usually, these are the more problematic ones because these are the diamonds that shops don’t want to buy for their own inventory.
So where do all these diamonds go to that shops don’t want to invest in? The floating goods. There can be many many reasons to this like the diamond being milky, off color tinges, durability issues, light leakages, etc (which is all not on the certificate).
I’m not saying that all of these diamonds are bad, but you have to be very careful about them and they are floating goods for a reason.
Majority of websites do the floating goods method, or some can use both methods. Most people avoid the floating goods as there are many risks involved, but I feel that there is no right or wrong in this.
Its just what is your level of tolerance that is acceptable to you.
The problem only comes in when websites just calls anything Super Ideal Cut just to fool people into competing with JP standards.
So it really depends on what you want. At the end of the day, everyone just wants to get the best bang for the buck. Some go for quality value, some go for paper value.
But whether you want a Tier 1 or Tier 3 diamond, I believe that everyone wants the best price you can get for it.
Its just that some might confuse the labels and compare a Tier 1 and Tier 3 diamond which is not correct.
Basically, you don’t want to buy a Tier 3 diamond and pay a Tier 2 price for it, thinking its a Tier 1 quality.
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