The Diamond Industry

It’s true that diamonds are forever, but contrary to popular belief, their investment potentials are skewed. I’m a diamond wholesaler and I’ll give it to you straight: many potential buyers prize certain attributes and characteristics of diamonds while severely overlooking other important traits. With the rise of the digital age and the internet, customers (perhaps like yourself) are certainly becoming better informed. However, despite the wealth of information available on the internet authoritatively discussing the 4Cs, many diamond buyers are still victims of skepticism, speculation and often distortions.

I remember asking, “how much is this worth, Papa?”, to which he would exclaim, “it’s not worth that much, Nikhil, but if you find enough of those, that will be your college education.” Though my simple, innocent mind could not comprehend the scale or value in his remark, it still spurred me to keep on hunting, for finding these little treasures was so significant, so real and so exciting.

The concept of a wholesaler in business is well known, but to the average consumer, it is a concept that doesn’t seem congruent with their version of how the diamond industry operates. In the diamond industry, wholesalers account for approximately 30% of the independent businesses in the diamond value chain. The majority of diamond jewellery businesses are independent & family owned, and at the wholesale level, family ownership accounts for almost 90% of all wholesale diamond companies.

People outside of the diamond trade often misunderstand the relationship between diamonds and colour. Many people think of diamonds as colourless. In reality, truly colourless diamonds are quite rare. Most diamonds used in jewellery are nearly colourless with a slight yellow or brown tint — most often very light yellow.

Fluorescence is the glow sometimes seen when an object emits visible light. Some diamonds fluoresce when they are exposed to ultraviolet light. This can cause them to emit a bluish glow of varying intensities and less often so - a yellow, green or even a white glow.

Most diamonds found in nature do not fluoresce. It has been established over the years, through extensive testing that approximately 30% to 35% of all natural diamonds exhibit some degree of fluorescence when exposed to UV light.

It’s sometimes hard to think of the words “diamond” and “colour” at the same time. After all, most people think of diamonds as colourless. In reality, most diamonds in the market range from colourless or nearly colourless to light yellow, brown or even grey-green.

This is known as the standard colour range. It’s also called the D-Z range because of the letter designations given to each step in the colour scale, ‘D’ being absolutely ‘colourless’ and ‘Z’ being essentially yellow, on the border of ‘fancy.’