Diamond Cost

Market research suggests cost is the primary concern of most diamond buyers. The numerous lists of diamonds on jewelry store websites influence many of today’s buyers to reduce diamond values to a series of letters and numbers. This process influences diamond buyers to rush through quality analysis; the inevitable result being that they reduce both the beauty and the value of their purchase.

How are diamonds priced? After all, when they are removed from the earth they are ice cube-looking raw crystals, some with dirt attached and certainly not beautiful. Cost is based on the following factors:

• Time and labor to find diamonds, remove them and sort them
• Labor to study, cut and facet the crystal into polished diamond
• Weight of the crystal and size of the polished diamond
• Rarity of the crystal and rarity of the polished diamond
• Cut grade of the polished diamond
• Marketing
• Seller’s commission

Size and rarity of the rough crystal are the most important factors in cost. Because nature provides far fewer crystals of greater carat weight, diamond prices rise quickly with increases in the weight of the stone.

Most customers have a budget in mind when they begin the process of searching for a diamond. By providing the budget to your jeweler, you should expect your jeweler to concentrate on the best combination of size and quality within that number. At Tom Tivol Jewels, we like to know our customer’s budget range because it allows for greater opportunity to show different sizes and qualities of stones. This also allows customers to spend more time examining the quality of a diamond, which almost always results in a diamond of better value.

Remember: the cost of a diamond is always important. Yet, like other features of the stone, it’s ultimately a statistic that fades over time. What remains should be a gorgeous diamond.

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