Articles by this author

The problem started back in 1812 when Friedrich Mos developed the Mohs scale for gemstone hardness. He took a selection of stones and used them to scratch each other. Harder stones would scratch softer ones and he organized them into a ranking from 1 – 10 with diamond being the hardest. Nothing will scratch a diamond except another diamond. This is correct and diamond is in fact quite a bit harder than 2nd place (sapphire) and it has lead to a long standing belief that diamonds are indestructible.

Diamonds should be a blessing to all they touch, from the mine to the consumer, and everyone involved in the chain should be doing their best to insure that this happens. For the most part, they are. Diamonds and the related industries continue to provide a living for hundreds of thousands of people in Africa, India and in nearly every country on earth. Effective management of their diamond resources is the major reason that Botswana is a successful nation and Canada is using diamonds to bring prosperity to the native population in their depressed far north. Australia, Russia, Namibia, Belgium, Israel and Armenia are just a few more of the places touched by - and benefited by - the diamond trade. They are indeed a blessing.

Let's start at the beginning. The Rappaport Diamond Report is a trade magazine for jewelers and others in the diamond business. It's a pretty good magazine. It's available by subscription only and interested subscribers can inquire at www.diamonds.net. One of the regular features is a diamond pricing grid that is used by many in the trade as a benchmark for pricing their goods. It's updated weekly and distributed to subscribers by mail or fax. This grid is known as Rappaport, Rapaport, Rap or List and it's quoted regularly as part of sales presentations.

Most jewelers and diamond dealers have for decades shared in a system called memorandum or memo. If a customer goes into a store looking for a particular item that the store doesn’t have in stock at the moment, they will ring up one their suppliers and borrow a few stones for long enough to make a sales presentation. This is based on the good credit of the jeweler with their supplier. If the customer chooses one of the stones, they both make a sale and if the customer opts out, then the stones are returned where they wait for the next possible buyer. It works pretty well and both the dealers and the wholesalers benefit by it.

Diamonds are a difficult item to buy in the best of circumstances. For most shoppers it’s one of the most expensive purchases of their lives and it’s aggravatingly necessary to rely on the advice of salespeople who may not have your best interest at heart when they tell you that something is a fabulous deal. The Internet merchants come with their own risks of providing a credit card, waiting for delivery and the ever present possibility that you will need to make a return and collect a refund. Here are some tips on buying diamonds safely, both online and on the street.