How come only some certs have a CUT grade?

[motifone]

I''m a little confused:

How come only some types of certs give a grade for Cut.

For example, I was at Zales and I looked at a diamond with a Certificate (not GIA) that graded the cut as EXCELLENT. Then, I saw a friend''s GIA certificate for her diamond (purchased elswhere) that has no cut grade whatsoever.

thanks for any input!

 

[oldminer]

Not every lab grades cut.

Not every diamond has a cut grade good enough that a seller would want to tell you the cut grade.

Diamonds with the finest cut grades tend to have reports that have a cut grade attached.

Diamonds with less than the best cut often go to labs that don''t offer a cut grade.

Sometimes a super fine cut will have no cut grade because the seller did not think about obtaining a cut grade or doesn''t believe in giving cut grades with diamonds. That''s teir choice as they are the one paying for the report. There is a lot of resistance to quantifying how well a diamond is cut.

 

[denverappraiser]

Cut grading is a confusing area in the diamond business. The problem is that not everyone agrees on what is best and what are the acceptable variations on that standard in order to earn the various grades. Some dealers and labs will use terms like ‘excellent’ and ‘ideal’ very broadly and others have rather narrow parameters. To make it even more difficult, these terms are not always used to describe the same things.

GIA does not yet issue a cut grade but they have announced their intention to do so in the near future. I’ve never found the Zales lab parameters for their Excellent grade or even what the other choices are so it is quite difficult to compare their terms to the other various systems. It’s fairly common for dealers to use a report from a Sarin machine to accompany a GIA report as a way of supplying additional cut grading information. If your dealer doesn’t have one of these machines, it’s likely that they have access to one through one of their suppliers or a local appraiser and can get a report for a reasonable price. As Dave points out, they or their supplier may have already done this and decided not to forward the information because they didn’t like the results.

By the way, if anyone has the Zales scale, I'm sure the people here would love to look at it

Neil Beaty, GG ISA
Independent Appraisals in Denver