- Joined
- May 3, 2001
- Messages
- 7,516
I just spent some wonderful time at the EightStar dealer’s conference. It was Fantastic.
We heard in great detail from Peter Yantzer as to what was done in the development of the AGS Princess grades, even though it did not directly involve EightStar dealers, and about their future projects. Their next project is the square emerald cut and they are much further into it than you might imagine. We saw many of the charts that they have done already, and it is now going to be possible to get a great square emerald cut, just as it is now possible to get a great princess.
I believe that in a few short years the dearth of great looking stones will be over and the vast ocean of lifeless looking fancy cuts will be entering the cutting factories for “extreme” make overs.
I do not remember if Peter gave us the order in which it will happen or not, but Ovals, Marquises, radiants are not far off. I believe the comment may have been something along the lines of, “If they will just quit sending me around the world I can do several more of them done next year.”
Peter was just in India and missed the deadly monsoon rains by just a few days. He says that many of the Indian cutters were starting to cut the AGS 1’s and 0 princess cut stones, so it will not be too much longer before they become more available. He says that they are all just waiting for the next stone on the list so that they can jump on it and become vendors for the new AGS 0 cuts. I think this is a VERY good thing for consumers. Not only will you be given the data about the new cuts, but the new cuts will be on the market in unprecedented quickness.
Gary Roskin was also there and gave us a great look into what is going on in the market (he now works for JC-K a jewelry trade magazine) He also talked about his new book, Photo Masters for Diamond Grading 2. It will have more and even better pictures than his first Photo Masters book. He says that the new lenses in some of the Microscopes make it easier to see inclusions that we simply could not detect with earlier lenses. He also said that diamond grading is a living breathing art and that some stones are in different categories than they were ten years ago. Gary spent a lot of time taking pictures and talking with various attendees, who knows what might show up in JC-K one of these coming issues.
Marte Haske (Adamasgem) was there too, and he went into excruciating detail on things mathematical and reflective. I hope my head will quit hurting soon. Marte does NOT like the term leakage and states correctly that ALL diamonds leak light and provided some great graphs to show leakage as determined with “only 40,000 rays”. More charts and graphs were given to show the light leakage in a dirty stone, an amazing difference was seen between clean and dirty stones, so be sure to clean your diamonds tonight. He insists that the white light seen in a firescope or ASET not be called leakage but rather a point at which light is not capable of being reflected in the diamond when seen from that angle. Peter Yantzer calls these areas leakage, and then defines leakage as areas where no reflected light is seen from that angle. Since the public, those who understand this at all, largely think of those areas as leakage, I like Peter’s usage better than Marte''s.
There were a couple of other great speakers there too, one on the intricacies of proper lighting to display diamonds and colored stones who spoke with fabulous authority on color temperature and what light temperatures worked best for diamonds, sapphires, and rubies. He also spoke about NOT lighting up your store with klieg lights that made any old diamond look great until it was taken out of the store. Light realistically so that your diamond looks great at the store, but also like it will look at home so that you do not destroy credibility with your clientele. I know a LOT of jewelers who should have listened to him before spending tens of thousands on their lighting.
All in all it was a very worthwhile conference and I am fortunate to have been able to attend.
Wink
P.S. It amazes me now that I reflect upon it, just how much of the conference had nothing to do with EightStar and everything to do with diamonds as a whole and especially the information from Peter Yantzer, Gary Roskin and Phil, the lighting guy. Even Marte''s work was largely about reality in the diamond world and the math and other mind splitting facts rather than concentrating only on EightStar. It was a great experience and prepared me to be ready to discuss many things with the fine people here on Pricescope.
We heard in great detail from Peter Yantzer as to what was done in the development of the AGS Princess grades, even though it did not directly involve EightStar dealers, and about their future projects. Their next project is the square emerald cut and they are much further into it than you might imagine. We saw many of the charts that they have done already, and it is now going to be possible to get a great square emerald cut, just as it is now possible to get a great princess.
I believe that in a few short years the dearth of great looking stones will be over and the vast ocean of lifeless looking fancy cuts will be entering the cutting factories for “extreme” make overs.
I do not remember if Peter gave us the order in which it will happen or not, but Ovals, Marquises, radiants are not far off. I believe the comment may have been something along the lines of, “If they will just quit sending me around the world I can do several more of them done next year.”
Peter was just in India and missed the deadly monsoon rains by just a few days. He says that many of the Indian cutters were starting to cut the AGS 1’s and 0 princess cut stones, so it will not be too much longer before they become more available. He says that they are all just waiting for the next stone on the list so that they can jump on it and become vendors for the new AGS 0 cuts. I think this is a VERY good thing for consumers. Not only will you be given the data about the new cuts, but the new cuts will be on the market in unprecedented quickness.
Gary Roskin was also there and gave us a great look into what is going on in the market (he now works for JC-K a jewelry trade magazine) He also talked about his new book, Photo Masters for Diamond Grading 2. It will have more and even better pictures than his first Photo Masters book. He says that the new lenses in some of the Microscopes make it easier to see inclusions that we simply could not detect with earlier lenses. He also said that diamond grading is a living breathing art and that some stones are in different categories than they were ten years ago. Gary spent a lot of time taking pictures and talking with various attendees, who knows what might show up in JC-K one of these coming issues.
Marte Haske (Adamasgem) was there too, and he went into excruciating detail on things mathematical and reflective. I hope my head will quit hurting soon. Marte does NOT like the term leakage and states correctly that ALL diamonds leak light and provided some great graphs to show leakage as determined with “only 40,000 rays”. More charts and graphs were given to show the light leakage in a dirty stone, an amazing difference was seen between clean and dirty stones, so be sure to clean your diamonds tonight. He insists that the white light seen in a firescope or ASET not be called leakage but rather a point at which light is not capable of being reflected in the diamond when seen from that angle. Peter Yantzer calls these areas leakage, and then defines leakage as areas where no reflected light is seen from that angle. Since the public, those who understand this at all, largely think of those areas as leakage, I like Peter’s usage better than Marte''s.
There were a couple of other great speakers there too, one on the intricacies of proper lighting to display diamonds and colored stones who spoke with fabulous authority on color temperature and what light temperatures worked best for diamonds, sapphires, and rubies. He also spoke about NOT lighting up your store with klieg lights that made any old diamond look great until it was taken out of the store. Light realistically so that your diamond looks great at the store, but also like it will look at home so that you do not destroy credibility with your clientele. I know a LOT of jewelers who should have listened to him before spending tens of thousands on their lighting.
All in all it was a very worthwhile conference and I am fortunate to have been able to attend.
Wink
P.S. It amazes me now that I reflect upon it, just how much of the conference had nothing to do with EightStar and everything to do with diamonds as a whole and especially the information from Peter Yantzer, Gary Roskin and Phil, the lighting guy. Even Marte''s work was largely about reality in the diamond world and the math and other mind splitting facts rather than concentrating only on EightStar. It was a great experience and prepared me to be ready to discuss many things with the fine people here on Pricescope.
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