Question for Mr. Atlas (or anyone) on AGA Grading

[Arlington]

Just a general question regarding the AGA grading scale... in a recent post Richard Sherwood made a rough guesstimate that 80 percent of the stones he sees each day are 3A cuts.

Has there ever been any attempt made to track the percentages of stones appraised by their respective AGA Cut Grade scores?

 

[Richard Sherwood]

I've never tracked it, but if I were to guess from my own personal experience, I would think the figures would fall somewhere in the following ranges:

1A-1B 2-5%
2A-2B 8-15%
3A-3B 70-80%
4A-4B 10-20%

 

[oldminer]

I think those numbers above look pretty right. One must keep in mnd that the vast majority of diamonds seen by an appraiser never were sold via the internet where a well cut stone is king. The percentage figures for Internet sales would be nearly all at 2B and above and most would be cut class 1 stones from my experience.

The Internet buyers of today are the general buyers of the coming decade. Sellers of diamonds will have to shift to better cut stones in the overall or lose out to those who seek and followed this trend.

One must also note that buyers of diamonds based just on "PRICE" rarely visit a gemologist or an appraiser. We appraise / grade thousands of poorly cut diamonds every year just for clarity and color. These outsell wonderfully cut diamonds many times over. The regular consumer of jewelry in the USA is not sophisticated or knowledgeable. They are PRICE driven, look at how much the payment is per month, and rather impulsive, too. These folks generally do not look to learn about the product, but they are hard workers and entitled to spend as they best see fit.

The USA has so many different market niches. The Internet is relatively new and home to a minority of buyers and sellers. While this is a growing element, I have no idea of how much larger the other parts of the total market really are. It is huge or we'd never be grading so many "regular" diamonds...