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- Aug 29, 2003
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what would be the key characteristic that I could look for to see the value in this stone?
Gray is a tone without a hue ... So there are degrees of light & dark, but no 'saturation' with a caveat: gray diamonds may have colour overtones (greenish gray, bluish gray ...). It can be said that these coloured grays are relatively dark tone, low saturation colours.
GIA grades play with these concepts to draw some important lines: some gray diamonds quallify for formal 'Fancy Gray' - others do not [I never knew what the formal criterium is - rather embarrasing ... ]. Depending on saturation (say, of green), some get to be 'Greenish Gray', some 'Green Gray', some 'Gray Green', some 'Grayish Green' ... There often are multiple cpensive for colour modifyers & GIA has its own conventions for naming ... which simply are too hairy for me to look into for joy.
As far as I know, the key characteristic for pricing grays is clarity. Then, the above-mentioned overtones ... you've seen what 'blue' does to && these days, violet is worse, green - overlooked... Warm overtones (yellow) - are somewhat discunted, so you may find surprisingly beautiful gray diamonds with yellow & green overtones, that seem low-balled [no complaint !].
IF is unheard of (I recall seeing a few reports over the years & a heartbreaking Fancy Deep Gray IF I should have bought - one of only two such regrets: a transparent black object looks impossible !). The usual clarity charactristic are clouds - rendering gray diamonds translucent, rather than transparent slowly, step by clarity grade step:
VS is still transparent for most iintents & purposes - compared to a clear stone you'd see something, else ... perhaps not. Many Fancy Light Gray here than darker ...
SI begins to look foggy - still, ligghter grays are cleaner. SI2 clarity dues to clouds alone is obviously translucent not transparent & this gets worse down from here ...
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The diamond you have seems to be Gray or darker, not Light Gray. If there is a colour overtone, I do not see it. Clarity I would expect to be an 'I', not necessarity I1. Not many such things ever get a GIA report, so... I am curious what it might say.
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Footnotes
# There is more to say about Gray - e.g. very light ones woudl be there in the Near-Colourless & Light range (HIJKLMN... with a gray component, then, at some point, they'd be called 'Fancy Gray'). Because GIA reports for such things are rare, I do not know what the grades look like !
# There clearly (pun!) are more than one type of gray diamond: different kinds of clarity characteristics realizing the gray tone & potential colour tint. This, I would love to dig into one day ... till then, it seems obvious that the common foggy grays get their darkness from the 'fog' (GIA reports would call the clarity charactristic : 'clouds') - hence the lighter gray diamonds also tend to have better clarity. BUT, the dark, flawless grays - rare and obviously recognized for their paradoxical beauty $$$, look so different, they must be essentially different, methinks - would love to know ...
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