has anyone heard of diamond "overtone"?

[marchesa6989]

so today i went into a few jewellers to suss out the pricing on similar stones. one jeweller was asking for almost twice the price of another for a similar GIA certified 0.9 G SI1 triple excellent stone. i didn't eyeball the certificate, but it seems ridiculous to be charging almost twice the price. i explained to him i'd seen a stone at another store with the same specs for half the price and he started to tell me about how he'd been a diamond grader for years blahblahblah. he went on to say that even though a stone has the same specs, they can look visually different (ok yes i appreciate that and one should check with ASET etcetc) and that some stones have this thing called overtone - where they are inherently not as good but can still get the same grading. the way i understood was that he was implying that because diamonds are made naturally some are just not made my nature as well? but will still be white and clear of inclusions that the graders will list, but something about it will be off and not as visually impressive.

now what i'm trying to work out is if this is some crock to get me to buy a more expensive stone or whether this is a real thing. can there really be that much difference between two stones with the same specs?

 

[mastercut]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N4goRPTNOM

 

[marchesa6989]

HAHAHAHA that is too good. i thought that might be the case. he also conveniently had pictures demonstrating this "overtone" but had misplaced them. hmmmm....

 

[Lula]

Is he referring to a brown or yellow or grey tone? Because I have read older threads about this. Sometimes it is noted on the grading report that the stone has brown contributing to the color grade ????? I can't remember, exactly, but I remember a thread from a few years ago with a link to a beautiful diamond from GOG, where the GIA grading report noted the brown.

 

[marchesa6989]

well he certainly didn't explain it to me like that, if that is indeed what he was referring to. it seemed more like some mythical internal poor quality that is never reported nor talked about to laypeople. it certainly put a degree of fear into me though (combined with skepticism haha).

 

[Lula]

well he certainly didn't explain it to me like that, if that is indeed what he was referring to. it seemed more like some mythical internal poor quality that is never reported nor talked about to laypeople. it certainly put a degree of fear into me though (combined with skepticism haha).

Well, even if that's what he was referring to, it doesn't justify the large discrepancy in price. He may also have been referring to the presence of fluorescence, which does have an impact on the price. But even the presence of fluorescence would not account for such a large difference in price, unless the lower-priced stone was cloudy due to the fluorescence (rare).

 

[diamondseeker2006]

Did you check the prices here to compare? As long as the stones were GIA graded, you can certainly compare prices. But it is also true that some SI1's will be more desirable than others due to the placement, type, and visibility of the inclusions.

 

[mastercut]

Is he referring to a brown or yellow or grey tone? Because I have read older threads about this. Sometimes it is noted on the grading report that the stone has brown contributing to the color grade ????? I can't remember, exactly, but I remember a thread from a few years ago with a link to a beautiful diamond from GOG, where the GIA grading report noted the brown.

The diamond is white G colour, almost colourless in fact. "Overtone" and "colourless" is actually a contradiction in terms. It is not a fancy coloured diamond and any "overtone" in case of a G colour diamond is a nonsense. Of course in case of a N colour diamond a brown tone can appear...
Since it is GIA certifed G colour there is no reason to think it could be anything much different than the G colour. Of course apart from the jeweller´s will Almost the same thing is the price.

 

[diamondseeker2006]

I'm thinking the jeweler has diamonds confused with pearls. I'm thinking I wouldn't be able to have a lot of confidence in what he says about anything,

 

[mastercut]

I think the jeweller, not the diamond has an overtone

 

[denverappraiser]

Diamond color from D-Z is a measure of saturation. Hue plays no part. Although yellow is the usual hue, there are other choices and it can give the stone a different look. There’s also a phenomena that some diamonds are more transparent than others and, up to a certain point, this doesn’t get considered in the clarity grade. I’ve never head either of these called overtone but I suppose he can use whatever phrase he wants.

That said, these are decidedly unusual issues. More importantly, the jeweler is slamming a stone that he’s never seen based on an attribute that doesn’t appear on the lab report. His only evidence of a problem is that it’s cheaper. It is possible that there is some ‘off report’ attribute about this other stone that makes it inferior but there’s also a possibility that there’s an off report problem with the one that HE’S showing. Price is not a good measure for this. I'm with the above that this claim sounds like grasping at straws to save a sale rather than any real information about either stone.

 

[marchesa6989]

thanks for the additional replies! i have to say i got a good chuckle out of some of them. as we aussies would say...he's a silly bugger!