How to determine fancy grading?

[toolsmack2]

My girlfriend has a 1.5 Fancy yellow diamond passed down from her grandmother.

How do I determine the grading of the stone, light, medium, etc.

Do I need a professional appraisal for this?

Thanks,

Jared

 

[valeria101]

I would say you do need an appraiser. After some time hunting down such merchandise, I can comfortably say that few jewelers' opinion would be precise enough. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions: you could just go into a jewelry store and get an opinion (or an inexpensive appraisal compared to what a specialized company may charge) and if you get to talk with the right person you'd be in luck. However, unless your stone is a low color grade (say U-V) blatantly below the "fancy" area, or a striking vivid, most jewelers would not have enough experience with these stones to tell borderline grades apart (such as a high "light yellow" from a "fancy yellow" or the latter from a borderline "intense"). Prices are rather sensitive to these labels, unfortunately, and fancy color grades "wider" than the colorless ones, making color grading a rather taxing art.

No way you could do this yourself without some graded stones aside for comparison. However, if that yellow looks more like the peel of a ripen lemon (

) than a slice of it's pulp, go for an appraiser - the cost of it would likely be a small fraction of the gem's worth

PS: Of course, lemons DO NOT qualify as a diamond grading kit, but neither are written words, unfortunately.

 

[mogok]

Yes I agree completly with AnA!
I would also advise you to send the stone if it looks to worth it to a specialized laboratory like EGL that have good skills regarding to colored diamonds, irradiated diamonds, synthetic diamonds and of course irradiated synthetic diamonds.

One point is that color grading is usualy given only if the color origin is natural.

If the stone is really good it could worth it as AnA said...

All the best,

 

[Sagebrush]

The GIA-GTL grading report "certificate" is, at this moment the be all and end all in fancy colored diamond grading. That is, whether sold at auction or wherever, that is the certificate of choice. You can submit the stone for grading through your local retailer.