Jewelers misrepresenting FCDs: how common is it?

[cygnet]

I went into a mall jewelry store earlier this week and I was looking around and I noticed they had a section for yellow diamonds. I thought that was kind of interesting because this was a pretty low-end jewelry store and yellow diamonds typically seem to be way more expensive.

So I asked to see a ring that had a "yellow" diamond center stone (that looked suspiciously not yellow) and I noticed that it was just barely off white but it was sitting in a yellow gold cup. I asked what color the center stone was and the woman working there said "um, yellow" so I asked where on the yellow color scale it was and she finally told me it was an "I" colored diamond. I told her that to my understanding, an "I" grade is near colorless and she responded with "yeah but the thing is, anything after J is a fancy colored diamond, you know, so this is basically a yellow diamond."

?????
!


I looked at their other "yellow diamond" rings and they all appeared to be about the same color, just appearing slightly yellow due to being in YG cups.

Does this happen more frequently than I think it does? Or is this jeweler just super shady?!

 

[derbygal]

That is really bad. I typically avoid those kind of stores, but it would be interesting to see if others are doing that.

 

[kenny]

Sounds like a poorly-informed employee, or management trying to get away with lying.
I anticipate more and more FCD misinformation and misrepresentation as awareness of them increases, especially when it comes to origin of material and color being nature or a lab.

Fully natural is very expensive and means the material came from the earth (not a lab) AND the color you see came from the earth (not a lab).
I see more and more marketing from companies who sell lab-grown diamonds and mined diamonds that got treated for color that tries hard to blur the line between fully natural and not fully natural diamonds.
As a collector of fully natural FCD with GIA reports this concerns me.
I'd hate to see what I've bought plummet in value as the public slides into ignorance and gets convinced that man made diamonds and color-treated mined diamonds are the same as natural.
This must be already happening as I just took a beating today on the Color Stones forum for simply stating truths about the subject.

One slimy trick sellers of mined diamonds treated for color use is only saying that their diamonds are 'natural' blue diamonds.
This is only half true since only one of two things are natural.
If the blue color was also from nature the price would be higher, perhaps 100 times higher.

A lab report is necessary to determine both material and color are of natural origin- preferably the lab GIA.

Putting a diamond over a yellow cup is a great way to amp up the color of a poorly-cut diamond that leaks/windows.
But hey, people want what appears to be top quality at a very low price so someone will give it to them.

We all would love to have more than we can afford.
I certainly do.
Sellers know this so they find ways to give us what SEEMS like more than what we can afford... like mounting 4 small princess cut diamonds close so it looks, sort of, like one big one.
This makes some people happy.

 

[cygnet]

Nice post, kenny. And yep, princess clusters do make some people happy, it's true. More power to them if that's what they like.

Sounds like a poorly-informed employee, or management trying to get away with lying.

Usually I assume it's the former, as many of the employees I've met in the mall jewelry stores have not been terribly well educated about jewelry... but the rings were in a section labeled "Natural Yellow Diamonds."

 

[kenny]

Usually I assume it's the former, as many of the employees I've met in the mall jewelry stores have not been terribly well educated about jewelry... but the rings were in a section labeled "Natural Yellow Diamonds."

Well if you want to split hairs they are ... natural yellow diamonds.
They are natural and look yellow.

They are just not natural Fancy yellow diamonds.
GIA makes a distinction between white, D-Z, diamonds and Fancy Colored Diamonds.
Each diamond they grade is placed into one of those two categories, but not both.

But once again calling them 'natural yellow diamonds' is clearly exploiting the extremely low level of public education on FCDs ... and is probably an excuse for charging more than a "white" diamonds that's low in color.

 

[cygnet]

Usually I assume it's the former, as many of the employees I've met in the mall jewelry stores have not been terribly well educated about jewelry... but the rings were in a section labeled "Natural Yellow Diamonds."

Well if you want to split hairs they are ... natural yellow diamonds.
They are natural and look yellow.

Wow... you're right! That's low.

 

[kenny]

Another possibility is they are mined diamonds that have been treated to make their color more of a pretty yellow.

I'd go back and ask to see the GIA reports.
What? No GIA reports? ... Run away screaming!

 

[diamondseeker2006]

They probably were pretty close to being honest, actually! If the stones were uncertified or EGL International or other unreliable lab grade I color, they could have been M color which is definitely very light yellow to me! So as long as they are priced appropriately for what they are, and the person can see that there is a yellow cup enhancing the color (which is done all the time even with FLY stones), I don't see this as particularly deceitful in the overall scheme of things. I think it is much worse to sell treated stones and not reveal the treatment.