Logic behind accepting EGL grading for vintage stones?

[yssie]

Creating a cut standard is really hard. Modern RBs are the only shape with cut grading by GIA. AGS grades princesses and cushions in addition to rounds.

This. Also cut is king on PS. And the fact that AGS now has cut parameters means that this train of thought is gaining momentum and speed and influence in the industry as a whole. But it's still not industry standard, that's why GIA doesn't really need to do it as strictly as AGS. GIA DOES grade cut on RB's though, it's just that the GIA excellent is looser than the AGS0.

Snoopkat, you are assuming that what we preach on PS is what is preached worldwide in the industry. It's not. Why do you think that we recommend the same vendors over and over? Because they are PS inducted and understand our perspective and priorities. But that perspective and priority is still a minority one. It costs A LOT more money to cut an ideal cut stone than a crappy cut stone. And if your consumers don't know the difference, then why bother to produce ideal cut stones? As the consumer market place gets more educated (and PS is a tool that promotes this admirably) then supply dictates demand and more vendors take notice.

Go into Macys sometimes and ask them to talk to you about diamond cut. They will show you the different shapes diamonds come in. That's what they consider cut. And unfortunately, that's not unusual.

That.
Ditto.
And BTDT at Macy's with exactly those results.

 

[ericad]

I'm not sure what the "both ways" is you refer to? Tryign to trick the consumer AND inform them? I see no downside to dual certing for the consumer.

And the previous poster is correct that EGL is not more consistent than GIA with old cuts, nto for color and clarity at least; they are more consistent in description of the cut style.

Perhaps that could've been worded better (in my defense, it was late and I had 2 large glasses of wine ). What I was trying to say with dual certification is that a vendor might get both GIA and EGL reports for the same stone and then decide to only produce the 'better' certificate to the consumer. But if both certificates are produced for the consumer to make a like with like comparison as Erica said, then that's ok.

Out of curiousity, has any vendor ever had GIA come back with an evaluation that is better than EGL? i.e. EGL might have graded a stone L/M and GIA graded it I/J?

One of 3 things I've read on PS over and over again is that cut is king. Why doesn't GIA grade cut if it's one of the top determining factors in diamond purchase?

This happened to us once recently. EGL came back with a lower color grade than GIA. We also recently had EGL come back with a lower clarity grade than GIA (different stone). I'll pull the reports to show you - need to ask Grace which stone that was - can't remember cuz I like wine on Friday evenings too

 

[ericad]

I tend to agree with the critics against EGL (in general), the costs & time should not be an excuse for not sending the OldCut Diamonds to first tier Labs such as GIA and/or AGSL etc...

This may be the case for large dealers, but we're small. Tiny by comparison to most. Truly, we can't afford to sit on a single stone for 1-2 weeks for EGL, then another 4 weeks for GIA, before even listing it to the site. Someday I hope that we can, but at this stage in our growing small business, it's a reality for us that we're trying to overcome.

I fully understand, it's time to think forward...
With so much buzz lately behind "Fair trade Diamonds", the more I think about it the more I believe EGL will disappear unless they start aligning themselves with the "Standard" developed by GIA.

In the mean time I will remind professionals on the new trend (as Martin Rapaport points out) evolving in our industry..., we are each "individually" responsible for what we market and it should be made clear on each invoice!
Marketing EGL graded Diamonds might become a reputational risk.

I can assure you that, as the tide turns towards GIA (specific to antique stones), we will be among the first adopters. But until that happens, using GIA puts us at a disadvantage in the marketplace. Dual certing stones in the interim is a good middle ground if we can overcome some obstacles (I'm sure we can). The industry views on GIA versus EGL as they apply to modern goods is a very different ball of wax from the much smaller niche of antique diamonds and jewelry.

I keep reading EGL is the industry standard Lab for Antique Cuts..., well that claim/fact is not entirely true across the board!
Maybe you (and others) can agree with this standard for yellowish (lower colored) Old Cuts in the "US" market but defenitely not for OldCuts in general!
On the yellowish OldCuts I can (maybe) see some sense as consistency accross all Labs is lacking, but this doesn't give EGL more credibility.

You can't be the first adopters as its being implemented already for years (I have not handled an EGL graded diamond for years). Today, with issues like consumer confidence, fair trade etc.. on top of the industry agenda's, finding a creative path to market fair graded Diamonds is part of the equation. I believe small niche businesses in our industry need to use these limitations and upgrade their business models to focus on added value features. Marketing OldCuts with an AGSL (as example) grading document can be translated to extra value. Sometimes differentiating yourself from an errored standard is a good start.

I realy can't see how current businesses will survive unless they change with the winds of change. Beware, strong winds are just above the horizon.

For my small business, the only market that's relevant to us is the US market. And even beyond that, the US antique market that SELL ONLINE. And within this relatively small market, we're most competitive with just a handful of other sellers, among which EGL is most broadly used. These are the facts of our business.

We used GIA exclusively for over a year. Stones sat in inventory for ages. In fact, we STILL have GIA-only stones that have been in the store since those GIA-only times gone by, lol. They don't sell for us. Our business has boomed since we moved to EGL and no buyer has ever objected to an EGL report. GIA reports, in a pool of mostly EGL, simply confuse consumers. We've seen it time and time again.

As another poster stated above, we're small. It's just Grace and I (and two wonderful part time employees who help us, which we only added this year.) Much as I'd love to be a trailblazer, I'll have to do so by educating buyers about the labs as best I can, but we can't risk losing business while we wait for the other much larger vendors we compete with to make similar changes.

Again, I see dual certification as truly the best solution. We could solve the turnaround time issue with GIA by paying double for same day service. This is the option we're looking at implementing.

 

[Haven]

Erica--I understand what you're saying and I respect that.

I do wonder if your GIA-only stones sit in inventory longer because they appear to be more expensive compared to what uneducated consumers would believe to be "comparable" EGL stones. For example, a GIA stone that is graded as a J/VS2 is going to cost more than a stone of the same weight that is graded as a J/VS2 by EGL. The uneducated consumer will see the two stones and believe he's getting a better deal with the stone graded by EGL, because the uneducated consumer won't understand that the grading is not based on universal standards.

 

[ericad]

Erica--I understand what you're saying and I respect that.

I do wonder if your GIA-only stones sit in inventory longer because they appear to be more expensive compared to what uneducated consumers would believe to be "comparable" EGL stones. For example, a GIA stone that is graded as a J/VS2 is going to cost more than a stone of the same weight that is graded as a J/VS2 by EGL. The uneducated consumer will see the two stones and believe he's getting a better deal with the stone graded by EGL, because the uneducated consumer won't understand that the grading is not based on universal standards.

This is precisely what's happening, Haven. They're comping our GIA K (for example) to another vendors' EGL K's and ours looks really expensive. And when we say, "A GIA K is equivalent to an EGL I" (or alternately, "An EGL K is equivalent to a GIA M/N") those who don't already know about the differences between labs run for the hills. Even educated consumers can't be sure of how to comp a GIA stone to EGL stones for pricing, since there's no consistent rule of thumb for adjusting GIA grading to EGL-equivalent.

Even for us, it's tough to zero in on the right price, since part of our pricing model is to comp to other vendors. We know how they utilize Rap pricing with their EGL graded stones, but then it gets tricky to accurately price GIA goods.

I know it may sound overly simple, but the issue really boils down to consumers being able to make apples to apples comparisons with our competitors in order to evaluate our pricing against other stones they're considering. We have to make money, and this is how we make sales - by keeping it simple for our buyers so that they can quickly realize that we're the best choice out there (ha, ha, don't flag me, I'm just being cheeky!)

For every PSer that says they would never buy an old cut with an EGL report, there are 10 consumers who don't know how to buy an old cut without one.

 

[denverappraiser]

One of 3 things I've read on PS over and over again is that cut is king. Why doesn't GIA grade cut if it's one of the top determining factors in diamond purchase?

It took GIA 70 years to decide on a cut grade for modern round brilliants. OEC's are harder. Old Miners harder still. Why? Because there's way more variables that people count as desirable and there's far less agreement about what combinations are 'best'. Even with RBC's there's significant disagreement and that's why the range of 'excellent' is so big. 4 out of 5 people surveyed like stone A better than stone B was basically their underlying strategy for RBC scale but that doesn't make that 5th person wrong. It just makes them unpopular. T'aint the same thing. I get why they did this, but what if it's 3 out of 5, or 2 out of 5? How do you assign a more-or-less unbiased grade?