We purchase natural diamonds of any cut, color, clarity and carat weight. Diamonds can be loose or mounted stones. We have graduate gemologists and accredited jewelry professionals on staff who will grade and identify your stone. We are equipped with the proper tools necessary for testing a diamond's authenticity, measurements and characteristics. The four characteristics of diamonds we examine are the cut, color, clarity and carat weight.
When you hear the term “cut” when referring to a diamond, most people are thinking of the shape. However, cut actually refers to the symmetry and polish of a diamond. These factors have to do with how the facets interact with light to give it that sparkle! There are five cut grades: Excellent (EX), Very Good (VG), Good (G), Fair (F) and Poor (P).
The color scale goes from D-Z. D meaning completely colorless which is the rarest and most valuable while Z is typically not something that would be used in jewelry. Deciphering color is a trained skill that cannot be determined by the untrained eye.
Clarity measures the transparency of the stone. Things that factor into this are inclusions and imperfections. There are 6 categories for grading clarity; Flawless (FL), Internally Flawless (IF), Very Very Slightly Included (VVS1 & VVS2), Very Slightly Included (VS1 & VS2), Slightly Included (SI1 & SI2) and Included (I1, I2 & I3).
Carat is a unit of weight, rather than size. 1 carat weighs roughly the same as a single paperclip. More carats doesn’t mean a better diamond, simply because you have to take into account the other four characteristics.
One of our estate specialists, Brandon, had a customer at MJ Christensen Diamonds with a 7 carat round brilliant cut diamond. The diamond was set in a brooch that had belonged to her aunt. When her aunt passed away, our customer inherited this brooch and assumed the diamond was fake. Brandon noticed the brooch hidden in a bag of costume jewelry. After evaluating the gemstone, Brandon was able to properly grade the diamond and offer the customer an amount of money that almost made her fall over!
