Collecting Colored Diamonds: The Aurora Collection
In 1979 the diamond market experienced a significant financial and philosophical change. By mid-1980 there was a great rush to promote colorless and near-colorless diamonds as rare objects for investment. Laboratory grading reports fueled this idea of classifying diamonds as a commodity, using grading scales to rate the degree of colorlessness (D-Z) and the degree of purity (FL-I3). Diamond grading scales and related technology had reached a point that still seems difficult to improve upon.
Posted by ColorDia Date: Friday, November 2, 2007
Categories: Color Diamond Investing, Diamond News, Natural Color Diamonds, ~ Rare Diamonds
Tags: alan bronstein, canary yellow diamond, diamond broker, diamond market, fancy color diamonds, fancy colored diamonds, rare objects
Orange Diamond
David Federman
Modern Jeweler
Creation plays by very frustrating rules when it comes to pure red and orange diamonds. Yet with nearly 100 million carats of diamond mined annually, collectors of fancy colors still feel good reason to hope for a handful of stones with these two rarest of shades. So while the search for pure orange diamonds is like looking for a needle in a haystack, it is child’s play next to the grail-quest for pure red diamonds.
Nature is sporting enough to provide encouraging numbers of fancy color diamonds with golden amber and fiery autumn hues, but the orange in these stones usually amounts to a secondary tinge or color highlight. Collectors lucky enough to own the occasional orange stone whose hue truly conjures pumpkin or cantaloupe know they possess one of the world’s rarest diamond treasures. There are just enough of these stones to nourish dreams of owning one. But reality nearly always falls far short of fantasy. “I’ve seen a dozen diamonds that were certified as pure orange,” says fancy color diamond specialist Alan Bronstein, Aurora Gems, New York. “Unfortunately, only three faced up with decent color. The others were too washed out.”
So close and yet so far.
View Full Article: http://www.modernjeweler.com/web/online/Diamond-Gem-Profiles/Orange-Diamond/2$289
Posted by ColorDia Date: Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Categories: Natural Color Diamonds, ~ Orange Diamonds, ~ Rare Diamonds
Tags: alan bronstein, color diamond, fancy color diamonds, fancy colors, orange stone, rarest diamond
Fancy Blue Diamond
David Federman
Modern Jeweler
These may be the worst of times, as far as supply goes, for natural-color (a.k.a. “fancy”) blue diamonds. No one remembers it being quite so difficult to find fancy color diamonds with this much-coveted hue as it is now. And, worse, no one expects things to get better any time soon.
Oh sure, one can find stones with somewhat fanciful, rather than fancy, color that the Gemological Institute of America, this country’s chief pedigreer of diamonds, compassionately classifies as “faint blue” or “very light blue.” One may even locate stones with wishful tints that carry the lab’s next highest rating, “light blue.’
But just try to find true-blue stones that deserve any of GIA’s really meaty grades: “fancy light blue,” “fancy blue” or, on the rarest of occasions, “fancy dark blue.” Here the pickings are the slimmest in decades. And auction prices, easily more than $1,000,000 per carat for a five-carat “fancy blue” stone, reflect this nagging scarcity and hunches that it will linger.
View Full Article: http://www.modernjeweler.com/web/online/Diamond-Gem-Profiles/Fancy-Blue-Diamond/2$278
Posted by ColorDia Date: Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Categories: Natural Color Diamonds, ~ Blue Diamonds, ~ Rare Diamonds
Tags: blue diamond, dark blue, fancy color diamonds, ~ Blue Diamonds
