GIA lab certificate premium

[kenny]

I shall be “tough” and hold out until I get the little thing in my hands tomorrow. It is going to be a challenge to mentally receive a microscopic speck after being used to purchasing 10 mm sized coloured gemstones, not to mention this miniscule speck cost more than most of my other gemstones. Perhaps I am being too negative or naive about this entire thing when I see similar ungraded stones being sold at a fraction of the price, in addition to having friends tell me I am overpaying for my stone by at least one zero, even with a GIA report.

If they are ungraded you don't know whether they really are similar.
That's the problem, and the reason I stick with graded FCDs.
You DO know what they really are.
There was a business reason those others were not graded, so don't think of it as apples to apples when comparing them to yours.

Yes size is a big thing.
If you can't let go of the size thing FCDs are not for you, unless you are fantastically rich.

When it comes to others we all know that few people know very much about white diamonds.
Far fewer know anything about FCDs.
I've heard that many jewelers have never even seen one.

For me my FCDs are a private pleasure, though perhaps you will feel comfortable sharing them with your friends.
I have only shared them with my SO - and the PS community.

 

[kenny]

This question probably sounds like a total noob but I’ve been told not to purchase around Christmas time as prices increase around this time? I’ve never heard that prices for FCDs are better at other times of the year. Can anyone dispute this?

I returned an FCD to Leibish www.fancydiamonds.net and it is listed now at the exact same price it was months ago.

 

[chrono]

Kenny,
The friends I am referring to are also part of the PS community and have made several FCD purchases themselves. You are slowly squirreling all the juicy tidbits from me one at a time about my new FCD. Does anyone know (in general), the premium of an Argyle mine pink over a non-Argyle mine pink?

 

[kenny]

Kenny,
The friends I am referring to are also part of the PS community and have made several FCD purchases themselves. You are slowly squirreling all the juicy tidbits from me one at a time about my new FCD. Does anyone know (in general), the premium of an Argyle mine pink over a non-Argyle mine pink?

Aha, another clue.
So it is a pink!?!
Perhaps I'll see which pinks are listed as recently sold.

Again I think this may be another question that can only be answered by FCD vendors whom, for proprietary reasons, would not answer it here in public.

One one hand Argyle pinks do have an elite image, especially if there is the Aryle logo and Argyle number inscribed on the girdle.
On the other hand the vast majority of today's pinks are mined in Argyle, so wouldn't that make pinks from elsewhere more rare and therefore more expensive?
Who knows?

 

[acebruin]

i had to chime in... the only "value" a consumer might have is for borderline graded stones... example a cutter sells a Y-Z stone to a dealer at a Y-Z stone... the cutter thinks it might get a FLY grade, but the dealer convinced him otherwise... so the dealer bought it at a Y-Z grade... dealer then lists the stone at a Y-Z grade while he sends the stone to GIA... when a consumer buys the diamond before the GIA is done, that consumer might get a value if the stone comes back as FLY... but the moment the grade comes from GIA, dealer will increase price to FLY instead of Y-Z... that's the only kind of premium that i can think of that comes with a GIA paper...

of course when we're talking about tens of thousands of $ worth of stones, a consumer will NOT buy that kind of expensive stone without a GIA paper as mentioned before...

 

[Rockdiamond]

The GIA report sets the value. Period.
As ace mentioned, there are borderline stones.
For example- take two hypothetical two stones graded Fancy Yellow , same size clarity and cut.
One is borderline Fancy Light Yellow, the other borderline Intense Yellow.
We can see a fairly large price difference.
But if the one which is close to Intense ( it might even be darker than a stone graded Fancy Intense- I've seen this happen) is priced like an Intense, it's not going to sell.
The stone at the other end of the grade is going to be more expensive than a super dark Fancy Light Light Yellow.

When we get into uber costly grades, the dollars can be huge.
For example, I love stones graded "Very Light Pink"- sometimes they can look as pink as "Fancy Light Pink"- but the cutter will never get anywhere near the price for the stone graded Fancy Light Pink.
Pink is a very good example, as the prices are stratospheric, and the color itself is not "dark".
That is to say, a stone graded fancy Light Yellow may have much more perceptible color as compared to a Fancy Light Pink.

Anyway, the bottom line is that without a GIA report, the stone is worth a lot less.
And this is an area where ONLY GIA counts- as opposed to colorless round diamonds where AGSL carries as much weight as GIA

 

[chrono]

When it comes to FCDs, it seems like it is a completely different ball of wax than colourless diamonds when it comes to grading and labs. I guess I’ll never know how much less a FCD without a GIA report is worth but it is universally acknowledged that it will be less.

 

[Rockdiamond]

Hi Chrono,
I'd love to be as helpful here as possible.
To get more specific:
Let's use a 1.00 Y-Z as the first example.
It's a very low priced stone- even with the lab report.
for the purposes of discussion, say a 1.00 Y-Z Radiant is about $3000 with the lab report.
Let's say the stone does not have the GIA- now it's worth about $2200-$2500.
So in this case, it's worth about 20-25% less without the report.
Let's move on up to Fancy Light Yellow.
With the GIA report, a hypothetical stone will be about $3500.
Remove the GIA report, and I'm not paying more than the Y-Z stone, sans report.
Who knows, GIA might give it Y-Z, Fancy Light- or even Fancy Yellow.
But without the report, it's a crapshoot.


If we're talking about a pink stone, it's really an entirely different ballgame.
For one thing, no cutter worth his salt is going to sell a pink looking diamond without the report.
Faint Pink, Very light Pink, Light Pink even fancy light pink - can look very similar - yet the price differences are startling.
SO- if we see a pink(ish) stone without the report, we have to seriously wonder why there's no report

 

[acebruin]

yep, let me just say no sane honest dealers out there will sell a substantial fancy colored diamond without a report! if they do, it should send you red flags and run away from them... not walk away, RUN AWAY!!!! you'll hardly see any substantial fancy colored diamond without a report... unless the stone is small enough or cheap enough not to warrant a report... i know i wouldn't spend my thousands and thousands of dollars on fancy colored diamonds without a report, unless the dealer has a money back GUARANTEE about the grade... then and only then i would tell them to send to gia and buy... money back if the result doesn't match his grade...

 

[ChunkyCushionLover]

yep, let me just say no sane honest dealers out there will sell a substantial fancy colored diamond without a report! if they do, it should send you red flags and run away from them... not walk away, RUN AWAY!!!! you'll hardly see any substantial fancy colored diamond without a report... unless the stone is small enough or cheap enough not to warrant a report... i know i wouldn't spend my thousands and thousands of dollars on fancy colored diamonds without a report, unless the dealer has a money back GUARANTEE about the grade... then and only then i would tell them to send to gia and buy... money back if the result doesn't match his grade...

Hi Chrono,
I'd love to be as helpful here as possible.
To get more specific:
Let's use a 1.00 Y-Z as the first example.
It's a very low priced stone- even with the lab report.
for the purposes of discussion, say a 1.00 Y-Z Radiant is about $3000 with the lab report.
Let's say the stone does not have the GIA- now it's worth about $2200-$2500.
So in this case, it's worth about 20-25% less without the report.
Let's move on up to Fancy Light Yellow.
With the GIA report, a hypothetical stone will be about $3500.
Remove the GIA report, and I'm not paying more than the Y-Z stone, sans report.
Who knows, GIA might give it Y-Z, Fancy Light- or even Fancy Yellow.
But without the report, it's a crapshoot.


If we're talking about a pink stone, it's really an entirely different ballgame.
For one thing, no cutter worth his salt is going to sell a pink looking diamond without the report.
Faint Pink, Very light Pink, Light Pink even fancy light pink - can look very similar - yet the price differences are startling.
SO- if we see a pink(ish) stone without the report, we have to seriously wonder why there's no report

Hmm wonder why these Purple Princess Cuts $5k+ are listed without a GIA report
I bet the clarity has something to do with it.

 

[oldminer]

The GIA report does not Create Value, but it does allow the Free Market to function by allowing both buyers and sellers to have confidence on both sides of a transaction. Without a highly credible lab, such as GIA, the market would rapidly create or sponsor another source of reliable advice, but GIA is on the top of the mountain and has been for a long time. When dealing with exotic color diamonds one finds strong demand for properly identified stones and a far, far weaker and highly speculative market for undocumented stone. As has already been said, any dealer with a great stone would not hesitate to spend the money to have a GIA document created in order to make a sale at the proper value. The free market creates value. The GIA document greases the wheels of commerce very effectively.

 

[kenny]

This thread really flies in the face of that oft-repeated PS mantra, "Buy the stone, not the paper".
To which I reply, "Uhm, go ahead and buy the stone but how do you know what should you pay without that paper?"

It also flyies in the face of that other oft-repeated PS mantra, "All that matters is if you love it."
Then there's my favorite, "Trust your eyes".

Sure, the paper doesn't change the stone.
It just reliably describes it so a price can be established.

 

[Rockdiamond]

yep, let me just say no sane honest dealers out there will sell a substantial fancy colored diamond without a report! if they do, it should send you red flags and run away from them... not walk away, RUN AWAY!!!! you'll hardly see any substantial fancy colored diamond without a report... unless the stone is small enough or cheap enough not to warrant a report... i know i wouldn't spend my thousands and thousands of dollars on fancy colored diamonds without a report, unless the dealer has a money back GUARANTEE about the grade... then and only then i would tell them to send to gia and buy... money back if the result doesn't match his grade...

Hi Chrono,
I'd love to be as helpful here as possible.
To get more specific:
Let's use a 1.00 Y-Z as the first example.
It's a very low priced stone- even with the lab report.
for the purposes of discussion, say a 1.00 Y-Z Radiant is about $3000 with the lab report.
Let's say the stone does not have the GIA- now it's worth about $2200-$2500.
So in this case, it's worth about 20-25% less without the report.
Let's move on up to Fancy Light Yellow.
With the GIA report, a hypothetical stone will be about $3500.
Remove the GIA report, and I'm not paying more than the Y-Z stone, sans report.
Who knows, GIA might give it Y-Z, Fancy Light- or even Fancy Yellow.
But without the report, it's a crapshoot.


If we're talking about a pink stone, it's really an entirely different ballgame.
For one thing, no cutter worth his salt is going to sell a pink looking diamond without the report.
Faint Pink, Very light Pink, Light Pink even fancy light pink - can look very similar - yet the price differences are startling.
SO- if we see a pink(ish) stone without the report, we have to seriously wonder why there's no report

Hmm wonder why these Purple Princess Cuts $5k+ are listed without a GIA report
I bet the clarity has something to do with it.

HI CCL

I identified one stone as SI2, the other as I1.
I agree- they should have GIA reports.
We do get stones in the smaller sizes without GIA reports, from time to time.
Whenever an interested buyer asks about such a stone, and the lack of report, we gladly submit them- and when we get a call, I usually bring it up before they ask.

I know for a fact we're not the only seller who does have some smaller stones without the GIA reports.
But I agree, the pair you referred to should have them.
Thing is, we actually gave them back to the cutter- so I need to remove them from the site.
Thanks for pointing this out.

 

[ChunkyCushionLover]

Well I brought it up because the cutter and the vendor have to draw the line somewhere.
Clearly ~$2500 per stone would necessitate a report.

Your site is usually pretty strict about a report and about pointing it out very clearly when it doesn't have one but I would expect not all vendors are as vigilant.

But what about the Light Yellow Radiant you have on your site for $995 which has no GIA report.
http://rockdiamond.com/index.php/je...t-radiant-light-yellow-nice-lemon-color-r3402

I can't see it being a very good situation for you or for the buyer to have to purchase a $150 +shipping on a report on this diamond to confirm its pedigree. Who pays if it doesn't come back as you have graded it?

What about if it was only $600 would it even make sense to send it for a report?

For small diamonds this gets tricky where does one draw the line? I think there are plenty of honest dealers who have to balance the tradeoff on uncerted versus the $150 dollar report and how much that will add to the cost of the diamond especially on $1000 and under colored diamonds.

 

[Rockdiamond]

thanks for asking CCL!
Our policy is as follows:
If we have a stone sans GIA, and someone want to buy it, and have us send it off, we do so with the following conditions: If the stone comes back with a grade the buyer is unhappy with, we keep the stone and GIA, with a full refund to the buyer.
If the grade comes back better, than we allow the buyer that benefit.
Depending on the situation ( cost of the stone), there we might ask the buyer to pick up the cost of the GIA.
If someone asked for a GIA report on a stone we did not feel warranted one ( perhaps the $600 example you cited), we'd likely add a stipulation that there would be some charge if the grade came out as we advertised, and the buyer pulled out. But even in this type of situation, if the grade did not come out as we advertised, we'd eat the cost of the GIA, and allow the buyer to back out.