Pricing fancy colored diamonds has always been sort of an art for appraisers and diamond dealers—so many factors come into play, lots of unchartered territory. Not to mention, it is so market-driven with many unknowns. To make things even more difficult, fancy colored diamonds are multi-layered themselves, with several factors which come into play when determining a value.
Fancy colored diamonds are such a specialized category of diamonds, and yes, the fancy color diamond circle is small and exclusive. Often times, this category within the jewelry industry can be seen as intimidating—mostly because it is a specialized area of expertise. Here’s where the experts come into play. People like Eden Rachminov who has dedicated several years of researching fancy colored diamonds in order to write and release a book which delves into the pricing architecture of this interesting, market-driven world of colored diamonds.
Mr. Rachminov has written two books, the first called The Fancy Color Diamond Book, which we won’t be focusing on in this blog post, but it debuted in 2010 and is the first installment of all things FCD. The second book, Fancy Color Diamonds: The Pricing Architecture, is the book I received above and am reviewing here. It features 10 years worth of research and data collection, along with insight from first-hand experience in the business to formulate a new system for valuing fancy color diamonds. “The Layer System” presented in this book is a unique approach to illustrate the many impactful commercial characteristics absent from the GIA gemological report. Each attribute is represented as a “layer” and each layer is a chapter in the book. The impressive Appendix accompanied with the book includes 15 premium charts and over 10,000 coefficient tables that decode the complex fancy color pricing structure and the premiums each characteristic imparts.
This book is ideal for anyone in the jewelry industry that wants to better understand fancy color diamonds. Whether you’re a diamond miner, an appraiser, a sales associate or collector, this book can fit your niche and help you find insight. I love the gorgeous and vibrant photos of fancy color diamonds within the book (a few shown above). My favorite quote from the book juxtaposes what most are familiar with when we think of diamonds—colorless stones. It says, “In the colorless diamond world, buyers pursue “less:” less color, fewer inclusions and little if no fluorescence, to the point where the “void” symbolizes perfection.” This is so not the case for fancies. And this book will show you what I mean!
Fancy Colored Diamonds: The Pricing Architecture is practical, straight forward and aims to educate. It is also complex and at times challenging, but the wealth of information is incredible!
To order:
(proceeds go toward The Fancy Color Research Foundation & Make a Wish Foundation)
Follow on Facebook
Levant Jewellery August 26, 2016 at 9:53 pm:
Looks like a very informative book.
-Joseph
http://www.levantjewellery.com