Memorable quote (s) from the movie:
Harry Turner (Bing Crosby): Chester, I give you my solemn word. This time it's not dangerous.
Chester Babcock (Bob Hope): Not dangerous?
Harry Turner (Bing Crosby): No.
Chester Babcock (Bob Hope): That's what 'cha said when you shot me out of a cannon, when you dropped me in a tank with an octopus, when you had me wrestle a gorilla. It's not dangerous! I'm not goin'. I'm through. I've had it. So forget it, Charly!
Saturday, May 05, 2007
India: 5th Largest Consumer By 2025
(via Times News Network) Irshad Daftari writes:
The elephant has begun dancing and is now set to take wings. India’s much-touted middle-class will soon embark on a consuming spree that is set to make the country the fifth-largest consuming economy behind US, Japan, China and the UK by 2025.
According to a report by McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) titled The Bird of Gold: The Rise of India’s Consumer Market, India is set for a consumption boom, with aggregate consumption (private and government consumption) increasing more than four times to Rs 70,00,000 crore (approximately $1.5 trillion) from Rs 15,00,000 crore currently.
Further, the report states, if purchasing power parity (PPP) was used as a benchmark India’s aggregate consumption will stand at $8.2 trillion, making it larger than the current US consumption at $7.8 trillion. A significant aspect of a broadly middle-class economy is that it fundamentally changes the political dynamics.
“The political power structure will change as it has happened all over the world when economies have become middle-class,” says Adil Zainulbhai, MD, McKinsey, India. For a 20-year forecast, MGI has assumed that land reforms and urban and rural infrastructure investments will continue, or at least not be rolled back.
Says Mr Zainulbhai, “Our studies show that it takes nearly 15 years for reforms to fundamentally change the economy. China, for instance, took off in the mid-90s after beginning reforms in the late 70s. Some of the heavy lifting in terms of reforms has already been done and it won’t require sweeping changes at this speed.”
Further, the middle-class, which has broadly been defined as households earning between Rs. 2 lakh to Rs 10 lakh per annum, will grow to 583 million from just 50 million today. To put that figure into perspective, the middle-class would form the third-largest country by itself in terms of population, and nearly twice the current population of the United States. The average household income will rise from Rs 113,744 in 2005 to Rs 318,896 in 2025, growing 5.3% annually.
While that might seem a pittance in dollar terms at just under $7600, it works out to nearly $40,000 in terms of purchasing power parity, comfortable by most standards. Nearly 291 million people will move out of the lowest consuming class, earning less than Rs 90,000 per annum, to a middle class lifestyle.
More info @
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/India_5th_largest_consumer_by_2025/articleshow/1999742.cms
The elephant has begun dancing and is now set to take wings. India’s much-touted middle-class will soon embark on a consuming spree that is set to make the country the fifth-largest consuming economy behind US, Japan, China and the UK by 2025.
According to a report by McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) titled The Bird of Gold: The Rise of India’s Consumer Market, India is set for a consumption boom, with aggregate consumption (private and government consumption) increasing more than four times to Rs 70,00,000 crore (approximately $1.5 trillion) from Rs 15,00,000 crore currently.
Further, the report states, if purchasing power parity (PPP) was used as a benchmark India’s aggregate consumption will stand at $8.2 trillion, making it larger than the current US consumption at $7.8 trillion. A significant aspect of a broadly middle-class economy is that it fundamentally changes the political dynamics.
“The political power structure will change as it has happened all over the world when economies have become middle-class,” says Adil Zainulbhai, MD, McKinsey, India. For a 20-year forecast, MGI has assumed that land reforms and urban and rural infrastructure investments will continue, or at least not be rolled back.
Says Mr Zainulbhai, “Our studies show that it takes nearly 15 years for reforms to fundamentally change the economy. China, for instance, took off in the mid-90s after beginning reforms in the late 70s. Some of the heavy lifting in terms of reforms has already been done and it won’t require sweeping changes at this speed.”
Further, the middle-class, which has broadly been defined as households earning between Rs. 2 lakh to Rs 10 lakh per annum, will grow to 583 million from just 50 million today. To put that figure into perspective, the middle-class would form the third-largest country by itself in terms of population, and nearly twice the current population of the United States. The average household income will rise from Rs 113,744 in 2005 to Rs 318,896 in 2025, growing 5.3% annually.
While that might seem a pittance in dollar terms at just under $7600, it works out to nearly $40,000 in terms of purchasing power parity, comfortable by most standards. Nearly 291 million people will move out of the lowest consuming class, earning less than Rs 90,000 per annum, to a middle class lifestyle.
More info @
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/India_5th_largest_consumer_by_2025/articleshow/1999742.cms
Gem Scams—Where Are They Leading?
(via Gem & Jewellery News, Vol.9, No.1, December 1999) Harry Levy writes:
Since man first discovered the beauty of gems and pearls, and found he could find favor in the eyes of women by giving these as gifts, he has been faking it. He has been filling in the cracks in stones, oiling and staining them, bleaching pearls and waxing turquoise and lapis, anything to improve their appearance.
The discovery of glass was god send to such people and much ancient jewelry is found to be adorned with glass. These were cut to resemble gems and many were undoubtedly sold as gems to the rich and famous. It seems inconceivable that any royal person would have bought a piece of cut glass, but I have seen royal collections of loose stones containing many glass imitations.
When one buys a beautiful Georgian antique piece of jewelry everyone in the trade assumes that the gems could be foiled. Pale stones are cut in closed settings over a layer of colored silver foil to intensify the colors of the stones. I wonder how many of the original owners knew or where found that the stones were foiled and not valuable as they seemed at the time.
Traffic lights
Selling glass as gems is still practiced today. One amusing story (although not so amusing to the victims) is that often one sees smashed traffic lights in gem producing and gem cutting centers. The police eventually discovered why they were being smashed when they caught people selling broken pieces as ‘rough emeralds and rubies’ to the tourists.
Gem scams take many forms. The most obvious one is to sell a fake—a piece of glass or plastic—as real gem. A less obvious method is to sell a synthetic stone (one that has all the chemical and physical characteristics of its natural counterpart) as a natural gem, or to sell a genuine stone at a highly inflated price or to try to sell it as another type of stone. In this last category yellow quartz was marketed as ‘topaz’ confusing the unwary—the practice became so common that the trade introduced the term ‘topaz-citrine’ as being more truthful than simply ‘topaz’ for the yellow quartz. The correct description is yellow quartz or citrine, but never topaz with or without qualifying terms. To sell genuine topaz, the trade now uses terms such as ‘real topaz’ or ‘precious topaz’.
Iolite was sold as ‘water sapphire’ making the unwary think they were buying a variety of blue sapphire—not realizing they were buying a much softer and cheaper stone. Rubellite is used for a variety of red tourmaline to confuse the unsuspecting into thinking that is a variety of ruby. White stones have been sold as diamantine, CZ-diamond, diamonair and so on, again making the buyer think he is buying a type of diamond.
Synthetics
Colored synthetics are often sold as genuine gems, one of the most popular being the synthetic color change corundum imitating alexandrite. We often get calls from jewelers claiming that their client has a large alexandrite and they think it might be worth a lot of money. A good 1 carat alexandrite can fetch up to $10000 in the trade, and stones of 5 carat and above can run into hundred of thousands of dollars. So when we are told that the stone in question is large and very clean, we ask if it is 12mm or 15mm round, or 16 x 12 oval or octagonal. They are surprised when we can quote the size over the phone without seeing the stone. This is because the stones are synthetic and are cut in the calibrated ring sizes—worth but a few pounds. Their customer often insists that they are real stones bought in the markets in Alexandria.
Synthetic alexandrite is now available originating from Russia and being offered for sale in Sri Lanka and Brazil as a genuine alexandrite. Many in the trade are fooled by such stones as the color change and appearance is far more convincing than the synthetic corundum counterpart.
Mixed parcels
Itinerant dealers coming to London from the Far and Exotic East, show parcels of rubies and sapphires. Whilst the majority is real, the best few stones in the parcel are often synthetics. One does not know whether the dealers are doping the parcels or if they are duped themselves when they acquired the goods. Such stones circulating in the upper echelons of the trade are hard to spot, as the rubies are heated to reduce the visible zoning and curved lines, while sapphires are cut from the top parts of the boules to give striation of color and patches of blue resembling genuine Ceylon stones.
Usually one thinks that synthetics will generally be used as a substitute for expensive stones. Several years ago a dealer from the sub-continent came into my office with a parcel of cheap rubies calibrated into 9 x 7mm and 10 x 8mm ovals. They were reddish pink color, somewhat opaque and roughly polished. One often sees such goods, but only up to size of 7 x 5mm. The stones seemed cheap for their size. It was perhaps experience and instinct that made me look again before buying. I then realized that they were synthetic rubies; they had been heated and cooled rapidly to produce a cracking effect and then tumbled to rub the surface and produce the effect one sees in cheap Burma rubies. The seller claimed he knew nothing about the origin of the stones and had been given them by an ‘uncle’ to sell in Europe.
One can see other dealers coming in from that part of the world with cheap native cut stones. Sometimes there may be a parcel of, say, larger cut peridots. The price looks tempting until one looks again to discover that they are peridot color glass—native cut to resemble natural stones.
Genuine stones at inflated prices
The most common gem scam nowadays is to sell genuine stones, but at highly inflated prices. The stones may be in transparent sealed boxes, or loose, nearly always accompanied by a certificate. The certificate purports to come from a gemological institution or a government body with titles such as the “The State Gem Corporation’. The certificate will give accurate measurements of the stone, its weight and a statement to the effect that it is a real or genuine stone such as a ruby or sapphire, and sometimes the origin of the stone. Always these statements will be true. In some cases there will be a grading with words such as ‘fine’, ‘high quality’, etc. Potential buyers are targeted by researching credit card companies to find high spenders. They are approached through telephone calls or enticing literature offering a portfolio of stones with copies of the certificates, literature about the uniqueness and beauty of gemstones and graphs showing steep growth of prices over the past few years. These are often accompanied by promises, usually verbal, of buy-back opportunities as the value of the stones increases.
To add insult to injury, such buyers will still in their state of euphoria at the bargains they have purchased, and again approached by their sellers, with good news that they have found a buyer for their investment earning them a very healthy profit. The only condition is that the new buyer needs another stone to complete the portfolio before the deal can be completed. They promise to try to locate such a stone as they sold one to another investor in his portfolio and hope they can persuade him to sell. They of course come back with good news that he can purchase this stone and this stage of the negotiations the ‘profit’ shown on his portfolio will more than pay for the additional stone, but after paying for taking delivery the deal is never realized. But the consolation to the investor is that they shown him his stones are now worth much more than he paid for them originally and in a short time they will find another buyer and by then his stones will be worth even more.
Shamefaced
Whenever such stones are offered for sale by the ‘investors’ they say that they think they overpaid for the stone but would like to recoup their money or the best they can get. They are often prepared to take a small loss. Invariably such stones seem to be overvalued by a factor of ten, i.e. a $1000 stone is worth $100 in the trade. The owners are often shamefaced to state the true price they paid, but are shocked when they learn the true value. There is often an element of disbelief at the price they are told and it is only by being sent to several offices and shops that they actually realize the extent to which they have been overcharged.
All such stones I have seen would not be called ‘fine’ and are often difficult to sell even it at the correct market value. They usually are stones which have some defect, be it even in size or shape that makes them unsuitable for jewelry.
At the other end of the scale, captive audiences, such as those on cruise, are told that they have won a gemstone—usually a garnet or topaz. It is again accompanied by a certificate extolling its beauty and value. To make the win truly memorable they will have to pay a small amount—usually tens of pounds or dollars—to have the stone set in a ring or pendant. The ‘sting’ is in the amount they pay for mounting and setting of this stone; they could in many cases buy a similar article in their local High Street jewelers at a much cheaper price.
Moissanite
The latest masquerader is moissanite. No suggestion is made that those who are selling it are involved in any sort of scam. The producers, while they control the rough, have set their price and the prices their agents should charge and as long as these conditions prevail there will be a stability—and possibly increases—in the price. You may remember that when CZ first appeared
Large department stores often set aside a whole section for the sale of CZ jewelry. The stones often came with certificates, and grading reports were issued for the larger stones. They sold in the hundreds rather than the ten of dollars or pounds, whereas today a 6.5mm CZ (one carat diamond spread) sells for a few pence in the trade.
There are already rumors that moissanite is being manufactured in Eastern Europe and China where patents are hard to enforce. As the supply increases, so the prices will tumble. But in the case of moissanite the scam will come not from the producers or the jewelers—they will disclose it for what it is, a synthetic stone—but from the spouse or lover. With all the media publicity he can at last buy a ring with a stone that few can distinguish from a diamond. He will present his beloved the ‘diamond’ ring he always wanted to give her but could not afford. It will be years later, well into next millennium, when this jewelry will come back on the market by widowed spouses (or as family heirlooms) as authentic diamond jewelry. By then, hopefully, all jewelers will be able to spot a moissanite as being different from a diamond. They could then be accused, as the harbingers of bad tidings, of having cheated the original buyer by selling him a synthetic moissanite as a real diamond. The real culprit would not the actual jeweler in such a case but would bring the trade into disrepute.
I have not covered all the scams but jewelers and tourists who seek bargains from the gem cutting centers are often surprised that what they have bought may not sell at a profit back home. And this brings me round to the disclosure dispute—are we all committing a scam when we do not make the appropriate disclosure when selling a gemstone—by withholding information we are letting the buyer believe that the stone he is purchasing is not what it appears to be?
Disclosure
A thought that has bothered me for many years, as I have debated and presided over meetings devoted to disclosure of gemstone treatments and enhancements, that I as a dealer do not treat—sorry, handle—all my stones in the same way. My expensive emerald and ruby is carefully handled, placed in a special safe, unwrapped carefully, perhaps insured separately, while my small third-rate emeralds and rubies are put together with no cotton wool so that they rub and scratch each other. I have no second thoughts if I leave them out of the safe, for after all they are worth a few pence or at most a few pounds each. Yet when it comes to disclosure I have to apply the same rules to them as I apply to my truly precious gems. There is no disclosure problem with costume jewelry and this lower popular end of the trade now has many resemblances to the costume jewelry trade—people buy it for themselves, they are not given to them as gifts. They are worn a few times then thrown to the back of the drawer and forgotten—almost for ever. Should the stones in such jewelry be subjected to the same strictures of disclosure?
I do not know how I can draw a demarcation line but with the proliferation of jewelry set with cheap gemstones, often treated or synthetic, and the sale of such jewelry moving away from the traditional outlets such as jewelry shops into supermarkets and market stalls, should they become exempt from the need for disclosure? After all, who really cares if a 2mm round emerald selling in a ring for a few pounds has been oiled or resined or infilled with a colored substitute? Yet the trade can suffer prosecution every time this article is sold if the full facts have not been disclosed.
What for the future?
I mentioned the millennium a little earlier. It would be interesting if the trade could set up a panel to come up with their projection of the jewelry trade in, say, a hundred years time. With the advent of synthetics and ever improving treatments, I think a large part of jewelry will be sold for its appearance rather than its value. The traditional jeweler will move up market and hopefully those who buy the cheap items will develop a taste and move on to the more expensive individual jewelry where they will want to know exactly what they are buying.
Since man first discovered the beauty of gems and pearls, and found he could find favor in the eyes of women by giving these as gifts, he has been faking it. He has been filling in the cracks in stones, oiling and staining them, bleaching pearls and waxing turquoise and lapis, anything to improve their appearance.
The discovery of glass was god send to such people and much ancient jewelry is found to be adorned with glass. These were cut to resemble gems and many were undoubtedly sold as gems to the rich and famous. It seems inconceivable that any royal person would have bought a piece of cut glass, but I have seen royal collections of loose stones containing many glass imitations.
When one buys a beautiful Georgian antique piece of jewelry everyone in the trade assumes that the gems could be foiled. Pale stones are cut in closed settings over a layer of colored silver foil to intensify the colors of the stones. I wonder how many of the original owners knew or where found that the stones were foiled and not valuable as they seemed at the time.
Traffic lights
Selling glass as gems is still practiced today. One amusing story (although not so amusing to the victims) is that often one sees smashed traffic lights in gem producing and gem cutting centers. The police eventually discovered why they were being smashed when they caught people selling broken pieces as ‘rough emeralds and rubies’ to the tourists.
Gem scams take many forms. The most obvious one is to sell a fake—a piece of glass or plastic—as real gem. A less obvious method is to sell a synthetic stone (one that has all the chemical and physical characteristics of its natural counterpart) as a natural gem, or to sell a genuine stone at a highly inflated price or to try to sell it as another type of stone. In this last category yellow quartz was marketed as ‘topaz’ confusing the unwary—the practice became so common that the trade introduced the term ‘topaz-citrine’ as being more truthful than simply ‘topaz’ for the yellow quartz. The correct description is yellow quartz or citrine, but never topaz with or without qualifying terms. To sell genuine topaz, the trade now uses terms such as ‘real topaz’ or ‘precious topaz’.
Iolite was sold as ‘water sapphire’ making the unwary think they were buying a variety of blue sapphire—not realizing they were buying a much softer and cheaper stone. Rubellite is used for a variety of red tourmaline to confuse the unsuspecting into thinking that is a variety of ruby. White stones have been sold as diamantine, CZ-diamond, diamonair and so on, again making the buyer think he is buying a type of diamond.
Synthetics
Colored synthetics are often sold as genuine gems, one of the most popular being the synthetic color change corundum imitating alexandrite. We often get calls from jewelers claiming that their client has a large alexandrite and they think it might be worth a lot of money. A good 1 carat alexandrite can fetch up to $10000 in the trade, and stones of 5 carat and above can run into hundred of thousands of dollars. So when we are told that the stone in question is large and very clean, we ask if it is 12mm or 15mm round, or 16 x 12 oval or octagonal. They are surprised when we can quote the size over the phone without seeing the stone. This is because the stones are synthetic and are cut in the calibrated ring sizes—worth but a few pounds. Their customer often insists that they are real stones bought in the markets in Alexandria.
Synthetic alexandrite is now available originating from Russia and being offered for sale in Sri Lanka and Brazil as a genuine alexandrite. Many in the trade are fooled by such stones as the color change and appearance is far more convincing than the synthetic corundum counterpart.
Mixed parcels
Itinerant dealers coming to London from the Far and Exotic East, show parcels of rubies and sapphires. Whilst the majority is real, the best few stones in the parcel are often synthetics. One does not know whether the dealers are doping the parcels or if they are duped themselves when they acquired the goods. Such stones circulating in the upper echelons of the trade are hard to spot, as the rubies are heated to reduce the visible zoning and curved lines, while sapphires are cut from the top parts of the boules to give striation of color and patches of blue resembling genuine Ceylon stones.
Usually one thinks that synthetics will generally be used as a substitute for expensive stones. Several years ago a dealer from the sub-continent came into my office with a parcel of cheap rubies calibrated into 9 x 7mm and 10 x 8mm ovals. They were reddish pink color, somewhat opaque and roughly polished. One often sees such goods, but only up to size of 7 x 5mm. The stones seemed cheap for their size. It was perhaps experience and instinct that made me look again before buying. I then realized that they were synthetic rubies; they had been heated and cooled rapidly to produce a cracking effect and then tumbled to rub the surface and produce the effect one sees in cheap Burma rubies. The seller claimed he knew nothing about the origin of the stones and had been given them by an ‘uncle’ to sell in Europe.
One can see other dealers coming in from that part of the world with cheap native cut stones. Sometimes there may be a parcel of, say, larger cut peridots. The price looks tempting until one looks again to discover that they are peridot color glass—native cut to resemble natural stones.
Genuine stones at inflated prices
The most common gem scam nowadays is to sell genuine stones, but at highly inflated prices. The stones may be in transparent sealed boxes, or loose, nearly always accompanied by a certificate. The certificate purports to come from a gemological institution or a government body with titles such as the “The State Gem Corporation’. The certificate will give accurate measurements of the stone, its weight and a statement to the effect that it is a real or genuine stone such as a ruby or sapphire, and sometimes the origin of the stone. Always these statements will be true. In some cases there will be a grading with words such as ‘fine’, ‘high quality’, etc. Potential buyers are targeted by researching credit card companies to find high spenders. They are approached through telephone calls or enticing literature offering a portfolio of stones with copies of the certificates, literature about the uniqueness and beauty of gemstones and graphs showing steep growth of prices over the past few years. These are often accompanied by promises, usually verbal, of buy-back opportunities as the value of the stones increases.
To add insult to injury, such buyers will still in their state of euphoria at the bargains they have purchased, and again approached by their sellers, with good news that they have found a buyer for their investment earning them a very healthy profit. The only condition is that the new buyer needs another stone to complete the portfolio before the deal can be completed. They promise to try to locate such a stone as they sold one to another investor in his portfolio and hope they can persuade him to sell. They of course come back with good news that he can purchase this stone and this stage of the negotiations the ‘profit’ shown on his portfolio will more than pay for the additional stone, but after paying for taking delivery the deal is never realized. But the consolation to the investor is that they shown him his stones are now worth much more than he paid for them originally and in a short time they will find another buyer and by then his stones will be worth even more.
Shamefaced
Whenever such stones are offered for sale by the ‘investors’ they say that they think they overpaid for the stone but would like to recoup their money or the best they can get. They are often prepared to take a small loss. Invariably such stones seem to be overvalued by a factor of ten, i.e. a $1000 stone is worth $100 in the trade. The owners are often shamefaced to state the true price they paid, but are shocked when they learn the true value. There is often an element of disbelief at the price they are told and it is only by being sent to several offices and shops that they actually realize the extent to which they have been overcharged.
All such stones I have seen would not be called ‘fine’ and are often difficult to sell even it at the correct market value. They usually are stones which have some defect, be it even in size or shape that makes them unsuitable for jewelry.
At the other end of the scale, captive audiences, such as those on cruise, are told that they have won a gemstone—usually a garnet or topaz. It is again accompanied by a certificate extolling its beauty and value. To make the win truly memorable they will have to pay a small amount—usually tens of pounds or dollars—to have the stone set in a ring or pendant. The ‘sting’ is in the amount they pay for mounting and setting of this stone; they could in many cases buy a similar article in their local High Street jewelers at a much cheaper price.
Moissanite
The latest masquerader is moissanite. No suggestion is made that those who are selling it are involved in any sort of scam. The producers, while they control the rough, have set their price and the prices their agents should charge and as long as these conditions prevail there will be a stability—and possibly increases—in the price. You may remember that when CZ first appeared
Large department stores often set aside a whole section for the sale of CZ jewelry. The stones often came with certificates, and grading reports were issued for the larger stones. They sold in the hundreds rather than the ten of dollars or pounds, whereas today a 6.5mm CZ (one carat diamond spread) sells for a few pence in the trade.
There are already rumors that moissanite is being manufactured in Eastern Europe and China where patents are hard to enforce. As the supply increases, so the prices will tumble. But in the case of moissanite the scam will come not from the producers or the jewelers—they will disclose it for what it is, a synthetic stone—but from the spouse or lover. With all the media publicity he can at last buy a ring with a stone that few can distinguish from a diamond. He will present his beloved the ‘diamond’ ring he always wanted to give her but could not afford. It will be years later, well into next millennium, when this jewelry will come back on the market by widowed spouses (or as family heirlooms) as authentic diamond jewelry. By then, hopefully, all jewelers will be able to spot a moissanite as being different from a diamond. They could then be accused, as the harbingers of bad tidings, of having cheated the original buyer by selling him a synthetic moissanite as a real diamond. The real culprit would not the actual jeweler in such a case but would bring the trade into disrepute.
I have not covered all the scams but jewelers and tourists who seek bargains from the gem cutting centers are often surprised that what they have bought may not sell at a profit back home. And this brings me round to the disclosure dispute—are we all committing a scam when we do not make the appropriate disclosure when selling a gemstone—by withholding information we are letting the buyer believe that the stone he is purchasing is not what it appears to be?
Disclosure
A thought that has bothered me for many years, as I have debated and presided over meetings devoted to disclosure of gemstone treatments and enhancements, that I as a dealer do not treat—sorry, handle—all my stones in the same way. My expensive emerald and ruby is carefully handled, placed in a special safe, unwrapped carefully, perhaps insured separately, while my small third-rate emeralds and rubies are put together with no cotton wool so that they rub and scratch each other. I have no second thoughts if I leave them out of the safe, for after all they are worth a few pence or at most a few pounds each. Yet when it comes to disclosure I have to apply the same rules to them as I apply to my truly precious gems. There is no disclosure problem with costume jewelry and this lower popular end of the trade now has many resemblances to the costume jewelry trade—people buy it for themselves, they are not given to them as gifts. They are worn a few times then thrown to the back of the drawer and forgotten—almost for ever. Should the stones in such jewelry be subjected to the same strictures of disclosure?
I do not know how I can draw a demarcation line but with the proliferation of jewelry set with cheap gemstones, often treated or synthetic, and the sale of such jewelry moving away from the traditional outlets such as jewelry shops into supermarkets and market stalls, should they become exempt from the need for disclosure? After all, who really cares if a 2mm round emerald selling in a ring for a few pounds has been oiled or resined or infilled with a colored substitute? Yet the trade can suffer prosecution every time this article is sold if the full facts have not been disclosed.
What for the future?
I mentioned the millennium a little earlier. It would be interesting if the trade could set up a panel to come up with their projection of the jewelry trade in, say, a hundred years time. With the advent of synthetics and ever improving treatments, I think a large part of jewelry will be sold for its appearance rather than its value. The traditional jeweler will move up market and hopefully those who buy the cheap items will develop a taste and move on to the more expensive individual jewelry where they will want to know exactly what they are buying.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Diamond Hub Upbeat At Duty Cut
Times News Network writes:
Surat's dream to shine brighter on the global diamond map — as a one-stop shop for sparklers — just moved yet another step closer to reality. This diamond manufacturing hub now has a shot at emerging as the global trading hub as well thanks to the Centre's decision to scrap customs duty on cut and polished diamond imports.
The decision promises to propel India into the league of global diamond trading hubs like Belgium, Israel and Hong Kong. After all, if 11 out of every 12 diamonds in the world is processed in India, then nine out these take shape in Surat.
"In the short term, Surat may benefit only indirectly from this move as it is a manufacturing centre and Mumbai is India's trading hub. But in the long run, the future looks bright for Surat," says an upbeat Gujarat Hira Bourse president Chandrakant Sanghavi.
Of course, much of Surat's realizing this ambition hinges on its ability to grab from Mumbai its coveted status as the country's diamond trading and exports hub, as most Surat companies prefer to operate their marketing and exporting offices from Mumbai.
An attempt at this is already underway with the upcoming Ichhapore Gems & Jewellery SEZ. "If Surat can create world class infrastructure like international connectivity, luxury hotels and entertainment, it can unseat a frightfully expensive Mumbai as most of the players would prefer to expand at a cheaper destination. But till such time, international buyers, domestic players would still prefer to trade at Mumbai," adds Sanghavi.
"If Surat can upscale infrastructure, it can easily take away at least 30% of Mumbai's business," says Gitanjali group chairman Mehul Chokshi. So what does this scrapping of customs duty mean for India's diamond industry? The move directly benefits diamond jewellery manufacturers who can now value-add with imports of special cuts or varieties from other global centres. For Indian diamond traders and exporters, the removal of customs duty, which stood at 5% before the budget when Union finance minister slashed it to 3%, will now enable them to stock all varieties of diamonds right here in India.
"From just a global diamond manufacturing, India will now become a global trading hub at par with other major centres. Trading volumes will shoot up and exports will get a boost," points out Gems & Jewellery Export Promotion Council chairman Sanjay Kothari.
More info @ http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Diamond_hub_upbeat_at_duty_cut/articleshow/1999434.cms
Surat's dream to shine brighter on the global diamond map — as a one-stop shop for sparklers — just moved yet another step closer to reality. This diamond manufacturing hub now has a shot at emerging as the global trading hub as well thanks to the Centre's decision to scrap customs duty on cut and polished diamond imports.
The decision promises to propel India into the league of global diamond trading hubs like Belgium, Israel and Hong Kong. After all, if 11 out of every 12 diamonds in the world is processed in India, then nine out these take shape in Surat.
"In the short term, Surat may benefit only indirectly from this move as it is a manufacturing centre and Mumbai is India's trading hub. But in the long run, the future looks bright for Surat," says an upbeat Gujarat Hira Bourse president Chandrakant Sanghavi.
Of course, much of Surat's realizing this ambition hinges on its ability to grab from Mumbai its coveted status as the country's diamond trading and exports hub, as most Surat companies prefer to operate their marketing and exporting offices from Mumbai.
An attempt at this is already underway with the upcoming Ichhapore Gems & Jewellery SEZ. "If Surat can create world class infrastructure like international connectivity, luxury hotels and entertainment, it can unseat a frightfully expensive Mumbai as most of the players would prefer to expand at a cheaper destination. But till such time, international buyers, domestic players would still prefer to trade at Mumbai," adds Sanghavi.
"If Surat can upscale infrastructure, it can easily take away at least 30% of Mumbai's business," says Gitanjali group chairman Mehul Chokshi. So what does this scrapping of customs duty mean for India's diamond industry? The move directly benefits diamond jewellery manufacturers who can now value-add with imports of special cuts or varieties from other global centres. For Indian diamond traders and exporters, the removal of customs duty, which stood at 5% before the budget when Union finance minister slashed it to 3%, will now enable them to stock all varieties of diamonds right here in India.
"From just a global diamond manufacturing, India will now become a global trading hub at par with other major centres. Trading volumes will shoot up and exports will get a boost," points out Gems & Jewellery Export Promotion Council chairman Sanjay Kothari.
More info @ http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Diamond_hub_upbeat_at_duty_cut/articleshow/1999434.cms
The Devil At 4 O'Clock
Memorable quote (s) from the movie:
Harry (Frank Sinatra): Hey, Holy Joe, we don't owe you nuttin', so don't start pushin'.
Father Matthew Doonan (Spencer Tracy): Where you from, tough guy? I hear echoes.
Harry (Frank Sinatra): I've been around... What's it to ya?
Father Matthew Doonan (Spencer Tracy): You spit your T's. That'd be Jersey, I guess, maybe Jersey City. Huh! I came from just across the River - Hell's Kitchen. We used to eat punks like you.
Harry (Frank Sinatra): Maybe. That's when you had your teeth.
Harry (Frank Sinatra): Hey, Holy Joe, we don't owe you nuttin', so don't start pushin'.
Father Matthew Doonan (Spencer Tracy): Where you from, tough guy? I hear echoes.
Harry (Frank Sinatra): I've been around... What's it to ya?
Father Matthew Doonan (Spencer Tracy): You spit your T's. That'd be Jersey, I guess, maybe Jersey City. Huh! I came from just across the River - Hell's Kitchen. We used to eat punks like you.
Harry (Frank Sinatra): Maybe. That's when you had your teeth.
Top Luxury Jewelry Brands
According to the Luxury Institute, the top ten ultra luxury jewelry brands are:
1. Tiffany
2. Cartier
3. De Beers
4. Gucci
5. Bulgari
6. Van Cleef & Arpels
7. Harry Winston
8. Chanel
9. Dior
10. Mikimoto
Useful link:
www.luxuryinstitute.com
1. Tiffany
2. Cartier
3. De Beers
4. Gucci
5. Bulgari
6. Van Cleef & Arpels
7. Harry Winston
8. Chanel
9. Dior
10. Mikimoto
Useful link:
www.luxuryinstitute.com
Diamond Grading And The SI3 Debate
(via Gem & Jewellery News, Vol.13, No.1 March 2004) Harry Levy writes:
It is amazing how little those who use grading certificates understand exactly what they are using. Laboratories, amongst the other work they do, produce two types of certificates. The first is an identification report, telling one whether it is a natural stone or a synthetic one, some identify whether the stone has been modified by treatments other than cutting and polishing, and some may give an origin of the stone, where the stone has been mined.
The other type is a grading report, usually for diamonds, which gives a grade for the color, clarity and other relevant factors to identify the stone, such as its dimensions and shape, as well as comments on cut and proportion, and an indication of fluorescence should this exist. Sometimes these reports are called grading certificates, which is an incorrect description. The grading reports may now include comments on treatments, a topic on which there is yet no universal agreement. Some identification reports are now trying to give comments on the amount of treatment a stone has undergone, for example the amount of oiling or resin-filling an emerald has been subjected to.
Why use reports?
The question to ask is why do we need grading reports and the simple answer is that they are used to put a value on a stone. It makes it simpler to compare stones, both for matching and for pricing. I recall when I first started trading in diamonds I would get a phone call with the question: “How much is a 1 carat diamond?” No matter what answer I gave I was told that they could get it cheaper and it was only after a second discussion could I tell them the price was dependent on the quality and thus give myself a chance of selling a stone.
Today I still get similar calls, although the enquiries seem to be more specific. I am now asked to quote for, say, a one carat diamond of color G and clarity VS1, again when I give a price I am told they can get it cheaper. The potential buyer thinks that by giving the parameters of color and clarity he has totally identified the stone. If I can get back to the caller I ask him he has such a stone and can he measure the diameter of the stone. If he can, I tell him his stone is of diameter of about 6.1mm. I am often asked how did I know and the simple answer is that a well-proportioned carat stone is of diameter 6.5mm and if he is being offered a stone below market value then there is a reason for this in that the stone is too deep or too flat, he has not considered the cut. Price is affected by the amount of fluorescence and the proportion of various facets. Price is also affected by the quality of the rough from which the stone is cut. Grading reports capture as many parameters as they can, but ultimately the final factor determining value is how the stone appears to the eye. One needs much experience to make these subtle judgments.
I have written much in the past about how we have come to have the terminology we use in diamond grading. The most popular system is that used by the GIA of letters for colors and terms such as VVS1 and SI2 for clarity. Other systems are used, using more descriptive terms but some such reports may have a chart showing how their system relates to the GIA one.
All this looks well to most traders, but unfortunately the comparison is not so simple. The main problem is that the sets of master stones used to determine color in different laboratories are not identical. Color is determined by using a trained eye to compare the stone with two adjacent master stones.
In some laboratories a stone that falls between the G and H master stones (i.e. worse than G but better than H) is considered to be G, whereas in others it is the stone between the F and G master stones (i.e worse than F but better than G) that is graded as G. Superficially these two systems seem to contradict each other, but if the G master stone in the one system is the same as the H in the other system then they are both seemingly coming up with the same answer. Thus when determining a master stone set the laboratory can claim that their master stone G, say, is a bottom G or a top G. But how these master stones sets compare to each other is something that is somewhat unknown. A similar problem exists for grading clarity.
The international diamond community tried to reconcile these problems by setting an ISO standard for diamond grading. An analogous problem could be for giving the weight of a stone. It is like some taking two stones of almost the same weight and saying that anything that falls between these two weights is identified as the weight of one of them. Thus if this was the method of determining weight, one could buy a stone in one place and be told that it weighs one carat, and when taken home and weighed again it was found to weight only 0.95 carat. Such ambiguity would be intolerable and, by convention, we have internationally recognized standards for weight. The ISO standard tried to achieve a similar convention for grading diamonds, bringing together the main systems used in the world. After 15 years of hard work the proposed system was not accepted.
Many in the diamond community would like to see such a standard adopted. This would help remove ambiguity and make the comparison of diamonds much easier. Unfortunately trade laboratories do not want to have their system replicated for outside use. Different centers use their own systems for grading and in order to buy and sell in these places one has to use the local grading report, and if one the goes to another center the stone may have to be regarded locally for the traders there. Imagine if one had to do this for weight! This was indeed done for many years from the early 1900s until the metric carat became standard. In many diamond centers one had to obtain an ‘official weight’, either through a local laboratory or a local trade organization. This problem no longer exists for weight, as most dealers now have accurate weighing balances, although the weight in a grading report still has a degree of being more official and thus acceptable than the weight given by the trader.
Thus the most pertinent question, whenever one is given a grading on a diamond, is to ask “Who says so?” Internationally some reports are more acceptable than others, although this can vary locally. If you have followed the arguments so far, you will probably see the need for one acceptable world standard. But I will try to show that even adopting a world standard we will still have ambiguity within the system.
Let me talk about the SI3 debate. The clarity grading for diamonds is accepted to be:
IF: Internally flawless
LC: 10x Loupe clean
VVS1 and VVS2: Very very small inclusions
VS1 and VS2: Very small inclusions
SI1 and SI2: Small or slight inclusions
P1, P2 and P3 or I1, I2 and 13: Visible inclusions
Many traders think that the band classified as P1 is too wide. That is, too many stones of different clarity appearance fall within this grade. One must remember that the grades determine the price and some stones within the P1 band look much better than others within that grade. Thus stones within the same grade could sell for significantly different amounts and traders wish the grading report to somehow show this differential. Some traders began to call the better P1 stones SI3. This new classification has been accepted by bodies such as the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB), many laboratories use it and it is shown on the Rapaport price listing grid. Other trade organizations and some of the major laboratories refuse to recognize this new grade.
The laboratories who refuse to use it claim that an SI stone has inclusions which are not visible to the naked eye, whereas P stones (pique stones) have inclusions which are visible to the naked eye. Bringing stones which have visible inclusions into a classification for stones with inclusions that are not visible will introduce a contradiction into the term SI. Further they argue it will be difficult to define the term SI3 for international use. Then there are those within the trade organizations who feel any changes in the rules will only confuse the trade and the public. They fear retrospective complaints. Thus a stone given a grade at one time could obtain a different grade if it is graded again. Although giving a stone a SI3 grade may be better than calling it a P1 stone, then some stones graded as SI2 may now be graded as SI3.
The reason that the terminology SI3 is being used is that for most traders it is easier to sell a stone with an SI grade than a P grade. This is because we have degraded the stones that have visible inclusions and there is a reluctance to buy a stone with a P grading. In fact very few stones with visible inclusions are graded as the report in most cases will hinder rather than assist a sale. Many dealers will not pass on a report which has a P grading. Thus they are opting for an SI, thinking that this will make it easier to sell the stone. What in fact is the case is not that it is called an SI stone but that it is no longer P1. Not being a P1 is the important criterion. We can call these stones anything we want, for example we could call them VI stones—visible inclusions.
I said above even if we come to agreements to have an ISO standard for diamond grading there are inherent problems within the system. Our grading system has all the trappings of being a scientific system; it has well defined terms, it is subject to measurements and we make use of scientific instruments, and work is done in laboratories by people with scientific qualifications. But at best it is a pseudo science. It is this because it does not really have well defined terms. Linguistically terms used in diamond grading are vague terms. The colors D, E, etc, have all ill-defined scientific basis. They indicate color but are based on only a vague concept of absorption of light. The whitest stone, i.e. the one with the least color, was taken to be D, a stone with a perceptible difference in color was taken as the next stone and called E, and so on for F, G, etc. There is no scientific relationship between the colors D, E and F. We can do this with weight. A 3 carat stone is three times as heavy a 1 carat stone. Also the color scale is no linear. The colors D, E, and F are closer together than the colors J, K and L.
A similar problem exists for clarity grading. The term ‘clean’ seems unambiguous, but in reality it is only clean because we can see no inclusion with a 10x loupe. Put this stone under a microscope and with sufficient magnification one will eventually find inclusions. So grading a diamond is more of an art than a science. Similarly, the terms VVS, VS and so son are again randomly chosen terms. The International Diamond Council (IDC) tried to put some science into the system by measuring the sizes of inclusions in microns. But for grading stones it was not only the size of the inclusion that determined the clarity grade but where it was positioned in the stone. This again brings the art into grading and not just a science of measurement.
Vague terms have no absolute values. Thus a very small elephant is much bigger than a very very large rat, and a spoonful of sugar varies from one time to the next. We understand these terms, we can use them correctly, but not in absolute terms such as grammes, meters or minutes. Those who argue that we cannot define an SI3 term fail to realize that they have defined, in an arbitrary way, all the terms that are used for diamond grading, other than measurements of size and weight and proportion, and introducing one more vague term into a system of vague terms is not beyond our means or imagination.
Those who argue that introducing such a term would make it easier to sell a pique stone have failed to realize that laboratories and grading reports are there to help the trade and not hinder it. Recent developments in the distribution of rough diamonds by organizations such as the Diamond Trading Company (DTC) and the shortage of better quality stones is going to result in more stones of lower grades being offered in the markets to satisfy demand for diamonds. It seems strange to degrade the quality description of such stones.
Another argument espoused by those who do not wish to change the terminology is that the change would confuse the trade and the public. I have used the term VI; this is an arbitrary term I have chosen, it is not a term I am necessarily advocating. It is somewhat provocative on my part in that some will say it is too similar to VVS and VS. The trade is remarkably adept in accepting innovation and anyone who cannot understand the terms we use should not be in the trade. As for the public, it is totally fallacious to say they will be confused. The average member of the public has absolutely no idea what a G/VS1 diamond is. It is not a terminology we are taught at school, but if a graded diamond is sold with a certificate it will have a glossary that explains exactly to him what these terms mean and how they relate to each other. Our trade is far more transparent than almost all other trades. When we look at the ingredients of a foodstuff we think we know exactly what we are eating but how many of us know what E145 is an additive?
Problems such as this and all the new treatments now being done to diamonds to improve their appearance, such as high pressure high temperature (HPHT) and the appearance of synthetic stones is causing consternation within the trade. The subject was discussed at the CIBJO Congress held in Bangkok at the end of February, and will no doubt come up at the World Diamond Council (WDC) meeting in Dubai at the end of March, and meetings being called by smaller groups in other localities. If history is anything to go by, little will be resolved, the conservatives will prevail, they will fear change and find themselves being retroactive instead of proactive. We do not want to resolve problems until they are imposed on us through forces beyond our control.
A final story will illustrate our unwillingness and inability to act. CIBJO allowed only the term ‘treated’ to be used for stones that had been processed by means other than cutting and polishing. White topaz was being irradiated to change its color into various hue of blue. CIBJO was asked to introduce the term ‘irradiated’ to describe such stones, but the term was not accepted and was banned; they had to be designated as treated. The US government brought in legislation that anything that had been irradiated had to be so declared when being imported into
the United States. This was to ensure that such stones would be tested for safety before being distributed. Declaring such stones as treated was inadequate. So CIBJO was forced to allow the term ‘irradiated’ into its lexicon, as otherwise there would not have been trade between the USA and the rest of the world in white topaz artificially colored.
I hope to report back in the next issue of Gem & Jewellery News on any changes, if any, that will be advocated by the trade in these Congresses.
It is amazing how little those who use grading certificates understand exactly what they are using. Laboratories, amongst the other work they do, produce two types of certificates. The first is an identification report, telling one whether it is a natural stone or a synthetic one, some identify whether the stone has been modified by treatments other than cutting and polishing, and some may give an origin of the stone, where the stone has been mined.
The other type is a grading report, usually for diamonds, which gives a grade for the color, clarity and other relevant factors to identify the stone, such as its dimensions and shape, as well as comments on cut and proportion, and an indication of fluorescence should this exist. Sometimes these reports are called grading certificates, which is an incorrect description. The grading reports may now include comments on treatments, a topic on which there is yet no universal agreement. Some identification reports are now trying to give comments on the amount of treatment a stone has undergone, for example the amount of oiling or resin-filling an emerald has been subjected to.
Why use reports?
The question to ask is why do we need grading reports and the simple answer is that they are used to put a value on a stone. It makes it simpler to compare stones, both for matching and for pricing. I recall when I first started trading in diamonds I would get a phone call with the question: “How much is a 1 carat diamond?” No matter what answer I gave I was told that they could get it cheaper and it was only after a second discussion could I tell them the price was dependent on the quality and thus give myself a chance of selling a stone.
Today I still get similar calls, although the enquiries seem to be more specific. I am now asked to quote for, say, a one carat diamond of color G and clarity VS1, again when I give a price I am told they can get it cheaper. The potential buyer thinks that by giving the parameters of color and clarity he has totally identified the stone. If I can get back to the caller I ask him he has such a stone and can he measure the diameter of the stone. If he can, I tell him his stone is of diameter of about 6.1mm. I am often asked how did I know and the simple answer is that a well-proportioned carat stone is of diameter 6.5mm and if he is being offered a stone below market value then there is a reason for this in that the stone is too deep or too flat, he has not considered the cut. Price is affected by the amount of fluorescence and the proportion of various facets. Price is also affected by the quality of the rough from which the stone is cut. Grading reports capture as many parameters as they can, but ultimately the final factor determining value is how the stone appears to the eye. One needs much experience to make these subtle judgments.
I have written much in the past about how we have come to have the terminology we use in diamond grading. The most popular system is that used by the GIA of letters for colors and terms such as VVS1 and SI2 for clarity. Other systems are used, using more descriptive terms but some such reports may have a chart showing how their system relates to the GIA one.
All this looks well to most traders, but unfortunately the comparison is not so simple. The main problem is that the sets of master stones used to determine color in different laboratories are not identical. Color is determined by using a trained eye to compare the stone with two adjacent master stones.
In some laboratories a stone that falls between the G and H master stones (i.e. worse than G but better than H) is considered to be G, whereas in others it is the stone between the F and G master stones (i.e worse than F but better than G) that is graded as G. Superficially these two systems seem to contradict each other, but if the G master stone in the one system is the same as the H in the other system then they are both seemingly coming up with the same answer. Thus when determining a master stone set the laboratory can claim that their master stone G, say, is a bottom G or a top G. But how these master stones sets compare to each other is something that is somewhat unknown. A similar problem exists for grading clarity.
The international diamond community tried to reconcile these problems by setting an ISO standard for diamond grading. An analogous problem could be for giving the weight of a stone. It is like some taking two stones of almost the same weight and saying that anything that falls between these two weights is identified as the weight of one of them. Thus if this was the method of determining weight, one could buy a stone in one place and be told that it weighs one carat, and when taken home and weighed again it was found to weight only 0.95 carat. Such ambiguity would be intolerable and, by convention, we have internationally recognized standards for weight. The ISO standard tried to achieve a similar convention for grading diamonds, bringing together the main systems used in the world. After 15 years of hard work the proposed system was not accepted.
Many in the diamond community would like to see such a standard adopted. This would help remove ambiguity and make the comparison of diamonds much easier. Unfortunately trade laboratories do not want to have their system replicated for outside use. Different centers use their own systems for grading and in order to buy and sell in these places one has to use the local grading report, and if one the goes to another center the stone may have to be regarded locally for the traders there. Imagine if one had to do this for weight! This was indeed done for many years from the early 1900s until the metric carat became standard. In many diamond centers one had to obtain an ‘official weight’, either through a local laboratory or a local trade organization. This problem no longer exists for weight, as most dealers now have accurate weighing balances, although the weight in a grading report still has a degree of being more official and thus acceptable than the weight given by the trader.
Thus the most pertinent question, whenever one is given a grading on a diamond, is to ask “Who says so?” Internationally some reports are more acceptable than others, although this can vary locally. If you have followed the arguments so far, you will probably see the need for one acceptable world standard. But I will try to show that even adopting a world standard we will still have ambiguity within the system.
Let me talk about the SI3 debate. The clarity grading for diamonds is accepted to be:
IF: Internally flawless
LC: 10x Loupe clean
VVS1 and VVS2: Very very small inclusions
VS1 and VS2: Very small inclusions
SI1 and SI2: Small or slight inclusions
P1, P2 and P3 or I1, I2 and 13: Visible inclusions
Many traders think that the band classified as P1 is too wide. That is, too many stones of different clarity appearance fall within this grade. One must remember that the grades determine the price and some stones within the P1 band look much better than others within that grade. Thus stones within the same grade could sell for significantly different amounts and traders wish the grading report to somehow show this differential. Some traders began to call the better P1 stones SI3. This new classification has been accepted by bodies such as the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB), many laboratories use it and it is shown on the Rapaport price listing grid. Other trade organizations and some of the major laboratories refuse to recognize this new grade.
The laboratories who refuse to use it claim that an SI stone has inclusions which are not visible to the naked eye, whereas P stones (pique stones) have inclusions which are visible to the naked eye. Bringing stones which have visible inclusions into a classification for stones with inclusions that are not visible will introduce a contradiction into the term SI. Further they argue it will be difficult to define the term SI3 for international use. Then there are those within the trade organizations who feel any changes in the rules will only confuse the trade and the public. They fear retrospective complaints. Thus a stone given a grade at one time could obtain a different grade if it is graded again. Although giving a stone a SI3 grade may be better than calling it a P1 stone, then some stones graded as SI2 may now be graded as SI3.
The reason that the terminology SI3 is being used is that for most traders it is easier to sell a stone with an SI grade than a P grade. This is because we have degraded the stones that have visible inclusions and there is a reluctance to buy a stone with a P grading. In fact very few stones with visible inclusions are graded as the report in most cases will hinder rather than assist a sale. Many dealers will not pass on a report which has a P grading. Thus they are opting for an SI, thinking that this will make it easier to sell the stone. What in fact is the case is not that it is called an SI stone but that it is no longer P1. Not being a P1 is the important criterion. We can call these stones anything we want, for example we could call them VI stones—visible inclusions.
I said above even if we come to agreements to have an ISO standard for diamond grading there are inherent problems within the system. Our grading system has all the trappings of being a scientific system; it has well defined terms, it is subject to measurements and we make use of scientific instruments, and work is done in laboratories by people with scientific qualifications. But at best it is a pseudo science. It is this because it does not really have well defined terms. Linguistically terms used in diamond grading are vague terms. The colors D, E, etc, have all ill-defined scientific basis. They indicate color but are based on only a vague concept of absorption of light. The whitest stone, i.e. the one with the least color, was taken to be D, a stone with a perceptible difference in color was taken as the next stone and called E, and so on for F, G, etc. There is no scientific relationship between the colors D, E and F. We can do this with weight. A 3 carat stone is three times as heavy a 1 carat stone. Also the color scale is no linear. The colors D, E, and F are closer together than the colors J, K and L.
A similar problem exists for clarity grading. The term ‘clean’ seems unambiguous, but in reality it is only clean because we can see no inclusion with a 10x loupe. Put this stone under a microscope and with sufficient magnification one will eventually find inclusions. So grading a diamond is more of an art than a science. Similarly, the terms VVS, VS and so son are again randomly chosen terms. The International Diamond Council (IDC) tried to put some science into the system by measuring the sizes of inclusions in microns. But for grading stones it was not only the size of the inclusion that determined the clarity grade but where it was positioned in the stone. This again brings the art into grading and not just a science of measurement.
Vague terms have no absolute values. Thus a very small elephant is much bigger than a very very large rat, and a spoonful of sugar varies from one time to the next. We understand these terms, we can use them correctly, but not in absolute terms such as grammes, meters or minutes. Those who argue that we cannot define an SI3 term fail to realize that they have defined, in an arbitrary way, all the terms that are used for diamond grading, other than measurements of size and weight and proportion, and introducing one more vague term into a system of vague terms is not beyond our means or imagination.
Those who argue that introducing such a term would make it easier to sell a pique stone have failed to realize that laboratories and grading reports are there to help the trade and not hinder it. Recent developments in the distribution of rough diamonds by organizations such as the Diamond Trading Company (DTC) and the shortage of better quality stones is going to result in more stones of lower grades being offered in the markets to satisfy demand for diamonds. It seems strange to degrade the quality description of such stones.
Another argument espoused by those who do not wish to change the terminology is that the change would confuse the trade and the public. I have used the term VI; this is an arbitrary term I have chosen, it is not a term I am necessarily advocating. It is somewhat provocative on my part in that some will say it is too similar to VVS and VS. The trade is remarkably adept in accepting innovation and anyone who cannot understand the terms we use should not be in the trade. As for the public, it is totally fallacious to say they will be confused. The average member of the public has absolutely no idea what a G/VS1 diamond is. It is not a terminology we are taught at school, but if a graded diamond is sold with a certificate it will have a glossary that explains exactly to him what these terms mean and how they relate to each other. Our trade is far more transparent than almost all other trades. When we look at the ingredients of a foodstuff we think we know exactly what we are eating but how many of us know what E145 is an additive?
Problems such as this and all the new treatments now being done to diamonds to improve their appearance, such as high pressure high temperature (HPHT) and the appearance of synthetic stones is causing consternation within the trade. The subject was discussed at the CIBJO Congress held in Bangkok at the end of February, and will no doubt come up at the World Diamond Council (WDC) meeting in Dubai at the end of March, and meetings being called by smaller groups in other localities. If history is anything to go by, little will be resolved, the conservatives will prevail, they will fear change and find themselves being retroactive instead of proactive. We do not want to resolve problems until they are imposed on us through forces beyond our control.
A final story will illustrate our unwillingness and inability to act. CIBJO allowed only the term ‘treated’ to be used for stones that had been processed by means other than cutting and polishing. White topaz was being irradiated to change its color into various hue of blue. CIBJO was asked to introduce the term ‘irradiated’ to describe such stones, but the term was not accepted and was banned; they had to be designated as treated. The US government brought in legislation that anything that had been irradiated had to be so declared when being imported into
the United States. This was to ensure that such stones would be tested for safety before being distributed. Declaring such stones as treated was inadequate. So CIBJO was forced to allow the term ‘irradiated’ into its lexicon, as otherwise there would not have been trade between the USA and the rest of the world in white topaz artificially colored.
I hope to report back in the next issue of Gem & Jewellery News on any changes, if any, that will be advocated by the trade in these Congresses.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Taxi Driver
Memorable quote (s) from the movie:
Betsy (Cybill Sheperd): You know what you remind me of?
Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro): What?
Betsy (Cybill Sheperd): That song by Kris Kristofferson.
Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro): Who's that?
Betsy (Cybill Sheperd): A songwriter. 'He's a prophet... he's a prophet and a pusher, partly truth, partly fiction. A walking contradiction.'
Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro): You sayin' that about me?
Betsy (Cybill Sheperd): Who else would I be talkin' about?
Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro): I'm no pusher. I never have pushed.
Betsy (Cybill Sheperd): No, no. Just the part about the contradictions. You are that.
Betsy (Cybill Sheperd): You know what you remind me of?
Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro): What?
Betsy (Cybill Sheperd): That song by Kris Kristofferson.
Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro): Who's that?
Betsy (Cybill Sheperd): A songwriter. 'He's a prophet... he's a prophet and a pusher, partly truth, partly fiction. A walking contradiction.'
Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro): You sayin' that about me?
Betsy (Cybill Sheperd): Who else would I be talkin' about?
Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro): I'm no pusher. I never have pushed.
Betsy (Cybill Sheperd): No, no. Just the part about the contradictions. You are that.
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