Spring is still in the air for a few more days, and oxytocin is apparently flowing in abundance because celebrities are popping the big question left, right, and center.
Among celebrity ladies entering the next stage of their lives are singers Jennifer Lopez, and Britney Spears. All three were on the receiving side of some unusual diamond engagement rings.
Interestingly, while there is only a 4.5-carat difference between the two stones, differences in price are astonishing, and not what one might expect.
Batman actor Ben Affleck spent around $6m for Jlo’s green 8.5-carat diamond, and on the other end of the spectrum, actor Sam Asghari gave Britney Spears a 4-carat round jewel estimated to cost around $80,000.
One cannot help but notice a $5,920,000 price difference between the two. Diamonds don’t have to be as big as a Ford Pickup to be pricey—size is only a single aspect of what makes a stone valuable, and it’s not always the most important.
Mere mortals won’t be able to sling a ring in the six or seven figures, but since most people purchase a diamond at some point in their lives, it’s important to understand how all of this stuff works.
Diamonds are appraised according to what’s known as “The 4Cs,” which stands for cut, color, clarity and carat. Historically, jewelers would pick up a gem and simply peer at it under magnification, and this is how most 4Cs grading is done.
Jewelry store window shoppers have probably seen official looking certificates from an organization called the GIA. This would seem to imply that buyers know what they’re getting.
Like most things in life, it’s not so simple. GIA certificates aren’t necessarily reliable, and even a small discrepancy in grading can translate into thousands of dollars over a stone’s market value.
Fortunately, modernity has caught up to this problem because a company called Sarine Technologies uses lab machines to accurately analyze and grade diamonds.
Sarine has been on the scene since 1988 and is a leading provider of industry tech innovations. The company operates a fully automated lab with state-of-the-art diamond scanning stations. 3D optical sensors and AI ensure that 4Cs grading is performed with scientific accuracy.
Another benefit of electronic grading, however, is that this technology measures light performance and inclusion details that extend well beyond the 4Cs, and these factors also contribute to value.
There’s no need to become an expert in this stuff, because shoppers can simply ask for a Sarine digital report from any jewelry store. Even if the item of interest already has a GIA certificate, a second opinion is always a smart idea.
Anne Bhatt is on the gemology faculty of a school in Southern California. In a Zoom interview, she talked about why Jennifer Lopez’s green diamond is of considerable value.
“Fancy colors such as Ms. Lopez’s diamond are so rare that most people will never see one in person. As with all colors of natural stones they are carried upward by lava flows from miles underground.”
Bhatt said that these unique minerals achieve their color from constant radioactive exposure to nearby elements. “This bombardment displaces electrons in the crystal lattice, which creates a green hue,” she explained.
When it comes to evaluating a fancy color, it works a bit differently than the way 4Cs are applied to the usual colorless diamonds that people are acquainted with.
Danny Sachorov is the owner of Sachorov, Ltd., a luxury jewelry boutique in Santa Barbara. “Colors are graded by matching a stone to reference gems that work like color swatches,” he explained over the phone.
“Each reference has a range of grades, and so the comparison gets finer and finer.” This illustrates how complex grading can be, and why “eGrading” is important.
According to Brides Magazine, the average engagement ring size in the United States is one carat, and experts say that this will cost around $4,000 on average. Now that digital grading is available to everyone, couples can leverage technology to get the most stone for the price.
