The ancient times gave birth to many legends about everything in the world, including diamonds. For example, Romans and Greek believed that diamonds were the tears of the gods. Today we live in a times of different diamond legends, which are no less beautiful and no less require clarification.

1. The biggest diamonds are the best

Some people think that the more carats does the diamond have, the more valuable it is. Let’s clarify, what does the carat mean? For 1 carat stone a 0.2 grams of a diamond is taken. But don’t forget, that diamonds are valued by the complex 4C’s system, which includes Cut, Color, Clarity and Carat weight. If you have a perfect in clarity small-sized diamond it can overcome the bigger diamond with a little flaw. One should always consider all the aspects of the C4 when buying or selling a diamond.

2. Jewellers earn big money

Jewellers make significantly more money, selling other precious stones. The markup for diamond makes up from 5% to 10% as this field has very high competition and in order to sell a diamond a jeweller has to offer attracting price. Selling a higher weighted and purer diamonds brings even lesser profits, as the customer might be hard to find.

Being embedded in a system, where jewellers buy overpriced diamonds from cutters and producers, they are also not interested in buying back the diamonds from customers, as they can’t offer buying them back for the same price they had once sold. The manufacturers are constantly raising the prices which overlaps the natural growth.

3. Diamonds are unbreakable

It is said, that the diamonds are the hardest gemstones in the world, as they are created deep under the surface of the planet with extreme heat and high pressure. Unfortunately, the diamonds can be shattered.

Chemically, diamonds consist of the carbon atoms in crystal form. But every diamond has a cleavage lines, where the molecular arrangement of the atoms is comparatively less tightly bonded. This makes the area around the the Girdle (the Outer Edge) thin and weak enough to get damaged by forceful blow at the right angle.

Some diamonds are more fragile than others, like the princess cut ones. Diamond holders are recommended to store each stone in separate pouches to avoid friction between the diamonds.

4. Color and clarity grade influence price the most

Besides for the people concentrating on carat weight, there are others who mostly care about the color and clarity. The color of the stone is graded with an alphabet, starting from top-grade D indicating a perfect vivid or colorless diamond. The lower grades start from K and mean that there is a yellow color to the stone, which considered a lower quality because such stones look darker.

Choosing between two diamonds with similar carat weight one should not judge by the alphabet grade system only. With two similar stones the cut is the most important feature. The cut contributes to visual performance and the value of the diamond much more, than the color and transparency, especially when there are no visible spots inside.

5. There are no blood diamonds on a diamond market

The Kimberley Process Certification, a global process that controls the trace of rough diamonds, does not fully certifies on fair trade practices. Which means the origin of diamonds is still difficult to tell. Although the trade of conflict diamonds, funding conflicts in war-torn areas of the central and western Africa, may be stopped, there are still many issues with social standards and labor violations in the diamond industry, especially regarding mining giants.

If some jewellery shop tells you it’s not blood diamonds, think twice before believing. A polished diamond with shiny certificate might looks really good and still comes from completely hidden sources.

So how can one find a trustworthy diamond? Buying it openly and directly from a reputed merchants and companies passed KYC on Diamond Open Market.