How the jewelry has industry changed
I have been out of the jewelry business for about 8 years but I just saw a commercial that both brought back memories and surprised me.
Back in 1986 when I was being trained I was taught the GIA color scale D through Z with D being colorless to with Z being dark yellow to brown. Likewise I was taught those which were yellow or brown were industrial grade, used in diamond drill bits ect.
Then a few years before I changed careers I started hearing of Canary or Champagne diamond sometimes called fancy diamonds which were "very rare". But, I was told by a gemologist that these were the "trash" or industrial diamonds which were sold for a few dollars a pound rather than hundreds of dollars per carat a few years earlier.
At about the same time the company I worked for sold some 1 carat diamond tennis bracelets for $99 each, the diamonds were brown about as low on the color chart as you could go. They cost the company about $10 a piece. We used them as advertising hoping the customer would see how bad they were and decide to purchase the $299, $599 or $999 variations if not we still made $89 each and since we had what we advertised it was not bait and switch.
So the industry found a way to take yellow diamonds which were at one time almost worthless and sell them for as much or more than the near colorless and the brown diamonds to sell in really cheap jewelry getting more than the tool industry would pay.
Now I just heard a commercial advertising Chocolate diamonds I wonder if these are the brown diamonds which were part of the $99 bracelets we had for sell.
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