In this age of the "Information Superhighway", when super models are auctioning their eggs to infertile couples, it appears that there's nothing you can't buy over the Internet. Seems like yesterday (it was) that companies selling diamonds over the Internet were thought of as a novelty, but today there are literally thousands of such sites. It still works that same way. You locate a diamond merchant on the web and look over a selection of stones.
Full-color, high-resolution images of the diamonds are displayed on the screen. The diamonds are graded by carat weight, cut, clarity and color. You select a stone you like, enter your credit card number and your diamond will be shipped.
Then as now my major concern is the quality of the stone's proportions. In my cyber travels I find lots of "off-makes" (poorly proportioned stones). I could tell they were taking rough which if properly cut would have yielded shy-carated stones and cutting them heavy to reach full-carat weights even if it meant sacrificing sparkle for size.
One dealer actually marked spread-cut diamonds with a "+" sign, offering them as more durable (and more expensive) claiming they were more brilliant and looked "larger than would be expected" for their weight. Well, we know that a spread-cut diamond offers brilliance at the expense of fire and probably has a very thin girdle which would cause a durability problem.
In the process, they offer lots of full-carated diamonds and a very few opportunities to "buy shy". They try to force the buyer to their strong suit where their inventories are the heaviest. If you want a .90ct SI-1, I then don't be pushed into a 1ct SI-1, G, unless you get it for the .90ct price and all the parameters of cut are at least Class II.
In short, you're forced to hunt for the needle in the haystack. However, the issue is much more complicated now if for no other reason than the advent of treated diamonds. That's just one of the many scams currently afloat.
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