... but sorry Shirley, diamonds AREN’T forever
SHIRLEY Bassey may have famously sung that ‘diamonds are forever’, but their value fell 40 per cent during the banking crisis eight years ago.
Diamond trading is an unregulated market so buyers should be wary of responding to tempting offers.
The London Diamond Bourse trading centre in Hatton Garden, City of London, verifies the quality of its members. Reputable diamond dealers also belong to The National Association of Jewellers – a trade body formed from a merger last year of The British Jewellers’ Association and National Association of Goldsmiths.
Tobias Kormind, co-founder of online dealer 77 Diamonds, admits the market has had a rough ride recently – with values falling 7 per cent last year. Yet he points out that over the past decade, prices are still up 50 per cent.
He says: ‘Each diamond is unique so it is hard to predict the value of a stone without studying it. Colour, clarity, cut and carat are critical as is contour – the shape that provides its sparkle. Any certificate of authenticity also helps.’
Companies such as 77 Diamonds are happy to value stones but they may have to take them out of any jewellery setting for a proper inspection. For diamonds, a single metric carat is about 200 milligrams. A one-carat diamond might sell for £2,000 but a five-carat diamond could be worth £30,000 – size matters.
Jean Ghika, head of jewellery at Bonhams, says: ‘Antique diamonds were cut by hand and no two are identical. In good condition, they fetch large sums of money. Coloured diamonds – pink, yellow and blue – are rare and have commanded good prices in recent sales.’
Over the past decade the value of coloured diamonds has risen 140 per cent, according to the Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index. Over the same period, topof-the-range 20-carat white diamonds have risen in value by about a third.
A pink diamond sold for a record-breaking £29million at Sotheby’s in 2010. The 24.78carat ‘Graff Pink’ was bought by jeweller Laurence Graff.
The biggest diamond ever found was a 3,106.75-carat (621.35g) ‘Cullinan’ mined in South Africa in 1905. It was cut into seven major stones and 96 minor ones – the biggest being the 530.4-carat ‘Great Star of Africa’ set into the Sovereign’s Sceptre with Cross of the Queen’s Crown Jewels.