Designs to tickle your fancy

The plethora of treatments and the increased availability of lab-grown fancy colour diamonds have made it even more important for our industry to know what is out there. Some of the colours are obviously not ‘natural,’ while others can deceive even a trained gemmologist at first examination. If a stone presented as natural has a price that seems too good to be true, the warning flags should go up. A well-equipped gemmological laboratory should be able to determine origin.

If you or your client is only interested in the esthetics (and the durability advantages) of diamonds and wish to use HPHT-treated or lab-grown diamonds, they can be an excellent alternative at a fraction of the price of their naturally coloured cousins. There is certainly a market for these stones, but my personal feeling is they are not likely to increase in value over time (like natural diamonds) and are best marketed as attractive and durable gems.