Diamond

Collectors' Tips

In some places you can reach down and pick up a diamond; sometimes all you have to do is pan it from the bed of a stream. Some places, but not anywhere close to here.

To collect diamonds in Canada, you're going to need perseverance, ingenuity, much luck, geological training and practice, deep-pocketed investors, and heavy-duty and highly sophisticated equipment just to find them in the first place, never mind what's involved in getting them out of the permanently frozen rock that holds them. Perhaps retail is the better option.

The retail value of a diamond is based on four factors: colour, clarity, cut, and weight.

The colour (or lack of colour) of diamond is determined by the degree of perfection of its crystal structure: distortion of diamond's atomic structure by non-carbon atoms affects the way light is absorbed in the crystal, thereby producing colour. While it may not be obvious to an untrained eye, most diamonds have at least some colour, particularly yellow and brown. Truly colourless diamonds are quite rare. Red, blue and green are the rarest colours. Orange, violet, yellow and yellowish-green are more common. Most common, gray or brown diamonds can be translucent or opaque, and are used for industrial purposes.

Evaluation of a diamond's clarity considers blemishes inside or on the surface. These are often tiny crystals included in the diamond crystal. The fewer inclusions the better, because clearer diamonds are more brilliant when polished, and are rare. Despite the fact that inclusions are common, many are not visible to the naked eye. Clarity is rated along a relative scale. Diamonds may be transparent, translucent or opaque.

In a well-cut diamond, light enters the top, bounces around inside the diamond from one facet to another, and exits back again through the top, whereupon the eye perceives brilliance and colourful fire from the returned light. If the cut or faceted stone is poorly proportioned, light escapes through the sides or bottom, and a less-brilliant display results.

"Diamond in the rough" is a familiar metaphor. Its original use recognizes that the inherent light-refracting qualities of a diamond crystal's closely knit atomic structure may be exploited through refinement: diamond's sparkle and fire are released by the faceting of a well-proportioned cut. (Actually, minerals are shaped by polishing or grinding, not cutting as by a knife). The brilliant cut of Nature's polished Canadian diamond is the most effective at bringing out brilliance.

The weight of gemstones is measured in carats. The original standard for this unit was the seed of the carob tree, but now one carat is fixed at 0.2 grams. Production in the 1990s annually yielded 100 million to 113 million carats of all qualities world-wide. Despite this seeming abundance, the number of polished stones produced that are of very good clarity and weigh more than 0.5 ct can be counted: annually, there is an average of a few hundred thousands.