Illustrated Guide

to the natural beauty and value of coloured diamonds

Introduction

The finest quality diamonds are memorialized as timeless objects of beauty and secure repositories of value. Colourless diamonds often called “white” diamonds may be considered a commodity, but each coloured diamond is a one of a kind work of natural art. coloured diamonds are much rarer than colourless diamonds, and therein lies their special value as collectors’ items, as adornments, and as hard assets that combine privacy of ownership with appreciating value.

“... I remember that stone ... it was an incredible colour, it had its own personality... I have never seen another one quite like it.” R. Winston 1990

For every 10,000 carats of diamonds cut, a mere single carat may possess fancy colour. A purplish-pink diamond from the Argyle mine in Australia may, literally, be a one-in-a-million proposition. One among numerous reasons their prices have never gone down at the dealer level during the past thirty years. In fact, prices of certain coloured diamonds have doubled every 5 years over those three decades.

Ownership of a fine coloured diamond is now, more than ever, within the reach of people of relatively modest means as well as connoisseurs and collectors. Multi-carat stones of pink, blue and green worth millions of dollars each may still change hands behind the velvet curtains of auction rooms, but within the past decade a much larger market has emerged, where coloured diamonds, of all sizes and all colours are regularly bought and sold.

In fact the world’s most celebrated diamonds are coloured. The famous sapphire-blue Hope Diamond from India, the fancy pink Williamson, the superb yellow Tiffany from South Africa, the Dresden Green from Brazil — these are the gemstones so extraordinary that they have received names.

Over the past decade a new generation of admirers of coloured diamonds has emerged, equally discerning and drawn by the same desire to possess something of value with no match anywhere in the world.

In response, a new international demand in the market has evolved, whose only immutable benchmarks are beauty, rarity and capital appreciation. coloured diamonds come in every size, colour — and price. Thus they are no longer the exclusive domain of major auction houses and the very privileged. This proliferation of buyers and sellers has brought the added safety and security that come from enhanced liquidity.

Rapidly becoming icons of exceptional taste and prestige, it is very difficult today to find an up-market magazine that does not feature two or three advertisements for coloured diamond jewelry.

No other form of asset is so rare, beautiful and enduring, with such a high degree of liquidity.

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