Diamond Prices: a Complete Guide

Blue Nile and James Allen are the industry leaders when it comes to diamonds (like Amazon is for many products). Firstly, had you gone through our education on quality, you would know that this was an undesirable diamond (cut a little too deep and better to avoid “I” color in cushion cuts. For example, we reviewed Shane Co and were offered a 1.01ct I VS2 cushion cut for $6,477. A store will always be more expensive than what you can find online, but figure out the right baseline and then you can decide if its worth paying premium “X” for the added value you feel you are getting from the store.

The only certificates that provide that are from the GIA and AGS laboratories. They are the gold standards for the diamond industry. 2) Quality – Now that we know which certificates to use, we need to understand all the qualities listed on the certificate and what we should do with that information. You may have heard of the four Cs of diamonds and we have articles on each of them: Color, Clarity, Cut and Carat.

If that diamond were an excellent cut and the SI1 was a beautiful SI1 that was way off on the side of the diamond and barely visible and the H color really looked like a G, and there was no fluorescence, then the diamond might trade at -20% or even -15% less than the Rap Price (in diamond jargon, this would be called “20 back” or “20 below”). This is the figure that is argued over. So while a seller might try to sell this diamond at “15 back,” a buyer might only wish to buy it for “20 below.” To calculate the actual price, you need to reduce that percentage from the Rap Price.

0.80, which comes to $6,080. But the difference between the same G VS2 and a 1 ct F VS2 is only $500! Take a close look. For example, the difference between a 1ct G color VS2 clarity diamond and a 1ct H color VS2 clarity diamond is a full $1000. Notice anything odd? The differences between adjacent prices in each matrix are very far from being uniform. Now, take another look at the sample “Rap Sheet” from before.