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Fancy Pink Diamonds for the Holidays

24.78 ct. Fancy Intense Pink Diamond

24.78 ct. Fancy Intense Pink Diamond

The gem auction world is all a-twitter over this outstanding emerald cut diamond offered at the Sotheby’s Auction, November 16 in Geneva, Switzerland. Graded Fancy Intense Pink, the diamond is also unusually high in clarity, pronounced VVS2 by GIA. Described as pure pink with no secondary hues, the pre-auction estimate for this ultra-rare gem is is a sizzling hot 27,000,000–38,000,000! Wow!

For an affordable natural color pink diamond, consider this just-completed Mardon pendant, designed by Jim and Jenny Sweaney. We created this one-of-a-kind jewel with all re-cycled gold and recycled diamonds, including the .19 ct. center round, a very nice natural pink we discovered hidden in a flush setting of an estate ring we purchased.

Pink Star Pendant

Pink Star Pendant

Natural color diamonds are one of the rarest of all gems. For the most part, the natural yellow, pink, and blue colors we occasionally see in diamond are delicate pastel shades. Many of the colors are combinations of hues. sometimes desirable, sometimes not. Many natural pink diamonds have brownish overtones and many natural blue diamonds have a grayish or steely look.

To to describe the color of these beauties and grade these gems fairly, gemologists use a color grading language unique to diamond. We use the term “Fancy” to describe the attractive natural colors we occasionally see in diamond, including browns, yellows, oranges, greens, pinks, blues, and the rarest of all, red. The term Fancy denotes and identifies the color as natural–diamonds of treated color are not graded Fancy.

Remember these Fancy color diamonds are generally pastel tints, especially the pinks, blues, and greens. Where the color saturation of the 24 ct. diamond above is graded intense, were we to see the same color appearance in a sapphire or other pink gemstone, we would mostly likely grade the color as moderately strong or strong pink.

We use the modifiers Light, Intense, and Vivid to describe the level or intensity of the color, i.e. Fancy Light, Fancy, Fancy Intense, and Fancy Vivid. Secondary hues, particularly those that are attractive, like purple, violet, orange, can be used in the color description and can add value to these collectible gems, i.e. Fancy Violetish Blue, Fancy Intense Orangy Yellow, Fancy Purple Red. Conversely, secondary hues that are not attractive can detract from the value of a fancy color diamond.

We grade the pink center stone in our pendant as a Fancy Purplish-Pink color, with no brown overtones, a good I1 in clarity, and think it is a good transitional cut, faceted somewhere between the Art Deco period and the Modern period. The color reminds us of lavender. We’ve complimented it with .79 ct of recycled rounds and baguettes, all F-G color, VS+ clarity, and set in 14K white gold. We built the piece with our CAD/CAM Jewelsmith software and our ModelMaster CNC machine. Our stock ID for this unique piece is I-20516, priced at $2,995.

james l. sweaney cga fga. gg

james l. sweaney cga fga. gg

james l. sweaney cga fga. gg

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