Fred Cuellar illustrates the best new way to clean a diamond using Phillips most advanced toothbrush and how to make your own jewelry cleaning solution.

Fred Cuellar, The Diamond Guy®, and Dr. Mark Mehaffey discuss the truth about removing wedding bands–including gold, platinum, silver, titanium, stainless steel, cobalt, and tungsten. The equipment to remove or cut tungsten and cobalt wedding rings are not as readily available as some have lead you to believe. Fred shows you how to remove these tungsten and conbalt rings.

My father and I were going to New York to have ametting with the manager of DCI New York to see why clients were experiencing unusual delays on the processing of their orders. The meeting should have lasted only thirty minutes…it lasted nine hours.

September 6, 2005

The meeting was at our offices at 579 Fifth Avenue scheduled for 9:00am. We had the whole day for the meeting and whatever (shopping and eating) becuase we weren’t flying back until Wednesday, September 7. I had no idea when I walked into the office my life was going to forever change!

The Meeting

We exchange pleasantries for a while and then I got to the
point of the meeting.

Me: ‘Neil, as you know DCI New York is falling a little behind
in filling all the orders, and we just want to see what’s up?’
(I wanted to say ‘What’s up like the Budweiser commercials but
realized it was a little lame to use a 7 year old bit regardless
of how much I personally loved to say Wazzzzzup?!’).

Long Dramatic Pause’¦’¦.

Neil: ‘Fred, do you know how for 20 years you’ve been telling
people to buy shy?’

Me: ‘Ah huh.’

Neil: ‘Well, they did. And now they’re all gone —
the good quality ones.’

Me: ‘What do you mean they’re all gone?!’

Neil: ‘They are all gone! All the shy stones (.45 ‘” .49 ct,
.65 – .69 ct, 1.45 ‘” 1.49 ct, 1.85 ‘” 1.95 ct, 2.85 ct ‘” 2.95 ct)
are gone, and it’s not only those. All the full sizes over 3
carats are gone. The rough to cut 1.25 ct and 1.75 ct box
radiants are gone. The rough to cut 65/65 princesses in any
size are gone. The 65/65 Asschers are gone! Fred, they’re all gone!’

The conversation proceeded from there. For 9 hours, we tackled many questions. What rough was still available to fill current and future orders? What type of rationing was needed to stretch the current supply of ‘fulls’? A full is a hard weight diamond .50 ct, .75 ct, 1.0 ct, 1.50 ct, 2.0 ct, and rough to cut full sizes was still available. Important note: When I tell you, the reader, that the world is running out of diamonds, again, I am only referring to the good diamonds, not the commercial grade stuff
that consolidators like Costco, Sam’s, Blue Nile, Zales, Bailey Banks & Biddle, Mondera, or Dirt Cheap Diamonds sell. There is no shortage, nor will there ever be a shortage of commercial grade diamonds.

Everyone defines a ‘good’ diamond as a diamond that holds or appreciates in value over time when you try to sell it. Commercial grade diamonds, on the secondary market, sell for only a small fraction of what you paid. That is also the case now for the fancy shapes (pear, marquise, emerald cut, asscher, oval, heart, trilliant, baguette), and melee. They have little or no secondary market value. The three shapes that will hold their value and/or appreciate over time are round, box radiant, and standard radiant. The top price you’ll see for any commercial grade, fancy shaped, or melee diamonds will rarely be a penny more than 19.7% of the original dollar spent. While a good diamond (white, eye clean, Class 1 or 2, non-fluorescent, natural, fully bonded) will always bring you even money (100% of what you paid) as long as the vendor you bought it from stays in business. Even if they don’t, you’ll at least get 40-45% of what you paid as dump value (the average is 60%) or 80-85% on the secondary market to an end consumer who is not looking to flip the rock. There is no question, if you are going buy a diamond, it makes no sense purchasing a crummy one with bogus ‘certificates’ that don’t guarantee you anything. It leaves you holding a piece gravel if you ever want to part with your rock.

Anyway, this is what the market (world) is dealing with. Good diamonds in entire categories are extinct except the onesies and twosies, and what is left could be gone as early as 2010.

Related Article: Bonded Jewelers

By Fran Blandy (AFP)

KLEINZEE, South Africa — The glittering diamonds are almost gone and as the lustre fades on South Africa’s Diamond Coast, desperate ghost towns are left clinging to the last signs of life.

The heyday of diamond mining may be over, but the restoration of a once-pristine landscape along the country’s west coast should turn this wasteland of scarred earth into a tourist paradise.

Isolated under strict security for 80 years of mining, towering mine dumps reach hundreds of metres into the air along the coast, the site of one of the most ambitious mining restoration projects to date.

It’s hard to believe it by looking at the area now. The sole customer in a supermarket on a recent day in one of the mining towns, Kleinzee, said the industry has left it looking as if a “nuclear bomb was dropped on it.”

Since 2007 the world’s leading diamond company De Beers has drastically cut operations at its Namaqualand mines as the precious gem runs out, reducing staff from about 3,000 to 250.

Globally, known diamond reserves are expected to run out in 30 years.

Kleinzee, located about 600 kilometres (370 miles) north of Cape Town in the country’s biggest and most sparsely populated province of Northern Cape, is entirely owned by the diamond giant.

Schools, recreation centres and houses stand mostly empty.

Its mine has already shut down and residents wait desperately for officials to proclaim an end to its life as a privately owned mining town so individuals can buy homes themselves and try to breathe life back into business.

“All my friends lost their jobs. This is a mining town, what must they do here?” said local supermarket owner Ann Engelbrecht, whose sales have dropped 60 percent with only a trickle of tourists and locals sustaining her.

She took over the Spar in 2007 after working for De Beers since 1984, and says she has already had two heart attacks from the stress, making opening hours ever later and shutting down completely over weekends.

“It is just not worth it anymore. Business is so bad but I really believe if the town is proclaimed it will get better.”

De Beers, grappling with how to leave the town, is partnering with conservationists to reinvigorate the area through tourism, fish farming and other industries.

The project highlights increasing concerns about the environmental footprint left by mining and the responsibility of companies to mitigate it.

Gert Klopper, De Beers Namaqualand spokesman, says the company hopes the project will improve the image of the diamond industry, long blighted by conflict and violence.

“I think it’s the first time anywhere in the world that it (restoration) has taken place on such a large scale,” he tells AFP of the 463 million rand (56 million dollar, 40 million euro) project.

De Beers owns some 10 percent of South Africa’s 2,500-kilometre coastline, much of which has been extensively mined.

Conservation experts are now busy filling gaping holes and transplanting sensitive plant species to restore the vast plains to their former glory.

“The succulent Karoo is one of only two arid hotspots in the world with more than 4,500 plant species. The whole of Europe doesn’t have the same number of plant species,” says environmental officer Werner Nel.

Klopper notes that while some 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) have been mined, a total of 90,000 hectares were restricted from the public for decades, meaning “huge tracts of land have been pristinely preserved.”

Thick and varied vegetation which comes alive with wildflowers in spring stretches for miles to sandy white dunes and idyllic beaches ideal for surfing.

With the rest of South Africa’s coast overdeveloped, it is hoped a new tourist attraction will be created along with hundreds of jobs in the most isolated corner of the country.

Sea water pumps designed for mining are now helping fill the pits, which are being turned into oyster and abalone farms.

Already exposed bedrock is being eyed for nearly 100 wind turbines along the wind-blown coastline — to create much needed renewable energy in the power-strapped country.

Other plans are underway to create land art, a marina, seawater greenhouses and hiking trails, and even to turn one massive pit into a concert venue.

“It will take 10, 20, 30 years to get to the point that you can’t see mining happened here,” says Andre Meyer of the Nurture, Restore, Innovate project which is restoring the land for De Beers.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Click here for original article.

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• All Palladium VP products come with a life time destruction guarantee and sizing guarantee

And finally, look at the price! Counterfeiters could take Mexican Palladium and stamp it VP but they won’t be able to sell it at white gold prices ($500-700.00). If the vendor you’re thinking of buying from says they can sell you a 6mm half round heavy comfort fit Palladium VP ring for under a grand, they are probably trying to pull the wool over your eyes. As long as platinum prices are overly inflated, I think it’s only natural to look for an alternative. Palladium VP is to platinum what Ethanol is to fossil fuel gasoline. It’s just a smart way to go!

1. An observer
2. A diamond
3. A light source

• The crown (top)
• The girdle (around the middle)
• The pavilion (the bottom).