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Diamonds - See No Evil
My job is to talk
about diamonds. How to get a good one, how not to get ripped off,
how to get the most for your money. But, I’m seeing a society
where the "truth" belongs to the one who can tell the
best story, not the one based on the facts.
For example, every
year 5,000 people are indicted, convicted and sentenced for a whole
list of horrific crimes. From petty theft, to rape, assault and
even murder. What is even more horrific is all these crimes hold
three special things in common; the men and women that are convicted
were primarily incarcerated on eye witness testimony, spend an average
of ten years in prison and oh, one more thing all of these criminals
are eventually set free because they are later proven to be innocent.
How must it feel to spend a decade of your life telling the whole
world you didn’t do it, to lose your family, friends, livelihood
all based on what some one else believes they see. As it turns out
magicians knew it a long time ago, that the hand was quicker than
the eye.
The eye can be fooled!
It happens everyday. In our streets, in automobile showrooms, to
tires we’re told are safe enough to drive our families around.
Now I’m not here to talk about how our justice system is broken
(I think all but the most naïve of us already knows that) or
about slick car salesman who try to sell us the virtues of undercoating
or who roll back odometers to give us the perception of more value.
It’s not even to pick on Firestone who felt profits superseded
the quality of a tire and the lives that trusted those tires not
to explode when driving 65mph. For me it’s still about diamonds.
"Seeing is believing", you might say.
But does believing constitute the truth? Does it constitute a fact?
Well try this on for size, for the last few years the diamond industry
has been fighting the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to not have
to disclose laser-drilled diamonds. The industry felt it was an
insult. For starters, to require disclosure of a treatment that
alters the value or durability by changing the FTC guidelines would
be paramount to announcing to the world that jewelers are dishonest.
Jewelers can’t be trusted to tell the truth.
For God’s sake,
the industry can police itself. But every year over 5,000 complaints
are registered at the Better Business Bureau, FTC and Jewelers Vigilante
Committee that this system of the fox guarding the hen house wasn’t
working. People were and are buying diamonds every day based on
who has the best story to tell and with a constant reminder "See
for yourself, isn’t it a beautiful diamond?" Even in
the casinos with no clocks and free liquor you know what your odds
are.
But in a jewelry store with its hundred canned spotlights, its
very good stories, its lab grading reports and its appraisal documents,
we lay our money down. Is it worth it? It must be it’s an
AGS000. Is it worth it? It must be, it’s been graded by GIA. Is
it worth it? It must be, it’s 100%
natural. Is it worth it? It must be, just look how pretty it is.
And that is where they get you. That is where they set the hook.
Then to reel you in, the jeweler says, "How can you put a price
on something that lasts forever?" The love card.
So you forget about
the months or years it took you to save your money or the loan you
have to take out or even the VISA you’re going to max out at
a 22% interest rate because how can you put a price on love? The
illusion is complete. Like the frog that turns into the handsome
prince. The rock becomes the magical diamond. Seeing is believing
or maybe better said believing is seeing. That’s where any
good salesman will get you. If he gets you to believe; you will
see. Last month the FTC changed their guidelines and made it mandatory
to disclose laser-drilled diamonds or for that matter any form of
treatment that would give you the impression that something is better
or more valuable than what it is.
The convict gets
released, the automaker gets fined, the tires get recalled. Is that
the lesson here? The end justifies the means until you get caught.
The poor go to jail, the rich go free. If we see no evil than, everything’s
okay. Good always triumphs in the end. Let me ask you this, if 5,000
men and women are convicted for crimes they didn’t commit,
if there are over 5,000 complaints each year about non-disclosure
in treatments, how many people are still in jail that are innocent
and how many diamonds are on the fingers of our loved ones and are
worthless?
Here’s one
more thing to chew on; it has just been announced (to the jewelry
industry not the public of course) that a company by the name of
3-Beams Technology (a separate division of Norsam) has created a
process called Focus Ion Beam Technology. FIB for short. Apparently
taking ideas from Los Alamos National Laboratory, FIB instruments
can focus a beam of ions down to a diameter of 7 nanometers (that’s
.000007 millimeters, or .00000028 inches). Using this technology
they can drill a diamond to remove carbon leaving a drill hole 1/1000th
the size of the current technology.
According to 3-Beams’
CEO, Jayant Neogi, with a special modification a gas can be injected
into the void which will solidify making the drill hole practically
invisible.
FTC makes a law
that treatments must be disclosed then the industry we were supposed
to trust announces a new way not to get caught. What’s the
moral of this story? Seeing is not believing, take everything with
a grain of salt and please cut the deck before you’re dealt
a hand.
by Fred Cuellar, author of the best-selling book
"How to Buy a Diamond."
More questions? Ask
the Diamond Guy®
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