Natural Coloured Diamonds

Could someone please put me straight on this as I was just listening to Scot and by the way he is talking and comparing, he is making it sound as if the coloured diamonds he is selling are natural. Also, the other night I heard Lynne talking in a similar way. I always thought their coloured diamonds were enhanced in some way to change the colour as the natural ones are so expensive. If they are enhanced, I think their sales' patter is extremely misleading.

Did he mean the pink diamonds Jacqualina? I don't know anything about it, but I too thought the blue and black diamonds were enhanced by heat treatment, and their yellow diamonds certainly seem to be a lot more vibrant in colour than those I've seen on TJC.

No doubt our resident expert will be along soon to put us straight :4:

:doggie:

I am not sure, i always thought natural ones are paler in colour, unless you pay a small fortune, but there is every chance i am wrong as i am not very well verse i these matters. Meeshoo should be able to help

They did have some natural pink diamonds set in 18k a while ago (as confirmed by Steve Ashton in the good old days), but they were a lot more expensive that the ones they have on now (which are set in 9k). I'm sure I read somewhere on this forum that the current crop are treated.

The unfortunate thing is you can't even contact them to ask, because you can't be sure that the person on the other end of the e-mail will really know what they're talking about.

They are irradiated. I found the thread - see Meeshoo's post number 13.

http://www.shoppingtelly.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6894&highlight=irradiated&page=2

Thanks everyone. Why did Scott compare them to the Hope Diamond then and to a $1,000,000 coloured diamond that some filmstar wore on her back to the Oscars? Why did Lynne say that for serious gem collectors, they should have at least one of every colour in their collection? Why do they tell us how extremely rare black diamonds are? It's all so misleading, especially for newbies to gem collecting. I haven't bought from TJC for ages now, but at least they have the decency to state when their coloured diamonds are treated.

From my own personal experience, naturally coloured diamonds were the very pale pink ones in a range that appeared more a year ago..... set in 18k two-tone gold. The pinkies were set in rose gold - you can guess whyfor! :1:

This new range seems much brighter in colour eg I had this delivered today and the yellow is fairly bold, even though the diamonds are tiny. On the plus side, I would say that the treated coloured diamonds are of a higher quality than the surrounding white diamonds......which are rather milky in appearance.

I have the notion that Cognac / Champagne diamonds are likely to be natural in colour and came across this link re. brown diamonds.

I was told by a friend who was in S Africa in the sixties that these sort of diamonds used to be chucked away :11: if not required for industrial purposes. High fashion they were not!!

Sacha that ring looks nice

I get VERY VERY VERY annoyed when presenters mislead. They've done this here and with the TP (see other thread). Right, here's the skinny ....

They did have a range of natural yellow and pink diamonds (as has been said before) BUT they were small in carat weight and set in 18k gold (generally). The pinks were pale and the yellows a lemon colour. This, I believe, was a one off range and the items were fairly expensive.

ALL OF THEIR BLUE DIAMONDS are irradiated. Natural blue diamonds are extremely rare and extremely expensive. You can tell they're irradiated by their colour which tends to be a deep dark(ish) blue. To compare what GemsTV are selling to the Hope Diamond is incredibly misleading. Natural blues tend to be more pale. You can see some here:
http://www.amgad.com/Blue_Diamonds.asp

ALL OF THEIR GREEN DIAMONDS are irradiated. Natural green diamonds are even more difficult to source than blues. If these were natural greens you could add on a few 0's to the price! Again, here are some greens, they tend to have a secondary grey, brown or yellow tone:
http://www.amgad.com/Green_Diamonds.asp

YELLOW DIAMONDS. I'm assuming the majority of GemsTV's yellows are irradiated. They certainly look it and the price would indicate they are. Whilst natural yellow diamonds come in all colours ranging from pale lemon to a vivid bright yellow, the price will indicate whether they're irradiated or not. All of the yellows I've bought from GemsTV have been irradiated with the exception of the natural range they brought out a couple of years ago. These were heavily marketed as natural and confirmed as such by SteveA.

PINK DIAMONDS. If pink diamonds are tiny (i.e. like accent diamonds) they could be natural but if I'm not mistaken, when selling the latest crop of pinks they were very careful not to mention whether they were natural or treated. I actually phoned and was told they were irradiated.

NEARLY ALL BLACK DIAMONDS on the market are irradiated. They used to be used for industrial purposes but have crept into jewellery more and more.

BROWNS/CHAMPAGNES/COGNAC and all the other "brown" fancy diamonds are usually natural. No idea if this is the case with GemsTV brown range but I would presume so. As Sacha says, these are diamonds of very little value and were considered worthless a while ago. However, I have to say that larger browns (i.e. .50ct and above) CAN be very beautiful and have wonderful fire.


Hope that helps.

Thanks for that Meeshoo, as informative as ever. I'm really annoyed then at how the presenters are inferring that these diamonds are natural because when you yatter on about the Hope Diamond and some $1,000,000 beauty worn by a film star to the Oscars in the same breath, in my opinion that is exactly what they are doing. I know they'll say that all treatments are fully disclosed on their website, but not everyone has access to that. It should be illegal and they should have their knuckles rapped. There, I feel slightly better now.

it's the old chestnut of them saying "natural" when they mean "mined from the earth" rather than synthetic. rather like when they bang on about their flamingo topaz being natural...