The Jewelry Insider

A diamond may be forever, and gold may be a precious metal, but that doesn’t mean that your jewelry won’t wear with time. Rutine wear can actually take quite a toll on jewelry: white gold starts to look yellow, scuff marks dull the once bright finish, valuable diamonds and gemstones come loose, and on and on. As with most items of value, the best approach with jewelry is preventative maintenance. Don’t wait until your diamond is on the verge of falling out to have your jewelry looked it.

It’s not always easy to see if jewelry needs to have serious work done, or if it just needs a quick cleaning to shine like it used to. The best approach is to have someone who knows jewelry, and who has had many years of experience working with it, examine your jewelry to see if there are any potential problems. At Arden Jewelers, we are happy to have our expert staff give your jewelry a check-up at no charge. It doesn’t take long, and it could save you some serious heartache and money down the line. Here’s our location and hours.

Arden Jeweler’s custom design specialist and jewelry CAD artist Angelo Parisi has been producing some cutting edge designs lately that we just had to share with you. Angelo was inspired by the displays he saw while walking the JCK Jewelry Show, and he has taken some of the gems he purchased there and turned them into world class designs. We don’t have space here to show you all of the new designs that Angelo has produced, but you can check them out at our design gallery.

For those of you who don’t know, Angelo has been using state-of-the-art jewelry design and manufacturing technology to produce custom designs for Arden Jeweler’s customers for severl years now. He designs the jewelry in a 3D virtual reality environment, and then produces photo-realistic renders of the piece for people to see before it actually produced. Then, our rapid prototyping machine litterally grows a wax model of piece one microscopic droplet at a time for incredible accuracy and fidelity to the computer model. Then all that remains is to cast the wax model in the metal that the customer desires, and set the gems.

If you want to see more of Angelo’s designs, please visit our custom design gallery.

Or, if you’re interested in learning more about the custom design process, you can read our in-depth article on the subject.

This weekend, over 20,000 of the world’s top jewelry companies are gathering in Las Vegas for the JCK jewelry show. Jewelry retailers explore the latest trends and attend some of the year’s most exciting and informative special events. Some of this years events include appearances by hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, Miss France Valerie Begue, and “American Gladiators” star Mike O’Hearn. Also, one the industry’s preeminent diamond experts, Martin Rapaport will deliver his “State of the Diamond Industry” address.

Angelo, Arden Jeweler’s custom design specialist, is attending the JCK show this year to talk with other jewelers and to bring back some exciting new jewelry. The show has an incredible variety of jewelry to offer from $100,000+ sapphires to elegant new engagement ring designs. We are excited to see the new pieces that Angelo brings back, and we will keep you posted when he returns.

When we think of diamonds, we often imagine brilliantly white gemstones. But every so often, a diamond will come out of the ground in vivid color. These diamonds are extremely rare, accounting for only 0.001% of the total number of rough diamonds that are mined. Because of this, they are often far more expensive than normal diamonds. Here’s a quick run down of the main fancy colors:

	YELLOW Yellow is one of the most familiar names known aside from white “colorless” diamonds. Canary is a term commonly used to describe intense yellow diamonds. Some of the yellows with higher intensity of color (Fancy Vivid Yellow) are as rare as the pink and blue diamonds.
	PINK Pink diamonds are rare and highly desired. Pink diamonds of higher intensity are the most rare. Most pink diamonds mined are faint to light colored (pastel colored). Many of the deep colored pink diamonds come from the Argyle mine in Australia.
	BLUE Natural blue color is one of the rarest of fancy color diamonds. These diamonds are amongst the most sought after by collectors. Color can range from faint to a very deep blue.
	RED Red is by far the rarest of all colored diamonds. Fewer than 20 stones have so far been certified as red diamonds. Some of these have fetched over a million dollars per carat, although most other colored diamonds fetch between five to six figures per carat.
	GREEN Green diamonds with no other secondary hues or modifiers are some of the rarest, and depending on intensity and purity of color, can command astronomical prices. Most green diamonds have either grey, brown or yellow modifiers.
	PURPLE Purple diamonds with no secondary hues are very rare. Most of these diamonds are less than one carat in size and are very seldom found in dark to vivid lilac colors. Most purple diamonds exhibit needle-like color zones.
	ORANGE Orange diamonds are not as rare as the red or green daimonds. Most orange colored diamonds have strong yellow or brown hues mixed in with the orange. Pastel colored orange diamonds are of similar value as pastel pinks and some blues.
	GREY Diamonds with grey as the primary dominant color are also unique. These diamonds are comparitively reasonably priced (in the high four to low five figures per carat).
	BLACK Black diamonds are not transparent, and do not show fire (flashes of color) as other diamonds, but can be extremely expensive where they are in the dark to vivid color ranges. Black diamonds may give off secondary color hues of grey or white.
	BROWN These are the most widely available and surprisingly affordable colored diamonds. They provide a beautiful low cost alternative to pink, blue, grey, green or yellow diamonds. Common names used to describe brown color are: champagne, chocolate, coffee, golden, honey, bronze, cognac, etc.

P.S. Thanks to Olympic Diamonds for some of the content here.

Gold and Platinum has dramatically increased in value in the past 5 years. Gold in one year had a low of $637 per ounce and high of $978 and climbing. Platinum in the same year had a low of $1168 per ounce to $2169 and souring higher. The five year low and high is even greater. Gold’s low was $322 and now is over $978 and Platinum’s low was $602 and has climbed over $2169.

If the jewelry item’s value was due in large part to gold or platinum, then the item might not be able to be replaced for the appraised value! Diamond values have also gone up in the same time period. In addition many gemstones have risen dramatically in the last five years. If your jewelry was appraised over three years ago, it you could be undervalued by 40% or more!

This has been a period of big changes in the jewelry field. We are dedicated to keeping up with all the adjustments and keeping our clients protected and informed.

P.S. Thanks to Kitco for the charts