Buying a diamond abroad may seem like a bargain, but not if you're buying an enhanced gem, writes CONOR POPE
YOU’RE ON holidays and stop off in a lovely jewellers, where you see an enormous rock selling for a fraction of the price it would cost at home. So, bedazzled by its sheen and the sunlight, and maybe a little drunk from a boozy lunch, you buy it and bring it home, delighted with yourself.
Until you find out it is not the pure stone you thought it was. It is, in fact, an enhanced diamond. According to Irish diamond dealers, a growing number of overseas jewellers are selling enhanced diamonds to tourists without informing them of this fact.
An enhanced diamond is not fake or man-made, but a natural stone that has had its clarity or colour improved to create the impression that is of a considerably higher quality. Enhancements can take place in a number of ways: lasers drill microscopic tunnels into a rock’s core before it is soaked in acid to clear out impurities, or a substance is injected into it to improve clarity by as much as 200 per cent.
Because of this, you can pay around 40 per cent less for an artificially enhanced diamond, but it may not represent value for money; they still can cost thousands, have little or no resale value and if they need to be cleaned, resized or polished, the enhancement process renders them unstable.
Dublin jeweller Martin Gear has had four customers visit his shop in recent months to have enhanced jewels, bought unknowingly overseas or online, modified. “They’re just cheap diamonds with no resale value,” Gear says. They are also very hard to spot. “I have special lighting, high powered microscopes and have been working with diamonds all my life and I can just about spot the enhancements,” he says. “I have had people coming in having spent up to €5,000 on a diamond overseas and I have had to tell them they’ve been enhanced. They look amazing but they are worthless.”
Gear claims one in four jewellers in New York City has admitted to handling and selling enhanced diamonds and he claims the only way people can be sure they get what they pay for is to shop locally.
If you do decide to spend a significant sum on a diamond overseas, always ask for the gem’s certification – a jeweller should be happy to provide one. It will detail the quality of the stone and, crucially, say if it is natural or enhanced.
