If you’ve read other pages of this website, you have by now learned about the industry standard Rapaport Diamond Report ™, which provides weekly updated pricing standards for diamond traders and dealers within the industry. We’ve also learned that while many top dealers buy and sell diamonds from each other at prices at or below Rapaport®, the average consumer has never even heard of this pricing sheet that has been used worldwide for over 30 years.

Your typical jeweler or local ‘dealer’ will markup the same exact stone and sell it to you, the consumer, at grossly inflated prices often two to three times or higher than what they paid! How has this deceptive practice been kept a secret for so long?

Two words: greed and marketing.

Diamonds are arguably the most sought after, precious commodity in the world. It is considered by most - especially Americans that consume up to 70% of the world’s diamonds - to be an extremely rare gem that is synonymous with wealth, prestige, status… and a physical display of one’s love and affection for another. As the DeBeers brothers famously coined, “A Diamond is Forever.”

In truth, aside from potential trace elements, a diamond is made entirely from the world’s most common element – carbon. And while diamonds are undisputedly stunning and often take hundreds of millions of years to form beneath the Earth’s surface, they are not in short supply.

DREW STILL WORKING ON THIS SECTION . QUESTION: HOW MUCH OF THE WORLD’S DIAMONDS ARE MINED or TAPPED? – NF gem quality diamond is rare. Diamond as a mineral is not rare.

How are we able to do this?

Because we have fully integrated the process of diamond and jewelry manufacturing, literally from mine to market. We cut out all the middle men – on average between 30-40 people have touched each stone, marketing it up along the way, and we have streamlined our mining and retail operations alike to have as little overhead as possible. In this way, we are able to stay above the competition and still make a fair profit. To us, selling our diamonds in the wholesale or retail market is largely one and the same. And we don’t believe in price markup for the sake of protecting a long held unspoken industry agreement of secrecy and lies.

Another factor contributing to deceptive pricing of diamonds in the industry lies with who is rating or grading the stone. If we take a look at our trusty Rapaport Diamond Report™, you can see how even one move up or down in color (for example, from “H” to “I”) or clarity (for example, SI1 to SI2) of the same exact shaped and sized diamond can have an enormous price difference… usually hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of dollars. So really understanding exactly what a particular color and clarity rating means, and more importantly, who graded that diamond is so very important.

The very first question you should ask your jeweler when he or she shows you a diamond is what grade it is, and if it is certified by an independent grading lab, such as the GIA. Safari Diamond only buys and sells diamonds with certification from the largest and most reputable labs in the world – GIA, EGL USA, or HRD Belgium – and we strongly suggest you only do so too.

Talk about florescence.
Talk about how jewelers get raised prices from the wholesalers. Talk about high overhead, online marketing vs. mall stores, higher prices.