How to Tell Cultured Diamonds From Real
Diamonds are a girl's best friend, but not every girl can afford a big fancy colored diamond---or can they? "Cultured" diamonds have been on the market, and with vivid colors like yellow selling for about a third of their natural counterparts, most every woman can own a canary or fancy pink diamond. If you are buying a fancy colored diamond, or any diamond, it can be difficult to tell a cultured diamond from a mined one. These man-made diamonds are diamonds, but for their point of origin. They offer identical hardness, fire, sparkle and luster compared to real diamonds, but they can be detected from mined diamonds. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
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Use a reputable jeweler who deals with reliable sources and keeps track of his suppliers. These jewelers are not willing to ruin their reputation in order to make a little money selling a man-made diamond in place of a real one.
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Look on the culet, or side edge, of the diamond, which can be seen with a jeweler's 10x loupe. The two largest man-made diamond manufacturers, Gemesis and Apollo, laser inscribe their name onto every diamond larger than a quarter carat. All the companies to date that create man-made diamonds fully disclose to their dealers.
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Read the diamond's certification. If the diamond is certified by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), the grading certificate will state that it is not a mined diamond. The GIA has been very vigilant about what it calls "synthetic" diamonds and tests every diamond it grades.
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Have the diamond tested by an appraiser or certification lab that uses the DiamondView and DiamondSure machines to test for synthetic diamonds. The machines examine the growth patterns of the stones and test for a specific fluorescence pattern unique to these man-made stones.
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