Diamond Engagement Rings

Video Transcript

"When considering the purchase of a diamond engagement ring there are four essential things you should consider. That is color, clarity, cut, and carat weight. My name is David Kruger and I'm with Kruger's Diamond Jewelers in downtown Austin. Clarity has to do with the presence or absence of imperfections in the diamond. These are imperfections typically that were in the diamond when they came out of the ground. A good diamond salesperson should be able to explain the different clarities to you and give you a chart and show you different diamonds of different clarities. The next thing to consider is color. Diamonds come in all colors but the ones that are most often sold are colorless which is a D color to JK color and even darker than that. The lower on the alphabet, the greater presence of yellow in the diamond, the higher in the alphabet the closer to colorless in the diamond becomes. The cut of the diamond has to deal with the type, the methodology of faceting the diamond. The most popular cut is a brilliant cut and the brilliant cut can come in a round shape, a pear shape, a marquise, an oval a princess cut and a radiant cut. So all those are brilliant cut but they are all different shapes. One of the things before you go shopping for an engagement ring is to determine which shape you would like and possibly explore some of the other shapes when you go into the jewelry store and you see them in live and in person so to speak. The last topic that you want to consider is the carat weight. Carat weight deals strictly with weight and it is on a decimal system just like dollars and cents so if you have a diamond that is .50 you have a half carat just as if you would have two quarters in your pocket and diamonds come in all sizes. There are some economies of scales to be realized by buying different size diamonds. In other words if you were going to buy, if you wanted a one carat diamond but you couldn't afford it, a diamond that weighs say 92 points is going to be dramatically less expensive than a 1 carat but in terms of the diameter of the stone and the way it looks in a ring is going to look almost identical so that you can achieve the look but stay within your budget. So those are the four c's that you need to consider in buying a diamond. My name is David Kruger with Kruger's Diamond Jewelers in Austin, Texas."