Saturday, July 3, 2010

Cheap Diamonds: How To Make The Most Out Of Your Tight Budget

The diamond is considered as one of the most sought after gemstones in history. It serves as a manifestation of power, love, invincibility and refinement to name a few. Due to the acknowledgment given to such gemstone, along with the controversies surrounding its mining process, purchasing and owning a flawless diamond would definitely cost a person his fortune. If you have limited budget at hand and would like to buy cheap diamond, you can follow some of the simple guidelines below to secure one.

The first thing that you can do is to go online and search for online jewelry shops that offer inexpensive jewelry pieces. Purchasing diamonds online is a good option because compared to local jewelry stores that incur additional costs on their products as a form of coverage for their overhead expenses, online jewelry stores offer competitive pricing without extra charges often induced by overhead expenses, except of course for the shipping and handling fees as well as taxes. You can also try participating in online diamond auctions where jewelers usually bring to the table some of their inexpensive diamonds. Purchasing online saves you money, time and energy.

If you have no problem buying pre-owned items, another option that you can go for is to drop by at stores that offer discounted or inexpensive jewelry pieces. You can find these shops in the form of pawnshops and thrift stores. However, make sure that you are knowledgeable enough about diamonds so that you will know if what they are offering are real or not. Likewise, be prepared to get a bit disappointed because at most times you might leave a shop without any purchase, but if you're lucky enough you can get a good deal for sparklers that are still in good condition or you can even get rare pieces for that matter.

Another practical option when buying cheap diamond is to go for the so called loose diamond. A loose diamond is a type of diamond that hasn't been utilized for jewelry production process. Compared to read- to-wear diamond jewelry pieces, loose diamond is more economical because you don't have to pay for metals used for ready made diamond jewelry pieces, the services, warranty coverage and the gift casing. With loose diamonds, you can be as creative as you want and make your own customized jewelry designs.

Alongside online shopping and buying loose diamonds, you can also get cheap diamond by downgrading some of its characteristics. Downgrading one or two of the 4Cs of diamonds can profoundly affect their market value. If you're worried about the quality of your sparkler, you don't have to because downgrading does not incur discernible reduction on the quality of the diamond. For example, in terms of clarity downgrading instead of buying flawless diamond, you can just settle for a diamond that has lower clarity rating but can still be considered as eye-clear, or in terms of carat try purchasing diamonds that have carat grades shy away from full numbered or exact half numbered carats.

Lastly, if you are really tight on budget, you can settle for clarity enhanced diamonds or treated diamonds. All diamonds, except for rare and flawless ones, contain flaws known as inclusion or imperfection. Inclusion determines the clarity grade of a diamond. So, when you speak of clarity enhanced sparklers they have imperfections that were corrected by irradiation, filling imperfections, laser drilling and so on, but such quality enhancements are not discernible for the untrained eyes; thereby making this option a good one for people with tight budgets.

Inexpensive jewelry pieces are hard to find nowadays, unless you wanted to settle for something that is low on quality. However, when it comes to gemstones, you can purchase cheap diamond in the form of clarity enhanced diamonds. Although they don't exemplify the same quality as that of flawless diamonds, these touched-up pieces are also good finds because aside from their low price tags, their enhancements are truly hard to discern by untrained eyes.

-Lorraine Jacobs

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