Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:22 pm Posts: 21602 Location: San Francisco
Good marketing move. Setting their service apart from other labs. Reassuring to those needing reassurance.
BUT, unless the criteria is made transparent and universally accessible to everyone in the trade, it would appear as if their determinations would be hard to confirm..... subjective at best.
So, in conclusion, I think the idea is a smart one albeit a bit cheesy.
Personally, I would agree it's mainly just marketing.
I understand you need to stand out in today's day and age but I'm not sure if it's exactly how I'd be looking at doing it. I could see it being useful if you had a lot of different stones go through their grading but as their points don't really relate to anything we use in valuation (at least that I'm aware of) it would only help the people try and describe stones really. I can, however, see it being a problem with some people trying to get a higher price because they have a 91 instead of an 83 or something similar but I agree that it would be entirely subjective as maybe that 83 has a very interesting / beautiful inclusion that someone would find far more desirable than the clean 91 so for valuation purposes it's going to be next to useless.
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:22 pm Posts: 21602 Location: San Francisco
While on the subject, IGR - Rivista Italiana di Gemmologia; Italian Gemological Review, just posted a brilliant editorial on this subject.
Quote:
Adjectives vs. Numbers. About old and new gemstone Classification Systems
Usually, proposals meant to be innovative by their authors are welcomed with a red carpet, maybe just out of mere formal courtesy. Since I am being given the chance to freely discuss, I will then be your Bad-Mouthed Jiminy Cricket, who goes against the grain, without encomiastic accents or hagiographic tones. A week apart, I have received two press releases, one after the other. Both seem enamoured of numbers.
The first, coming from zhōngguó (中國) or the Middle Kingdom, hails the New Silk Road in the Diamond Classification and Grading System. It is defined as “a system able to bring about a revolution in current practices in the jewellery and goldsmith industry, by using a technology that will set the groundwork for its new standards”. What is it? Conversion and homogenisation – through an undefined alternative search engine – of all the classic standards used to assign a diamond’s degree of Clarity and Colour. Begone D or H or J colour. Away with the bric-a-brac of terms like IF, VVS, VS et alia, and let the memory of the attributes qualifying Cut – Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair/Poor – be lost forever. The AI engine will express everything in numerical terms including the two other quality factors which make up the famous “4Cs”, thanks to the wonders of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.
Chow Tai Fook, the Chinese luxury chain at the head of an empire of 6,000 points of sale, proclaims it will be a “consumer-friendly” system (is the current one consumer-hostile?). So, how does it work? Details are scanty, and we are unaware how the system will be converted in monetary terms equivalent to those current internationally. Here is a case of salvific palingenesis, or indeed of delusion of omnipotence. A slap in the face to transparency!
Free to do as you please in your home, but if you want to subvert the system (even if just the diamond classification system) all over the planet, please kindly come to an agreement with the other 6.4 billion human beings (or their representatives) who crowd the globe, or do you think you can change the world as you please?
The second press release, on the other hand, comes from... READ MORE
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