What Color is G?

If you think defining and describing colorless has been hard, just wait until you take up the rest of the alphabet. It's fun, but it can get tricky.

Did you ever sit there and think to yourself, I’m going to spruce up my life, I’m going to paint my mailbox G, drive me a big old G color car, in my G color suit, wearing a G-wiz watch, thinking I’m a G-man!?

I doubt it, because G is not a color. It is a degree of not being colorless.

Thanks to modern gemology D E F are now classified as colorless, G H I J are called near colorless, the range between each letter grade gets broader as we go down the scale to Z. It's really pretty simple.

Remember, I was talking about the more common diamond colors - yellow, brown and grey? Any of these can be graded G if the tint is slight enough to fall within a range. That means some G’s might “warm” the ice, and others may look a wee bit “tan”. That’s OK. But it can seem confusing, especially when you’ve been thinking that your choice is between White vs. Yellow. It gets more obtuse when people start trying to compare colors on certificates.

Now we know that all G’s aren’t the same, even if they're graded by the same grader. If we take the same G around to several independent laboratories, then what do you suppose might happen? I'm guessing the chance for differences of opinion would go up.

No matter what anybody says though, every single expert I ever met agrees that the only way to know what you like is to go look at some diamonds (refer to Rule #1 below).

Rule #1
In order to appreciate the value of diamonds you have to actually look at them!!!

Colorless

What is the best color?
The “best” is the benchmark for any classification system. Ironically, in diamonds the best color is no color. Not just because it’s very rare. For us it symbolizes purity – literally and figuratively.

Diamond is pure carbon. Any color in a diamond is the result of minute differences in original crystal formation. For instance, when traces of nitrogen enter the mix, it makes yellow. And when the crystal lattice is mis-aligned it produces browns.

Colorless is pure. It is in a class of its own.

A short aside on the value of the best...
In the 1970’s the world’s economy experienced shocks like gas-rationing, 18% prime interest rates, $900+ per oz gold, and $65,000 for a one carat “D” color flawless diamond… at wholesale!

That’s right, $65,000 per carat for a one carat. By 1980, after things settled down, that same diamond sold for $15,000. Ouch! Some speculators really got hurt. But that’s still 3X the price it sold for in 1975. For most folks, holding on to their diamonds was a good thing.

For US jewelers the run up in prices was a market on fire - a time to cash in. High-end diamonds that had been stocked for years started fetching unheard of prices when sold as “collectables” to money managers and speculators.

The rules of the game changed very quickly. Investors demanded only the best – D E F colors, Flawless to VS in clarity, one carat and above. This required independent verification. The GIA blossomed overnight. Every diamond that was even remotely close to the best got certified! The very best got sold right away.

Meanwhile back at the family store, the best jewelers had to offer Joe Q. Public was a G, SI1, one carat. Sound familiar? It should. That’s been the sweet spot of the “best deal” for diamonds ever since.

Starting in 1980 - for over 25 years - your local jeweler has been telling everyone who will listen that “you can’t see the difference by eye” especially when the diamond is mounted so “why pay more?”

Is it any wonder that people now believe that's what they really want?