Home » categories » rare book library » Dieulafait. Diamonds and Precious Stones.
This chapter is tagged (labeled) with: 

Ch. 3: Diamond

Ch. 3: Diamond Page of 296 Ch. 3: Diamond Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
72                          PRECIOUS STONES.
The carat is divided into 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, ... 1/64 of the carat. The table of weights of a jeweller's balance should contain from the weight of a thou­sand carats to these fractions.
The balance employed by dealers in pre­cious stones is a simple little balance which is held in the hand: and yet "such is the experienced quickness of the lapidary," says M. Helphen, "that the balance of the assayer will never find him wrong by even the 64th part of a carat."
Rough crystallized diamonds are valued at from l6-1/2 to 19 dollars thecarat.for assorted lots containing no diamonds of more than one carat. Above this weight prices are a different affair.
The rule made known two hundred years ago by Tavernier, that "the prices of two diamonds are proportioned to the squares of their weights," is en­dorsed bysome modern lapidaries. According to this rule, since a one-carat stone of the first water, well cut and without flaws, is valued at about $93, a stone of two carats should be worth four times that, or $372; and one of three carats, nine times as much, or $837.
But statistics show that this rule, which was quite true in the time of Jeffries and Tavernier, is no longer applicable; it assigns to diamonds a higher price than in commerce they really bring.
A table is given here, which not only establishes this fact, but which also furnishes other interesting
Ch. 3: Diamond Page of 296 Ch. 3: Diamond
Suggested Illustrations
Other Chapters you may find useful
Other Books on this topic
bullet Tag
This Page