The prices of the preceding table refer only to diamonds of the first quality, and without a flaw.
One
sees immediately that the rule of Tavernier is completely at fault. For
by his rule the value of the one carat, being estimated in 1867 at $98,
39c, a diamond of two carats should have been worth $393, 56c, while in
reality it brought $375, 16c; and a diamond of five carats should have
been worth twenty-five times as much, $2459, 75c, when it brought
actually only $1641, 7c.
Another
point that strikes the attention in inÂspecting this table, is the
extraordinary depression in the price of diamonds in the middle of the
eighteenth century. It was about that time that the discovery of the
diamond districts of Bahia occasioned a panic in the diamond market.
Lastly, the table shows that, absolutely, the
price of diamonds was nearly the same in 1606 as in 1867; but when we
take into account the difference in the value of money at these two
epochs, we see that diamonds were really much dearer at the beginning
of the seventeenth century than they are now.
Large
diamonds are exceedingly rare. It is estimated that among ten thousand
diamonds hardly one will be found of ten carats weight; that is to say,
of the size represented by Fig. 29.
