Ben Affleck and fiancé, Jennifer Lopez just renewed their engagement plans. The couple made headlines when they called off their wedding in 2004 and then reunited in 2021. Now in 2022, the couple announced their new relationship status.
Mr. Affleck created quite a stir among the press with his gift to the award-winning musician and actress—an alluring 8.5 carat green diamond ring with an estimated value between five and ten million dollars. In 2002, her first engagement ring from fiancé, Affleck, was a pink 6.1 carat piece from Harry Winston.
According to CreditDonkey, Emory University researchers cited $2,500 as the average cost of an engagement ring. Most couples will purchase diamond jewelry within their lifetimes, so learning how to pick or grade a stone is vital in making an informed decision.
Gemstone evaluation isn’t nearly as straight-forward as a “certification.” Nuances in the manual appraisal process make it largely unreliable.
Sarine Technologies is one of the largest and most respected institutions in the industry, recognized for its enterprise-level hardware and software tools used by producers and artisans since 1998. The company’s automated diamond grading technology was first-to-market, and is widely considered the most innovative.
3D scanners with optical sensors work in unison with AI They objectively analyze stones in much higher resolution than the human eye.
Sarine’s affordable service is the benchmark in accuracy and has a faster turnaround time than gemological institutes and certification labs like GIA, AGS, EGL and IGI.
Tom Lynch, an appraiser at Jaded Jewels, NY, described certification inconsistencies over the years. “We used various labs. In-house we feel confident about basic parameters, but that’s only a general verification after the lab certification,” he said.
“We did have to switch vendors on multiple occasions over the years due in part to conflicting reports and quality control… staying on top of QC is always an issue.”
The reason for the inconsistency of traditional methods involves the organic nature of a subjective, manual inspection process. There are many factors, but as one example, there is a natural variance in color vision between the genders. Approximately 50% of women view colors tetrachromatically.
Many other elements play a part in human error including fatigue, lighting conditions, and different levels of natural perception.
Green is known as Jennifer Lopez’s “lucky” color, and it has a special significance in the world of diamonds. Derrick Weidner, a Natural History Museum gemologist, explained the science behind the color. “Decaying radioactive elements in the soil expose an adjacent crystal to radiation, leaving a green hue. These stones are considered among the rarest.”
Naturally colored stones have a value that is in direct correlation to their individual rarity in nature. The basic law of supply and demand is what determines pricing.
A common misconception is that a colorless diamond always receives the highest appraisals. But again, with all other things being equal, it is the rarity factor that drives the pricing. Ms. Lopez’s green jewel is more prized than a comparably graded white gem.
Grading can be tricky and complex, but modern computing makes it a simple and straight-forward process that saves consumers time and money. Budget-conscious jewelry shoppers will be well served by high-tech appraisal services.
The rule of thumb is that GIA certificates are not reliable measures of a stone’s attributes, and this directly affects both purchase price and resale value.
Perhaps Affleck and Lopez don’t literally see eye-to-eye in the color quality of their green gemstone, but technology provides a precision analysis, which has the final say, where objective grading is concerned.
