EGL vs. GIA Diamond Certificates

I have been meaning to write about this confusing issue for quite some time and so I won’t put it off any longer. Since the majority of our business is like the industry made up of mostly diamond sales, this comes up on a regular basis. I have been dealing with a client from the west coast who wanted a 3 carat round brilliant cut diamond. After searching on line they saw several stones that were described by the European Gem Lab as being from G to H color and VS1 to VS2 in clarity that would cost them in the neighborhood of $35,000. One stone was graded by the EGL as G , VS1 and the diamond price was $38,000.

The client then said to me that they had heard that the GIA Certified stones were better so they had me check to see what a stone with the same grade from the GIA would cost. The 3 carat plus G VS1 rounds from the GIA were priced at between $85,000 and $90,000.

Of course the client freaked out and said “This is ridiculous. Why would a stone with the same grade cost 2 1/2 times more from the GIA?” The answer of course is that the stones from the GIA are not the same grades as the EGL stones. They are at least one to two color and clarity grades lower.

So, I told my client that I would check on stones that were two color and two clarity grades lower from the GIA and see what the cost was. Sure enough with the lower color and clarity grades in GIA stones we were getting closer to the price where she wanted to be.

Below are copies of two certificates on the same stone from the GIA and the EGL for your review. The point that I am trying to make is that if something seems like too good of a deal to be true in the diamond business it usually is. If you would like to compare prices on diamonds please give us a call. With our low overhead we normally beat the prices that the retail jewelry stores charge for their diamonds. And please beware that the GIA Gem Trade Laboratory is the foremost expert on diamond grades in the world and if someone is selling a diamond graded by another lab then it very possibly will be overstated as far as quality.