Contrary to what I have read here, I think "Pawn Stars"

[Manifestor_of_Light]

83. Retail jewelry is a complete ripoff.

The value of diamonds is inflated because of the DeBeers cartel & their advertising campaigns. Diamonds are not that rare.

Also, the value depends on the quality grade. Just because it's bigger than a carat does not mean it's high quality. Most people see ads for SI and I (Slightly Imperfect and Imperfect). That doesn't sound bad.
Actually SI and I grades are full of flaws and should be in a grinding wheel, not set in jewelry.

If you looked at a clean diamond with a 10 power loupe, you would be able to see through it; the back facets would be clearly visible. Clean would be Flawless, Internally Flawless, (Very very slight) VVS1, VVS2, VS1 and VS2. That's six different grades.

Color starts at the letter D for colorless, and goes down the alphabet into yellow, which eventually turns into fancy yellow and the price goes up again.

Also, the cut, symmetry, proper angles for maximum brilliance, and polish would be good.

A crummy diamond, like most of what they sell in chain stores, under a 10x loupe, looks terrible, has bubbles, flaws, lines, black spots, and so forth.

I took a week long course in Diamond Grading from G.I.A. and once worked at a lease dept. at a dept. store selling alleged "Fine Jewelry".

I was SO ASHAMED of it. It did not have GIA grading certificates on it and was not worth carrying out of the store. I was selling prematurely mined lumps of coal.

But there is this mystique about real jewelry and diamonds that is perpetuated so the jewelers can make money off an uninformed consumer. If you want high quality stones you will have to pay real serious money for them.

And they generally don't set crummy stones in platinum, as that is the highest-quality metal used for jewelry. It's extremely hard and does not wear away.

Anything else ya wanna know? I don't know anything about prices, we didn't learn that in our diamond grading class.

Someday I want to see a D flawless diamond.