Hallmarking

Below is the Hallmarking notice. This is to help you understand what your hallmark means. Generally speaking, any precious metal item sold as “Gold”, “Silver”, “Platinum” or “Palladium” by law has to be hallmarked. There are some exceptions to this rule which are stated in the table below. 

Hallmarking is when a sponsor sends an item to an Assay Office to be Assayed. A sponsor isn’t necessarily the manufacturer of the item. The Assay Office will access the item to figure out what percentage of precious metal they contain. 

All precious metals have different “Fineness” levels this is a percentage expressed as parts per thousand. You often hear people asking if something is “sterling silver” Sterling is a Fineness level, 925 parts per thousand so 92.5% silver.

Similarly, Carat is also a fineness level. 9ct - 37.5% 14ct - 58.5% 18ct - 75% & 22ct - 91.6%. These are minimum percentages if something measured at 70% gold it can still be hallmarked but only at 14ct, not 18ct.

More information can be found on the Assay Office websites

Diamonds

There is a very thorough article by GIA here about the quality factors of Diamonds.

With the rise of Diamond Reports the public has become more aware of diamond quality factors and as such are asking for very specific diamonds.

In my experience, the “best value” diamonds are ones that are what I would call “eye clean” this can be anything above VS2. One thing that has stuck out with me is you can get a “good” VS2 or a bad “vs1” its always worth viewing different stones to see which look best in the flesh.

I would always go for a colourless stone (anything above an H) and at least a VS2 again I would look where the inclusion is because sometimes by the time the stone is set the inclusion is hidden by claws. One thing I would personally never want to compromise on is cut, granted I have an advantage or maybe disadvantage of seeing lots of diamonds through my training experience so I can spot a poor cut more easily but to me, a perfectly cut diamond really makes the difference, and even if a Diamond has the “excellent grade” for cut it is still worth comparing it to another of the same grade. -Tony Dieu de Bellefontaine