Buying diamonds off the street – Part I.5

Before I continue with this 3 part series, I want to publish a great comment from Stacey Gelmici-Saunders in Edson in response to yesterday’s post:  “What about the guaranteeing of the diamonds that they are mined in an ethical way?”  Good question!

Obviously there’s no way to know the provenance of an estate diamond.  Many of the diamonds you’ll be offered will have been purchased before the Kimberly Process was in place.  If you’ve taken a public stand for ethically sourced diamonds, you may need to draft a disclaimer for your estate diamonds that declares, “while we endeavor to source new diamonds only from ethically mined sources, we cannot trace the origin of our trade-in and estate diamonds” or something to that effect.

Further, there are always people trying to benefit from unethically sourced diamonds.  I would stay away from buying loose diamonds from the guy who has a cousin overseas who got these direct from whomever.  When buying-in diamonds from strangers, you’ll have to vet them, determine if you believe their story, and then follow the laws of the land in making the purchase.  I’ll talk more about the process in Part II. 

Thanks Stacey for your question!