Ronnie Mervis: Hi! I am Ronnie Mervis from Mervis Diamond Importers, the leading diamond importer in Washington DC, the nation's capital. I am going to have the pleasure of walking you through the diamond buying process. I am going to talk to you about how to select a diamond, what the items are that you should look for. We're going to explain the four C's, tell you how to make an intelligent choice, warn you of the pit falls, you should be aware of and help you get to the point where you make an intelligent, educated decision about a very important purchase, your diamond.

There are many different things you should take into account when you're looking for the right place to buy the diamond and remember, what you buy is as important as where you buy it. I think the most important thing is find somebody where you know that firm has been around for a long time, has made it to the top of the ratings list and is likely to be there for a long time.

It's very important that the organization you deal with will be there for a long time to come because there are many things you might want to go back to then for regarding the diamond purchase, you may want to trade it up later, you want to know that the firm is still going to be there, you want to know what the trade up policies are, whether they give you back everything you paid for it or they ask you to take a loss it, you might find later on that the diamond is chipped, when did the chip occur, as if next that occurred after you've purchased the diamond or is it in fact the fault that was there when you acquired the diamond. The certificate will certainly show if it was on the diamond at the time of purchase or not. And it's nice to know that the firm will still be there to deal with it when you get there.

We always believe that a diamond is a very specialized purchase. The best diamonds comes from firms that specialize in diamonds. In other words firm that don't deal with a lot of other extraneous gift items like silver frames, watch batteries, glass and the like, go for the expert. Ask the firm, what its policies are, where do they get their diamonds from, are they in compliance with rules and regulations regarding the banning of diamonds which come from conflict areas abroad, do they have color stones against which you can match yours.

When the firm tells you that a diamond is a certain color ask them how one would know that. Is it backed by an independent certificate? If it has an independent certificate, does it come from a recognized gem lab? Which labs? Which labs do they use? Which labs do they not use? Are there master stones so that you can check for yourself the color of your stone against the stone which is supposedly being sold to you as a certain color.

Ask them what instruments they have for you to see the diamond. Will you be able to see it under magnification? What extent of magnification? 10 times or 20 or 30? Ask what the standard is? Ask whether they have microscopes? Microscopes may not be a good thing! Microscopes are very difficult for you to set the diamond up and actually turn it around and see it.

The best way to see it is through a jeweler's loop. This is one, it's a very simple instrument that allows you to pick up the diamond and look at it through the loop, get a 10 times magnification on it but the beautiful thing about a simple instrument like a loop is that you can turn the diamond and see the back, you can see the edge, you can see the front. You can see it anywhere you want to see it without the whole lot of adjustments to the setting.

More than that, make sure that the diamond dealer whom you deal with has a large selection. You'd like to know that that dealer really is in the business and can show you many different stones of all different colors, all different shapes, all different sizes, all there present for you to see. We believe that buying a diamond is an important purchase. It's your money, it's your hard earned money which goes into it and you should be able to make any decision that you wanted to make without undue pressure on for the wrong reasons.

That gives you a basic idea of what you should look for in selecting the jeweler before you select the diamond. So before I sign off, I'd like just to remind you, stay tuned, don't go away, we've a lot of interesting stuff to talk about and in the next clip we're going to talk about how you would select the shape.