Ronnie Mervis: Hi, this Ronnie Mervis, from Mervis Diamond Importers and welcome back. I am glad, you are still with us, because we are now going to discuss the most important thing that there is to talk about, regarding in purchase of your diamond and so this is something that you should focus on.

It is called the four C's. The four C's stands for color, clarity, carat weight and cut. In this chapter, I am not going to dwell on each one specifically. I am going to simply tell you what it is and I am going to make the point of telling you are they all related to each other.

Let's start talking about diamond cut, first. Cut, relates to the actual proportioning of the diamond. If the diamond cut perfectly, it will give you the maximum brilliance. If it cuts less than perfectly, it won't.

Here we have color, diamonds come in many different colors and each one has a different degree of rarity on the color scale and it affects the price. Here we have clarity; clarity talks about what is inside the diamond, each diamond has a certain purity or lack of purity and here we have carat weight which talks about the size of the diamond.

You may notice that this pyramid is exactly that, it is a pyramid. It has a broad base at the bottom rising to an apex at the top. The bulk of the diamonds in any one of these categories; carat, cut, color or clarity are all at the bottom. The more they are at the bottom, the more they are, so the lesser value they have in terms of rarity. The finer they are within each category, so the more they rise to the top.

The price is determined by the interaction of where the diamond you select falls in each of these characteristics; cut, color, clarity and carat weight to the top. The higher the clarity, the higher the carat weight, the higher the cut and the higher the color; so the greater the price of the diamond will be.

Now, any diamond could have any variation of any of these four factors. It could be high in color and low in clarity or it could be high in clarity and small in carat weights or it could be large in carat weight; perfectly cut, but low in the color scale; every one is different. It is the summation of each of these four C's, which determine the value.

So, don't go away, for the next series when we start examining in turn each one of the C's of the four C's of diamonds, thank you.