The labor costs and weight loss incurred in manufacturing these goods can be quite substantial. In lower priced diamonds, these costs have a much higher impact on price (by percentage). Cutters would have to ask a very high price to be profitable, so they choose more expensive rough to cut into hearts and arrows and relegate the lower qualities to factories that produce average cuts.

There are many reasons ... here are a few:

• Some sell only lower priced diamonds, which are normally cut for weight retention and not for top beauty.
• Some lack the expertise to sell high performance diamonds.
• Hearts and Arrows are still so new that some jewelers don’t understand or embrace them. Though, this is changing.
• Still others do not have reliable suppliers of these diamonds and therefore they choose to sell what’s readily available.

We are diamond dealers operating in the wholesale market. We sell to better retail jewelers in the United States. We don’t sell to the public. We are happy to refer you to one of our dealers in your area. If you have a favorite jeweler that does not carry these incredible diamonds, let us know and we will contact them.

Yes, but unlike Cut they are quite easy to quantify. In fact, Color, Clarity and Carat weight are quite well known by the public. These three traits traditionally were the sole criteria for most people (except for price) when buying a diamond. There’s a lot of information on the Web about the other C's, but our focus here is cut.

This is an interesting question. It should be noted here that most of the biggest online sellers misuse the term Certificate. Neither the Gemological Institute of America nor the American Gem Society will “certify” any diamond. They simply issue grading reports. GIA calls theirs a Diamond Grading Report and AGS refers to their report as a Diamond Quality Document. The dictionary describes the word certify as: "to guarantee the quality or value of" or "to guarantee as certain”. GIA clearly states on the bottom of every document: "this report is not a guarantee." We use only GIA and AGS reports for our Hearts and Arrows diamonds.

Our DNA of Hearts and Arrows section shows cutting parameters that must be adhered to in making these extraordinary diamonds. Sellers check them for the hearts and arrows pattern with a special magnifying viewer as shown on our Website. They are happy to show the H&A pattern to prospective buyers in their stores. Our Grading the H&A section shows exactly what to expect when viewing the diamond in the viewer.

No, Hearts and Arrows go way beyond ideal cutting. When cutting these extraordinary diamonds, cutters must adhere to a specially prescribed formula of facet placement and limited proportion sets throughout the cutting process. Again, the faceting arrangement is paramount. Unfortunately, many sellers today refer to ideal cuts as H&A, if they show some sort of H&A pattern. These would never have passed for Hearts and Arrows in Japan and must be rejected today. Diamond companies often settle on cutting GIA Excellent or some other premium cut instead of committing the time and weight loss necessary to produce a super ideal H&A diamond.

Currently, GIA and AGS do not include the term Hearts & Arrows on any report. The term is not widely understood and until now there were no guidelines or charts for cutting them. It is highly unlikely that GIA will ever include the term on their reports.

The gem laboratories will laser inscribe almost anything on the girdle to identify or personalize a diamond. This alone is no assurance of ideal light performance or real Hearts & Arrows. This is why our website is so important in laying out, in great detail, the prescribed formula of faceting and limited proportion sets necessary in creating these extraordinary gems.

All rough diamonds selected for our H&A diamonds are obtained from 100% conflict-free sources that are fully compliant with all international trade laws and agreements designed to protect human rights, promote best practices and corporate responsibility among all of our stakeholders.