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Why are diamonds so expensive? Three things mostly: the cost of getting them out of the ground, a quality grading system called the 4Cs that prices each stone, and one of the most successful marketing campaigns in history that taught the world a diamond was the only acceptable engagement stone. At Vanhess Jewellery in Coquitlam, BC, customers ask us this almost weekly, and the honest answer mixes real scarcity with manufactured demand. Diamonds cost what they cost partly because they are hard to mine and partly because we were all told for eighty years that they should. The 4Cs set...

A coloured gemstone engagement ring, set with an emerald, ruby, or sapphire, is a strong choice for anyone who wants something other than a diamond, but the three stones are not equally suited to daily wear. At Vanhess Jewellery in Coquitlam, BC, the first thing we talk through with a customer eyeing a coloured stone is hardness, because an engagement ring takes more knocks than any other piece of jewellery a person owns. Sapphire and ruby shrug those knocks off. Emerald needs more care. We have written about sapphire on its own before, so here we will dig into ruby...

A hidden halo engagement ring is a solitaire with a ring of tiny diamonds set underneath the centre stone, around the base where the prongs meet the band. You only see it from the side. At Vanhess Jewellery in Coquitlam, BC, we build these as custom pieces, and they have become one of the most-requested upgrades from buyers who want a bit more sparkle and presence without turning a clean solitaire into something fussy. From the top, the ring still looks simple. From the side, there is a surprise. What a hidden halo actually is Picture a plain solitaire. Now...

If you want to know which diamond shape looks biggest for the money, the short answer is the elongated shapes: oval, marquise, pear, and elongated cushion all read larger than a round of the same carat weight. At Vanhess Jewellery in Coquitlam, BC, this is one of the most useful tricks we share with budget-conscious buyers. A diamond's carat is its weight, not its size, and how that weight spreads across the top of the stone (what jewellers call the face-up area) is what your eye actually sees on a finger. Carat is weight, not size This trips up almost...

If you are asking whether lab-grown diamonds are a good investment, here is the honest answer up front: no. Neither a lab-grown diamond nor most natural diamonds are a financial investment, and anyone at Vanhess Jewellery in Coquitlam, BC will tell you the same thing across the counter. Lab-grown prices have dropped sharply as production scaled up, and a stone you buy today will be worth a fraction of the receipt if you ever try to resell it. Buy a diamond because you want to wear it, not because you expect it to pay you back. What "investment" actually means,...

Recycled gold and ethical jewellery are two of the most used and least explained terms on a jewellery website, so let me cut through it: recycled gold is gold refined from old jewellery and scrap back to pure metal, and once refined it is chemically identical to newly mined gold. At Vanhess Jewellery in Coquitlam, BC, we remount heirlooms and work with recycled metal, so these labels are not abstractions to us. Here is what each one actually means, and which parts are marketing. What recycled gold really is Gold does not wear out. A wedding band from 1955, dental...