As the old song says diamonds are a girls best friend. Lots of women are in total agreement with that sentiment and all men know what to buy if they have to get a special gift. There is something about the way all the angles of a well cut diamond catch the light, causing that amazing sparkling we all know and admire. The value of a diamond depends on its weight in Carats. But what is a carat?

The origins of this strange term go back many centuries. In those far back times if a diamond was the weight of a carob bean it was one carob, which was corrupted to carat. Using metric measures one carat is around 0.2grams. In case you wondered the carob tree is native to the Mediterranean and produces the carob bean.

In other parts of the world that don’t have carob trees other methods were used. In the Far East where rice is very common rice grains were used instead. There are 4 grains to one carat. As you might expect the price of the diamond depends on how many carats it is. Most of the reasonably priced jewellery in the shops comes in fractions of a carat.

When you are shopping for a piece of diamond jewelry pay attention to how it’s mounted. If there are several chips then you’ll just see the carat total weight (CTW) rather than the weight of each individual diamond. Depending on the expense it may be worthwhile asking the jeweller for the carat weight of the largest one.

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