The diamond in the past

Nobody knows when the first diamond was found, but from an old script of the IV century b.C. we know that in India in that time they exchanged already diamonds. Until the XVIII century India was the unique producer.

The Greeks did not know the diamonds (even if the name derives from “adamas”= unbeatable). The Romans used them for incisions and as talismans.

The Persians and Arabs shared the monopoly of diamonds until mediaeval times. In the XIII century Venice was the greatest commercial centre of the occident. The Doges of Venice brought many diamonds to Antwerp. The legend says that Lodewijk Van Berckem invented the cut of diamonds.

The XVIII century brought a big change, in fact the resources in India exhausted, while in 1725 in Brazil they found big new diamond mines.

The first reaction was an explosion of the market, the offer of diamonds was very high, and everybody thought that the resources would never dissolve. This brought a fall of the prices for rough diamonds but not of polished, which due to the high demand had an increase of value.

At the same time some polishers opened their business, unfortunately they had to close them soon, because of missing rough diamonds on the market.

In 1866 they thought that the resources were finished, a South African farmer found a diamond in the river Oranje. Two years later they found the well-known "Star of Africa" and the boom of diamonds had its start.

The fight between Cecil Rhodes (owner of the Kimberley mines) and Berney Barnato took place until Sir Ernst Oppenheimer grounded in 1888 the DeBeers, which today controls 50% of the worldwide diamond market.

Investment example

Diamond color river D (colorless) of clarity IF (internally flawless) cut very good – very good of 1 carat.

Bought in 1987 and sold in 1997 with a profit of 247% net.