What the heck are they? Are they a good thing?
They are brown diamonds. They are great if you like brown diamonds.
Diamonds are graded on color, cut, clarity, etc., with the most valuable being colorless and with the fewest flaws.
It used to be that “colored” diamonds- mostly yellow- were less valuable. But, marketers found that calling diamonds “canary” or “chocolate” would increase demand and prices for those stones that people didn’t want in the past.
Of course rare colors were/are always worth more, but there are considerably fewer, for example, blue or pink diamonds.
A girl at work has some “black” diamonds.
I think they used to be called “coal”- LOL!
And here I thought this was about the white chocolate candies I once had in Antwerp 
In a city known for diamonds, in a country known for chocolate, it was probably inevitable that someone would think of that.
They can be. Very lightly brown diamonds are called champagne diamonds, and I think they’re quite pretty and can be flattering to ladies’ skintone. In my humble opinion, only colorless diamonds (D-I color) are appropriate for rings of any type. Others may disagree. Just keep in mind, regardless of how much you like them, they’re worth quite a bit less and you shouldn’t be enticed to paying almost as much per carat as colorless for them.
Diamonds which are of a yellow/brown color and/or are full of inclusions can be irradiated and turned different colors. That’s where the current “black” diamonds come from.
Remember that no diamond has much value once it’s off the show room floor, other than how much you like it.
“Chocolate Diamond” is a trademark of LeVian Corp. They have marketed this term to (sucessfully) raise the value of their brown diamonds over other brown diamonds.
I think they’re ugly as hell. Don’t let that stop you if you feel differently.
There must be a lot of brown and yellowish diamonds hanging around in the back of vaults because that’s all I see in the V-Day jewelry ads.
I turned on the Home Shopping Show (or QVC) out of curiosity one day as they were selling ‘blue diamond’ jewelry and I would guess the blue diamonds were previously brown or yellow.
Well, yeah, clear diamonds always move well in the jewelry trade so I imagine there are plenty of “extra” colored ones the current marketing campaigns are trying to move.
REALLY ugly diamonds are labeled “industrial” and wind up on drill bits and other tools. Sometimes people think that’s a marketing strategy but no, it’s really easy to buy that sort of diamond encrusted tool.
At least a part of the value of gem-quality diamonds is the marketing hype.
I agree. I think they’re ugly and look cheap.
Thanks for the comments.
Chocolate and Black diamonds used to be worthless in the jewelry trade. They were used as abrasives-the were worthless as gems.
Now the DeBeers marketing group has come up with a new idea-market something formerly worthless as something precious.
it worked before!
I prefer premature black diamonds and had a large one mounted in a ring setting for my wife but for some reason she wasn’t happy with it.
You may not be familiar with this particular type of diamond because it’s commonly referred to as “coal”.
I went to primary school with a guy, Johnny, who once decided to sell “chocolate diamonds.” He told the other kids that if they ate them, they would make them smarter. One of my friends bought a couple off Johnny and immediately ate them.
He started spitting all over the playground and said, “They aren’t chocolate diamonds, they are just pellets of rabbit shit.”
And Johnny, running, called out, over his shoulder, “See. Smarter already.”
It really isn’t funny when you change the smart pills joke like that.
Not DeBeers. LeVian Corp.
Le Vian is a jewelry manufacturer/marketer founded by an Iranian-Jewish jeweler in the United States and has no connection with DeBeers, which is a conglomerate mining operation of Dutch-African origin. Mr. Le Vian’s specialty seems to have been hyping relatively cheap gems - he was highly involved in Turquoise and Tanzanite at times.
Nitpick: despite the name, De Beers is of Anglo-African origin. “De Beers” was the name of the owner of the farm that is now the city of Kimberley, but he sold the land shortly after the discovery of diamonds. He had nothing to do with the company, which was founded by Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato, both of whom were English.
I think it’s awful sweet that you joined just to let us know, over a year after we were talking about them, that you know people who are selling brown diamonds. Thank you - no one interested in buying the shiney rocks would otherwise have ever been able to find a distributer.