What Can You Expect From An Argyle Diamond?

Odds are, if you have a fascination with pink diamonds, that you’ve heard of the Argyle mine. This mine is located in Western Australia and is known worldwide as the leading producer of pink diamonds, with up to 95% of the pink diamond market. However, despite this fact, the Argyle mine is not a leading producer of white jewelry-quality diamond gemstones. This mine does have the most annual production of diamonds, but that doesn’t necessarily correlate to quality white diamonds.

The Difference between Quality and Volume

As most jewelers and people in the diamond industry understand, a mine doesn’t produce 100% gemstone quality diamonds. In fact, only about 20% of the diamonds coming from mines around the world can be qualified as gemstone quality diamonds. These are diamonds that have the clarity, cut, color, and carat weight suitable to be made into fine jewelry. 80% of diamonds mined are used in other applications ranging from industrial tools (saw blades) to electronics. So, even if a mine has a large volume of diamond stones available, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are going to be quality diamonds. This is the case with the Argyle diamond mine.

The Argyle mine has only 5% of its total production classified as gemstone quality diamonds. This is far below the global average of 20%. On a per volume basis, it is the leader in diamond production with over 600 million carats mined since the Argyle mine went into production in 1985. Most of the stones mined are brown (about 80%), however, with only 2% being white. The pink ones are only 1% of the total production of the mine, but this is far more consistent than any other mine worldwide. This is why the Argyle mine is best known for the production of gemstone quality pink diamonds.

Other articles of interest:

• A Look Back in Time
• Unveiling the Opals
• Guide to Black Diamonds
• Investors Add Diamonds to Their Portfolio
• Diamond Sources Basic