GUEST: This belonged to my grandmother and she lived in California. And she gave it to my mom and then my mom gave it to me. My assumption is that her husband gave it to her and it's been in the family ever since then. My grandmother had very tiny fingers and so what was probably her ring finger it was just a pinky ring for me. It wasn't very attractive at that time. Mom had it sized, and when it became a ring finger size, it became quite attractive.
APPRAISER: Well, this is a wonderful old mine cut, which is one of the earliest cuts of diamonds. It started in about the 16th century. How many carats did you say this was?
GUEST: It's five.
APPRAISER: Five carats.
GUEST: Maybe five plus, yeah.
APPRAISER: Now, something very interesting has happened. 20 years ago, all of the wonderful old jewels, big brooches, old diamonds like this, old mine cuts, the European cuts, and the rose cuts-- dealers would come in, they would buy them, and they would re-cut them into brilliant modern cuts. They would lose sometimes 40% of the diamond. But they would get more a carat. So, in the process, they were all very happy because they were making a lot of money, but they were destroying pieces of wonderful old diamond jewelry. About seven or eight years ago, women began to see the beautiful brilliance in these older stones. And they liked the beautiful delicate openwork mountings as opposed to what we traditionally see. In the last five years, there's been a tremendous amount of cutting of diamonds in the old cuts, like the rose cut, and the old mine cut and the European cut.
GUEST: That's great.
APPRAISER: So, the price now on those stones has gone up in value where they went down before. These are such desirable mountings. This is a mounting from the Edwardian era. It's made in about 1910. And it's made with platinum and set with small diamonds. And the stone itself could have been cut in the 19th century or even the 18th century.
GUEST: Oh, wow.
APPRAISER: I think it's cut in the 19th century because it's just so sophisticated in its evenness and in the proportion of the facets. I've not ever seen one this large cut this well. This ring, if you were to buy this today, I would estimate between $40,000 and $50,000.
GUEST: That's... a fine tidy sum.
