January 20, 2025 • 29 mins
Thinking about buying a diamond but don’t know where to start? In this sparkling episode, our host Blanca Quezada sits down with Fred Cuellar, founder and CEO of Diamond Cutters International, to uncover everything you need to know before making your next big purchase.
Fred, a world-renowned diamond expert with clients like the Saudi Royal Family and Katy Perry, shares insider tips on spotting the difference between real and lab-grown diamonds, understanding pricing, and avoiding common mistakes. Discover why rare colored diamonds like pink and red are so valuable, how blockchain technology ensures diamond authenticity, and even a surprising way to test a diamond with a magnet!
Fred also tells us about designing custom pieces for Hollywood movies, his favorite celebrity stories, and unforgettable proposals. If you’re shopping for a diamond or just curious about the industry, this episode has all the sparkle and knowledge you need!
Key Topics Covered:
· Real vs. lab-grown diamonds: How to spot the difference
· Why rare colored diamonds like pink, red, and blue are highly prized
· Pricing diamonds: Getting the best value for your money
· How blockchain is transforming diamond authentication
· Surprising tools and techniques to test diamond authenticity
· Celebrity clients and incredible proposal stories
· Custom jewelry for Hollywood movies, including The Hunger Games
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And Diamond Cutters International can also help
people design their jewelry. Right? Yeah. We do Super
Bowl rings and stuff like that. I mean, if we can design a ring for
the Kansas City Chiefs or the Dallas Cowboys or the Baltimore Ravens, we can
design a ring for you. Absolutely can design a ring. Yeah.
You also designed a pin for, a movie.
(00:21):
Right? Yeah. We've done so many pretty pieces. Yeah.
Yeah. Which are some of the movies that you've designed for? The pin
that you're talking about is the Mockingjay pin. Yes. So the whole
Mockingjay period, right when they got to the end, they wanted to do a limited
edition piece done in gold with diamonds and stuff like that.
So that was fun working with Lionsgate and getting to
(00:43):
meet all those people there and do fun jewelry for them.
Thank you for joining us for another episode of spotlight Houston, where we bring
you the best of the people, places, and events in Greater Houston. In today's
episode, we're diving into the dazzling world of diamonds with Fred
Cuellar, founder and CEO of Diamond Cutters International.
(01:06):
Fred is one of the world's top diamond experts, with clients that
include the Saudi Royal Family, Katy Perry, and even Hollywood film
productions. Whether you're shopping for a special occasion or simply curious
about these sparkling gems, Fred has you covered. Our host, Blanca
Quezada, sat down with Fred as he shared tips on spotting the difference
between real and lab grown diamonds, understanding prices, and
(01:29):
navigating the diamond market with confidence. Plus, we'll hear fascinating
stories about rare colored diamonds, Hollywood designs, and unforgettable
proposals. Please note that the audio version of today's episode has been
edited for time, but you can catch the extended version on our YouTube channel.
This is episode 121 with an original air date of Monday, January
20, 2025. Spotlight Houston is brought to you by
(01:51):
Storyzone Media. And now here's your host, Blanca Quezada.
So Valentine's Day is coming up. June is also coming
up pretty quickly, and these are the the months in
where proposals happen or weddings
are happening, even important special
occasions in their lives, and these can
(02:14):
only be celebrated with that beautiful and perfect diamond.
Yes. They are still girl's best friend. I know
for fact. But anyway, diamonds are a
huge investment. But most of us don't know the first
thing about finding that perfect diamond or
making sure that we're getting a real diamond or
(02:36):
a lab grown diamond because there is a difference.
And the process to me is almost like buying
a car. You have to know what you're looking for, and that's
hard to do, and it can become quite overwhelming.
But it doesn't have to be. It can actually be a lot
of fun and but you need to educate yourself first.
(02:59):
That's really important. Where to begin. Right? I want you
to find out as much as possible
and about getting that perfect diamond.
So I've invited my friend, Fred Cuellar. He is
the founder and CEO of Diamond Cutters, and
he is the world's top diamond expert.
(03:22):
Can you believe I have an expert on diamonds here? I
can't believe it. But, anyway,
Fred's clients are so numerous to mention them all,
but they do include former president George Bush,
president Obama, president Kilk, president Clinton,
the Saudi Royal Family, and 100 of professional
(03:44):
athletes, as well as many celebrities, Katy
Perry, Pink, Rihanna, and so many other
clients. I mean, it the list would go on and on. But I don't
know how he does this and how he find he
also finds the time to write and publish very
helpful books, like his very first book,
(04:07):
How to Buy a Diamond, The World's Greatest Proposals,
as well as other books. They're on Amazon, so you
can check them out and buy them if you want to. But he's
also an expert on colored diamonds, which has been
very popular lately. And there is so much to
say about Fred. A lot to say about him because
(04:30):
he's been in the diamond industry and an expert for more
than 35 years. So he's the man to talk
to. Right? Fred, welcome to the show. Hi. Thank you
for having me. It's good to see you after a couple of decades. Yes.
I'm really excited to have you on the show. And it's I'm I'm just
I can't believe it. I still can't believe you're sitting here with me talking
(04:52):
diamonds. So, Fred, the first thing I want to know, and
Yeah. How did you happen to get into the diamond industry? I
went to Texas A&M to get a degree in
mechanical engineering. And while I was there, I got a part time job at
a jewelry store and got fascinated with with jewelry.
They just opened up Post Oak Mall in College Station at the time, so this
(05:15):
is the early eighties. And I came up with this idea that
I thought was a better mousetrap with Diamond Cutters International.
And I thought to myself, jeez, what if I build a company
that buys the rough, custom cuts the diamonds, goes directly to the
customer so they could help save them money? I built a business
plan, and that was almost 40 years ago, and now we're
(05:36):
a quarter of a $1,000,000,000 diamond company. Yeah. It's amazing.
Amazing. So do you travel, like,
to Africa or countries that have diamonds? At the beginning, we
used to get diamonds from Australia. You can get diamonds out
of Canada, Botswana. So in the early stages, I would do a lot of the
traveling, but now our company's gotten so big and I've gotten older, I
(06:00):
have people who do that for me. We have an office in Houston. I have
an office in New York. I have offices in Israel. I have offices in Belgium.
Is it difficult to manage so many
locations? I think what's nice is whether you
have one employee or I imagine 1,000, even
though we're in a few different locations, we're still a relatively small
(06:22):
company, but the most valuable asset that Diamond Cuts International
has isn't Dar Diamonds. It's the people. Finding
talented people who love what they do is, I think, sometimes
difficult to do, but once you find somebody, the average
length of time that a person that's with my company is about 18
years. So once people come to us, they tend to love it. You've got people
(06:43):
that you trust and give them autonomy to do what they need to do. Things
kinda work out. I've heard is that the best place to buy
a diamond is in New York. And I'm like, no. You
can buy some here too. Yeah. The reality is with
the emergence, obviously, of the Internet that's been around so long, if you know what
you're doing, you can pick up the telephone and pretty much buy a diamond
(07:06):
anywhere. I think the average consumer wants to look at it, touch it, feel it,
make sure it's okay. There's so many copycats that are on the
market. CZs, moissanites, lab
growns, yttrium aluminum garnet. We're seeing a lot of people who come
into our office who think they've bought a real diamond, and it's
horrible to have to tell them that it's not real. Oh, that's
(07:28):
sad. Yeah. That's sad. So since we're talking about
real and not real diamonds, what is the difference between the diamonds?
You could break it up into kinda 3 categories. You've got what are called
diamond simulants, things that look similar to a diamond, but
really don't have any of the same physical properties at all.
So that'd be cubic zirconia, moissanite, yttrium
(07:51):
aluminum garnet, white corundum, anything that looks like
a diamond, but has no not even one property exactly the
same. I think that's why lab grown diamonds for a
lot of people seem like they're a really good deal
because they're the first product that from a chemical standpoint
is mostly carbon and it that gives it more of a
(08:14):
synthetic. So if a diamond synthetic, which
is something that has similar or closer match
up to the physical, chemical, and optical properties,
then it switches over from being similar to being a synthetic.
And maybe a simple analogy would be is if ice
formed outside your house, I could say that's natural ice,
(08:36):
but if I decided to take water, put it in my freezer, I could
argue that man assisted in that and that's synthetic
ice. Very similar, but there are some major differences
besides the cost difference that people need to be aware
of so that they know exactly what they're getting. A lot of times
jewelers will give you, like, this little like, a magnifying
(08:59):
glass A loop. Yeah. Can see so you can see
they may tell you that there's a flaw in the diamond. But how can you
tell the difference between a lab grown diamond
and a real diamond? If there's so many different ways.
If one, a lot of people will say that they're chemically
identical, and they're not. So there's 2 types of
(09:21):
lab growns, one is called HPHT, which stands for high
pressure high temperature, and the other one is called CBD, which is chemical
vapor deposition. HPHT have dopants
that they use and catalyst that they use to grow the crystal.
They use nickel, iron, and cobalt. I'm not kidding.
In some cases, you can actually take a strong magnet
(09:45):
and because of the metal inclusions that are inside the HPHT,
just by taking the magnet and touching the stone, if it attracts
it, you know it's a labrum because metal is not inside a diamond.
K. Another thing is something called phosphorescence.
HPHT diamonds, sometimes they'll dope them with
boron, and I've had clients who say, hey. The
(10:07):
lab grown look pretty good, but then when the lights turned out, the
stone started glowing orange in the dark. Oh, wow.
Yes. Because of the way it was been doped with boron. If somebody
hands me a stone and says, hey, Fred. Can you take a quick look at
this? If a person didn't know what they were doing, there's
3 parts to the diamond, the the crown, the girdle, and the pavilion, the
(10:29):
pointed part. FTC guidelines suggest that you
should stamp, like, a tattoo right on the edge of the girdle
that it is lab grown or LG. Oh, okay. Okay. See, the
person selling it has to be careful that
if they sell it and they say it's a real diamond, a word they're not
allowed to use, or say it's just as valuable, or say that
(10:52):
it's a natural diamond, that's against the law and they could go to
jail for that based on FTC rulings. Yeah. So most of
the time, if it's a big company that's selling the lab grown, 1,
they'll tell you right upfront and then 2, ask them
they'll typically put a little tattoo or laser inscription right on the girl that
says lab grown. So even if you're not an expert, you can take a loupe
(11:14):
or magnifying glass and loop the edge of it, and you can
check. But as a customer, I wouldn't know that. I would
just think that's a normal diamond that, you
know and if they don't tell me that it's lab grown, I
probably wouldn't tell the difference. I mean, what we have
found with the big companies is that if they
(11:36):
sell both that accidentally they make a mistake. I had a
client who bought a diamond online from a pretty much reputable
company, I won't mention their name, and they brought it into me. They paid
$10,000 for it. I looked at it and said, I'm sorry. This
isn't real. And they said, what? I I paid for a
real diamond. And long story short, I showed them right where it said lab
(11:58):
grown on the edge of it. We called on the telephone. Yeah. The person said
it was just an honest mistake and that they were sorry. But
by that time, the the trust was broken. There is something
that you can that a lot of our clients are doing now, kind of hard
to explain. I'll try to explain it, but if you
don't have a chemistry background, it it won't make any sense. It's called
(12:20):
the n three vacancy center, which I'm sure makes no
sense to you. No. But it it only exists in,
real diamonds that come out of the ground, and it existed about 1 in
every 4 diamonds that come out of the ground. What happens is if
you take a natural diamond that has an n three vacancy center
and you hit it with an ultraviolet light that you can buy on Amazon for
(12:43):
$39 at 365 nanometers and just click on the
light, if it glows blue, which is what 95% of
the ones with n three vacancy centers do, if it glows blue,
it's a real diamond. You don't have to be an expert, you just hit it
with the light, it's instantaneous. These have become
so sought after, it's probably one of the top tips.
(13:05):
I can't even keep them in my office. People come in saying, I've
got to have a diamond with an entry vacancy center and we literally
provide them with the UV light so that
anytime they need to, just to make sure no one switch a diamond, when they
take it in for a pair somewhere, they just click on the light. And the
minute it glows that pretty little blue color, they know exactly that it's a real
(13:27):
diamond. It's a really good system. Yeah. Do real diamonds
actually have, like, a a stamp on them,
like, to get insured? You can tell them this is diamond number
so in or part of the alphabet in it or something? Back
in the seventies, what's called seventies technology, you you could do the
same thing they're doing with lab roll, which is put a laser inscription on the
(13:49):
girdle of the diamond. The problem is dishonest people can copy
those numbers. Oh. The the the the new system
is, a a spectral signature. What we do now
is very similar to what way an iPhone or an iPad work with
facial recognition system, it does the biometrics on your face. What
we do is we shoot a beam of light into the diamond, we capture the
(14:11):
unique diamond spectral signature of that diamond, and no
2 natural diamonds are the same. Lab ones, they're all the
same, but no 2 natural ones are the same. We
copy that digital fingerprint, we put it in a
blockchain and it lives in the clouds. So if anybody ever scans
that diamond all the information on the diamond is there, the clarity
(14:33):
grade, the color grade, the proportions, everything. If the diamond is ever
lost or stolen and ends up at a pawnshop, they scan it,
and they can see who has the digital title. Very similar if you put, like,
a chip inside a dog and someone found the dog, they could read the
chip. Same kind of idea. Wow. Wow.
Interesting. Interesting. Everything can be found. Right?
(14:55):
And now 25 years ago, I'm not sure. I think
you bonded diamonds existed. In fact, we may not have talked about it,
but you can now buy diamonds that are what are called fully bonded
natural diamonds. So the diamond comes with a lifetime cash
buyback, blue book to price paid, lifetime breakage,
lifetime exchange policy. So if you pay a 1,000, 10000,
(15:17):
a $1,000,000 for the diamond at any point in the
future, if you wake up one day and go that was silly, I shouldn't have
bought that diamond, I don't need a diamond. Yeah. You can actually return it and
get 100% of your money back for the diamond, Doesn't count settings or
sales tax, but at least you know the diamond's worth the price that you
paid. So Mhmm. Like, when I was on the Today Show, they said, what is
(15:39):
your number one tip that you would give somebody in buying a
diamond? Certainly, if you have a bonded diamond, you're guaranteed it's
always worth the price that you pay. Great. Great. So where
do the most expensive diamonds come from? The most
expensive diamonds typically aren't white diamonds. Pink
diamonds, red diamonds, violet diamonds, those have
(16:01):
been coming out of Australia, the Argyle Diamond Mines,
very expensive. A red diamond can go for a few $1,000,000 per
carat. Pink diamonds can go also for over $1,000,000 per
carat. But they ran out of those, and they closed the Argyle
mine site there. A lot of those you can only buy if you go to
auctions or from private clientele and stuff.
(16:24):
Like the pink and the greens and those diamonds
are beautiful, but they must be difficult to find.
Oh, yeah. We've had clients come to us. In some cases, we've had to search
for 6, 7, 8 months to find a particular unique color that means a lot
to them and stuff like that. Jennifer Lopez, when she she's not
together with Ben Affleck anymore, but when she got her first time with Ben
(16:46):
Affleck, she got a pink one. And then when they rekindled their
relationship, she got a green one, but then that didn't work out. And
maybe she's done it with fancy colored diamonds. I don't know. Yeah. And those
are worth 1,000,000. Yeah. Yeah. Jennifer Lopez was worth about
$6,000,000. Yeah. Yeah. But they
were they were extraordinary, though. Yeah. Very pretty. Beautiful. Think
(17:07):
about the Hope Diamond that's in the Smithsonian. It's a beautiful, pretty blue.
Yeah. So that's the most expensive diamond in the world. Right?
God, it pretty up it's pretty up there. I don't know if you can put
a price on it. A few months ago, they found a very
large diamond, a 2,492 carat
large rough diamond, and they reached out to me.
(17:29):
This was found in Botswana to put a value on it,
and my estimate that it was worth about $60,000,000.
Oh, wow. Oh my gosh. So I don't I think the
Hope Diamond is priceless. I don't know that anyone's ever put a price on it,
but that 24.92 carat rough diamond I just found, that's pretty
expensive too. Didn't you give the Smithsonian or
(17:52):
lend them the Smithsonian Wow. You got a great memory. You
found? Red barrel. It's a red emerald we had found in
the Wawa Mountains in Utah long time ago, and we
donated a few pieces to the Smithsonian. Yeah. Yeah. Are
they still there? Yeah. Yeah. They're still there. Wow. Wow.
Wow. Those red diamonds are just gorgeous. Very pretty.
(18:13):
Pricing is also very important. That makes a difference for a lot
of people. So how do we know we're paying the right
price for the the diamond that we're purchasing? I'll give you
an example. Let's say you want you have a car that you wanna sell or
buy. You have something called Kelly Blue Book, which will tell you what the
spot price is. If you had an ounce of gold that
(18:36):
you wanted to buy, the first thing you would do is look up the spot
price of gold, and you would see, like, today it was around $26100
an ounce. That gives you a good anchor to know what a fair market
price is. In the diamond business, it's called the wrapped
value, which is kinda like the Kelley blue book value. So if you go to
so a jewelry store and say, hey. I know that a fair price is the
(18:58):
wrap, r a p wrap price. Can you please tell me what
the wrap price of this diamond is? And then you can compare your price to
that, then you can get a good idea if you're getting a fair price or
not. Where can we find that information? Just go to Google. You just
put in wrapaport.com, price guides and and you can see
a lot of those prices, or it's in my book. I I publish it every
(19:20):
single time in the how to buy a diamond book or anybody could call
the diamond helpline, which is a Diamond Casino National and say, hey.
I wanna look at the current spot price of a particular diamond in quality.
They could go on to the website, ask any particular question, says, what's the current
price of this diamond, and we'll be glad to give it to them. Mhmm.
Why are diamonds more expensive
(19:42):
than, like, I guess, other gemstones like the aquamarine
or the amethyst? Why are they more expensive? Anytime
you say something is more valuable, which is what you're saying,
it comes down to 3 things. How pretty it is, that's important.
Is it durable? Okay. And then how rare
is the item? It turns out that an amethyst, which is the
(20:05):
birthstone for February, or aquamarine, which is the birthstone
for March, one is made out of quartz, one is made out of barrel.
They're not as durable as stones, and they're more
plentiful. So it's just because there's so much of it. I went to one of
the AI models today to do some research, and I was curious
how many gem stone quality
(20:27):
quality natural diamonds have ever been found since 18
70. What it said was that if you were looking
for that good a quality stone, you're
probably somewhere around maybe 90,000,000
carats of gem quality stones of over a carat
in size. And so I thought to myself, wow. Okay.
(20:51):
90,000,000. If I adjust the clarity and color a little bit, maybe I can get
the numbers up a little bit. Then I was just curious, I was like, I
wonder how many people has lived on this planet since
18/70 for the last 150 years, and it said somewhere between
15 and 20,000,000,000. So the reality is
if every person that lives said I want a diamond, you got a
(21:12):
problem. There's just not enough product there. It's interesting.
99.5 percent of people who will ever live will
never own a 1 carat real diamond in their lifetime.
And emeralds are also just gorgeous. Very
pretty. They're the birthstone for May. They typically have what's called
conchoidal fractures, which is little tiny breaks inside the stone. So they're a little
(21:35):
bit more fragile, but they're sir certainly very pretty. They don't do good for
engagement rings because they can't take a beating. If somebody's
thinking of an alternative to a a natural diamond, typically,
they'll go with a sapphire or a ruby because that's 9 in the
Mohs Harper scale, and sometimes people use those. Rubies are
beautiful too. So I do they do lab
(21:56):
grown gemstones like that? Lab lab is exists for
everything. And I think one of the things that was a
little disingenuous by the people who were selling it is
they would always anchor the price of the lab grown to the price
of the natural. So they would say, gee whiz, a natural diamond of
this size is 10,000 and we're selling it at 50%
(22:19):
discount, which seems like a really good deal. The problem is they're not
chemically the same, they're not optically the same, they're not
physically the same, they're not rare, they have typically
have enhancements in them. If you're a person you're a young person in a jewelry
store, when someone shows you this big giant stone
for half the price, it's tempting to want to get
(22:42):
it, but what people need to know, and this was reported on the
KHOU piece that was just done after the Golden
Globes the other night, was that the average markup at a
lot of these stores is 1,000 to
2000% on lab grown diamonds.
Wow. That means they're taking something that cost them a $100,
(23:04):
and they're selling it for a 1,000 to $2,000.
Crazy markups. I mean, it's just really nuts.
Yeah. So everything you're telling me is incredible, and
I'm sure we can find all this information in your book, how to
buy a diamond. Absolutely. Or go to the website at
diamondcutters, international, diamondcuttersintl.com.
(23:27):
I have articles and stuff there too. Do you happen to have a phone number
people wanna call? Sure. Local, 713-222-2728.
Or if they're not local, 1-800-275-4047.
And Diamond Cutters International can also help
people design their jewelry. Right? Yeah. We do Super
(23:49):
Bowl rings and stuff like that. I mean, if we can design a ring for
the Kansas City Chiefs or the Dallas Cowboys or the Baltimore Ravens, we can
design a ring for you. Absolutely can design a ring. Yeah.
You also designed a pin for, a movie.
Right? Yeah. We've done so many pretty pieces. Yeah.
Yeah. Which are some of the movies that you've designed for? The pin
(24:10):
that you're talking about is the Mockingjay pin. Yes. So the whole
Mockingjay period, right when they got to the end, they wanna do a limited
edition piece done in gold with diamonds and stuff like that.
So that was fun working with Lionsgate and getting to meet
all those people there and do fun jewelry for them. Yeah. The jewelry is
beautiful, by the way. Thank you. And very unique.
(24:33):
I know that you have other books, the especially the
proposal book. Yeah. What's the best proposal that you got in
the book? Gosh. The the book contains 75 of the best
proposals I ever heard. I think one of the best ones that I've ever
heard it's kinda dangerous, so it comes with a warning. But it's
a it's a Saturday afternoon. The guy calls his girlfriend up on the
(24:55):
phone. He says, honey, I have something I have to
confess to you. And they would pray at the same church. He says,
I'm at the chapel, meet me there. And he hangs up. He
has something to confess to me. He's at the church.
What? She jumps in the car. She races
there. I think she runs through a few lights. There is no service going
(25:17):
on, and he's in one of the pews. And she races it. Her heart is
just pounding. And she sits down, and she's like, oh my god. What's he
gonna tell me? Is he breaking it off or what's going on? And
then he says to her, I just want you to know that when I look
back at my life, it really didn't start until I met
you. Oh. Imagine my life without you. You you're
(25:39):
my everything. And and then he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a beautiful
ring and says, will you be my wife? Will you marry me? She goes, yes.
And she starts crying and put the ring on and all that good stuff. And
then after a second, she wipes the tears and she said, but
why here? Didn't you propose in church? And he
said, I wanted God as my witness. Oh,
(26:01):
wow. That's pretty good. Beautiful. That's pretty
good. What was your proposal like? Gosh. It was such a long time
ago. Fred, don't say you forgot. It I've been
married for 36 years. I'd met my wife a couple
years prior to that, and I was
in a relationship. She was in a relationship. I I don't know if you've ever
(26:23):
met somebody that you just had that instant kismet with. That's what
happened. I met her and but the timing was off. She was on
her way to go to New York and be a big time model. She would
later go on to be an actress, and I knew she was the
right person. And I just thought to myself, gosh, what do I do?
What do I do? But before I could make up my mind, her reaction
(26:45):
was, he's tied up. I'm tied up. I've got commitments.
And she left me. And after she left, I went,
gosh, that's what love is. I didn't you think you know when
you're young what love is. I go, gosh, that's what love is. And
so I said, if I'm ever lucky enough to ever meet her
again, I can't be tied up. So I got out of
(27:07):
that other relationship, and a year and a half went by. I didn't know where
she was. And then one day, I was in New York City, and someone said
to me, hey, Fred, there's a party that's that I hear that's
going on. You should stop by there and stuff like that. And it'd been late
that night, and I wasn't sure if I was gonna go. And something just told
me I needed to go to the party, and I got dressed when I went
(27:28):
to this party at at the Plaza Hotel. And when when
I got there, I place was crowded, and there she was
sitting on a sofa. I hadn't seen her in a year and a half, and
I walked up to her. Everything just kinda just stood still, and I said, I
don't know if you remember me. And she says, yeah. You're the diamond
guy. And I said, yeah. Yeah. That's me. Anyway, we were
(27:50):
kind of inseparable, you know, that weekend. But
within a a little over 24 hours, the next day I said, I
let you slip out of my hands once. I'm not gonna let it happen again.
And so within 24 hours of seeing her again, I got
down to one knee and asked her to be my wife. Oh, wow. That
is amazing. Yeah. That's beautiful. That's a great
(28:12):
story. Great story. But anyway, people can
just look you up on your on your website. They can
come by. Right? Can they look at it for me? We have a wonderful staff
of gemologists that work there, and I might be there. So they can
always ask for me, and maybe I can stick my hand and say hi, but
I have a wonderful group of people that work there. Yeah. Yeah.
(28:34):
So just make an appointment if you want to go by there.
So thank you. Thank you so much for all the lessons that you've
given us today on what diamonds really are and
how to make sure we're purchasing the right diamond for
us. You're welcome. Thank you. Right. So I
hope we don't have to wait so many years again to see each other,
(28:56):
but, this was you made my day. Oh, that's great.
Yes. Thank you again for being on spotlight Houston.
And, of course, I'd like to thank everyone else for being
with me, for joining me as well. And if you have
any comments or story ideas, please send them my way.
And I hope that you feel, a bit more confident
(29:19):
in buying a diamond for yourself or for that special
person in your life or just for a special occasion?
And Diamond Cutters International can also help
people design their jewelry. Right? Yeah. We do Super
Bowl rings and stuff like that. I mean, if we can design a ring for
the Kansas City Chiefs or the Dallas Cowboys or the Baltimore Ravens, we can
design a ring for you. Absolutely can design a ring. Yeah.
You also designed a pin for, a movie.
(00:21):
Right? Yeah. We've done so many pretty pieces. Yeah.
Yeah. Which are some of the movies that you've designed for? The pin
that you're talking about is the Mockingjay pin. Yes. So the whole
Mockingjay period, right when they got to the end, they wanted to do a limited
edition piece done in gold with diamonds and stuff like that.
So that was fun working with Lionsgate and getting to
(00:43):
meet all those people there and do fun jewelry for them.
Thank you for joining us for another episode of spotlight Houston, where we bring
you the best of the people, places, and events in Greater Houston. In today's
episode, we're diving into the dazzling world of diamonds with Fred
Cuellar, founder and CEO of Diamond Cutters International.
(01:06):
Fred is one of the world's top diamond experts, with clients that
include the Saudi Royal Family, Katy Perry, and even Hollywood film
productions. Whether you're shopping for a special occasion or simply curious
about these sparkling gems, Fred has you covered. Our host, Blanca
Quezada, sat down with Fred as he shared tips on spotting the difference
between real and lab grown diamonds, understanding prices, and
(01:29):
navigating the diamond market with confidence. Plus, we'll hear fascinating
stories about rare colored diamonds, Hollywood designs, and unforgettable
proposals. Please note that the audio version of today's episode has been
edited for time, but you can catch the extended version on our YouTube channel.
This is episode 121 with an original air date of Monday, January
20, 2025. Spotlight Houston is brought to you by
(01:51):
Storyzone Media. And now here's your host, Blanca Quezada.
So Valentine's Day is coming up. June is also coming
up pretty quickly, and these are the the months in
where proposals happen or weddings
are happening, even important special
occasions in their lives, and these can
(02:14):
only be celebrated with that beautiful and perfect diamond.
Yes. They are still girl's best friend. I know
for fact. But anyway, diamonds are a
huge investment. But most of us don't know the first
thing about finding that perfect diamond or
making sure that we're getting a real diamond or
(02:36):
a lab grown diamond because there is a difference.
And the process to me is almost like buying
a car. You have to know what you're looking for, and that's
hard to do, and it can become quite overwhelming.
But it doesn't have to be. It can actually be a lot
of fun and but you need to educate yourself first.
(02:59):
That's really important. Where to begin. Right? I want you
to find out as much as possible
and about getting that perfect diamond.
So I've invited my friend, Fred Cuellar. He is
the founder and CEO of Diamond Cutters, and
he is the world's top diamond expert.
(03:22):
Can you believe I have an expert on diamonds here? I
can't believe it. But, anyway,
Fred's clients are so numerous to mention them all,
but they do include former president George Bush,
president Obama, president Kilk, president Clinton,
the Saudi Royal Family, and 100 of professional
(03:44):
athletes, as well as many celebrities, Katy
Perry, Pink, Rihanna, and so many other
clients. I mean, it the list would go on and on. But I don't
know how he does this and how he find he
also finds the time to write and publish very
helpful books, like his very first book,
(04:07):
How to Buy a Diamond, The World's Greatest Proposals,
as well as other books. They're on Amazon, so you
can check them out and buy them if you want to. But he's
also an expert on colored diamonds, which has been
very popular lately. And there is so much to
say about Fred. A lot to say about him because
(04:30):
he's been in the diamond industry and an expert for more
than 35 years. So he's the man to talk
to. Right? Fred, welcome to the show. Hi. Thank you
for having me. It's good to see you after a couple of decades. Yes.
I'm really excited to have you on the show. And it's I'm I'm just
I can't believe it. I still can't believe you're sitting here with me talking
(04:52):
diamonds. So, Fred, the first thing I want to know, and
Yeah. How did you happen to get into the diamond industry? I
went to Texas A&M to get a degree in
mechanical engineering. And while I was there, I got a part time job at
a jewelry store and got fascinated with with jewelry.
They just opened up Post Oak Mall in College Station at the time, so this
(05:15):
is the early eighties. And I came up with this idea that
I thought was a better mousetrap with Diamond Cutters International.
And I thought to myself, jeez, what if I build a company
that buys the rough, custom cuts the diamonds, goes directly to the
customer so they could help save them money? I built a business
plan, and that was almost 40 years ago, and now we're
(05:36):
a quarter of a $1,000,000,000 diamond company. Yeah. It's amazing.
Amazing. So do you travel, like,
to Africa or countries that have diamonds? At the beginning, we
used to get diamonds from Australia. You can get diamonds out
of Canada, Botswana. So in the early stages, I would do a lot of the
traveling, but now our company's gotten so big and I've gotten older, I
(06:00):
have people who do that for me. We have an office in Houston. I have
an office in New York. I have offices in Israel. I have offices in Belgium.
Is it difficult to manage so many
locations? I think what's nice is whether you
have one employee or I imagine 1,000, even
though we're in a few different locations, we're still a relatively small
(06:22):
company, but the most valuable asset that Diamond Cuts International
has isn't Dar Diamonds. It's the people. Finding
talented people who love what they do is, I think, sometimes
difficult to do, but once you find somebody, the average
length of time that a person that's with my company is about 18
years. So once people come to us, they tend to love it. You've got people
(06:43):
that you trust and give them autonomy to do what they need to do. Things
kinda work out. I've heard is that the best place to buy
a diamond is in New York. And I'm like, no. You
can buy some here too. Yeah. The reality is with
the emergence, obviously, of the Internet that's been around so long, if you know what
you're doing, you can pick up the telephone and pretty much buy a diamond
(07:06):
anywhere. I think the average consumer wants to look at it, touch it, feel it,
make sure it's okay. There's so many copycats that are on the
market. CZs, moissanites, lab
growns, yttrium aluminum garnet. We're seeing a lot of people who come
into our office who think they've bought a real diamond, and it's
horrible to have to tell them that it's not real. Oh, that's
(07:28):
sad. Yeah. That's sad. So since we're talking about
real and not real diamonds, what is the difference between the diamonds?
You could break it up into kinda 3 categories. You've got what are called
diamond simulants, things that look similar to a diamond, but
really don't have any of the same physical properties at all.
So that'd be cubic zirconia, moissanite, yttrium
(07:51):
aluminum garnet, white corundum, anything that looks like
a diamond, but has no not even one property exactly the
same. I think that's why lab grown diamonds for a
lot of people seem like they're a really good deal
because they're the first product that from a chemical standpoint
is mostly carbon and it that gives it more of a
(08:14):
synthetic. So if a diamond synthetic, which
is something that has similar or closer match
up to the physical, chemical, and optical properties,
then it switches over from being similar to being a synthetic.
And maybe a simple analogy would be is if ice
formed outside your house, I could say that's natural ice,
(08:36):
but if I decided to take water, put it in my freezer, I could
argue that man assisted in that and that's synthetic
ice. Very similar, but there are some major differences
besides the cost difference that people need to be aware
of so that they know exactly what they're getting. A lot of times
jewelers will give you, like, this little like, a magnifying
(08:59):
glass A loop. Yeah. Can see so you can see
they may tell you that there's a flaw in the diamond. But how can you
tell the difference between a lab grown diamond
and a real diamond? If there's so many different ways.
If one, a lot of people will say that they're chemically
identical, and they're not. So there's 2 types of
(09:21):
lab growns, one is called HPHT, which stands for high
pressure high temperature, and the other one is called CBD, which is chemical
vapor deposition. HPHT have dopants
that they use and catalyst that they use to grow the crystal.
They use nickel, iron, and cobalt. I'm not kidding.
In some cases, you can actually take a strong magnet
(09:45):
and because of the metal inclusions that are inside the HPHT,
just by taking the magnet and touching the stone, if it attracts
it, you know it's a labrum because metal is not inside a diamond.
K. Another thing is something called phosphorescence.
HPHT diamonds, sometimes they'll dope them with
boron, and I've had clients who say, hey. The
(10:07):
lab grown look pretty good, but then when the lights turned out, the
stone started glowing orange in the dark. Oh, wow.
Yes. Because of the way it was been doped with boron. If somebody
hands me a stone and says, hey, Fred. Can you take a quick look at
this? If a person didn't know what they were doing, there's
3 parts to the diamond, the the crown, the girdle, and the pavilion, the
(10:29):
pointed part. FTC guidelines suggest that you
should stamp, like, a tattoo right on the edge of the girdle
that it is lab grown or LG. Oh, okay. Okay. See, the
person selling it has to be careful that
if they sell it and they say it's a real diamond, a word they're not
allowed to use, or say it's just as valuable, or say that
(10:52):
it's a natural diamond, that's against the law and they could go to
jail for that based on FTC rulings. Yeah. So most of
the time, if it's a big company that's selling the lab grown, 1,
they'll tell you right upfront and then 2, ask them
they'll typically put a little tattoo or laser inscription right on the girl that
says lab grown. So even if you're not an expert, you can take a loupe
(11:14):
or magnifying glass and loop the edge of it, and you can
check. But as a customer, I wouldn't know that. I would
just think that's a normal diamond that, you
know and if they don't tell me that it's lab grown, I
probably wouldn't tell the difference. I mean, what we have
found with the big companies is that if they
(11:36):
sell both that accidentally they make a mistake. I had a
client who bought a diamond online from a pretty much reputable
company, I won't mention their name, and they brought it into me. They paid
$10,000 for it. I looked at it and said, I'm sorry. This
isn't real. And they said, what? I I paid for a
real diamond. And long story short, I showed them right where it said lab
(11:58):
grown on the edge of it. We called on the telephone. Yeah. The person said
it was just an honest mistake and that they were sorry. But
by that time, the the trust was broken. There is something
that you can that a lot of our clients are doing now, kind of hard
to explain. I'll try to explain it, but if you
don't have a chemistry background, it it won't make any sense. It's called
(12:20):
the n three vacancy center, which I'm sure makes no
sense to you. No. But it it only exists in,
real diamonds that come out of the ground, and it existed about 1 in
every 4 diamonds that come out of the ground. What happens is if
you take a natural diamond that has an n three vacancy center
and you hit it with an ultraviolet light that you can buy on Amazon for
(12:43):
$39 at 365 nanometers and just click on the
light, if it glows blue, which is what 95% of
the ones with n three vacancy centers do, if it glows blue,
it's a real diamond. You don't have to be an expert, you just hit it
with the light, it's instantaneous. These have become
so sought after, it's probably one of the top tips.
(13:05):
I can't even keep them in my office. People come in saying, I've
got to have a diamond with an entry vacancy center and we literally
provide them with the UV light so that
anytime they need to, just to make sure no one switch a diamond, when they
take it in for a pair somewhere, they just click on the light. And the
minute it glows that pretty little blue color, they know exactly that it's a real
(13:27):
diamond. It's a really good system. Yeah. Do real diamonds
actually have, like, a a stamp on them,
like, to get insured? You can tell them this is diamond number
so in or part of the alphabet in it or something? Back
in the seventies, what's called seventies technology, you you could do the
same thing they're doing with lab roll, which is put a laser inscription on the
(13:49):
girdle of the diamond. The problem is dishonest people can copy
those numbers. Oh. The the the the new system
is, a a spectral signature. What we do now
is very similar to what way an iPhone or an iPad work with
facial recognition system, it does the biometrics on your face. What
we do is we shoot a beam of light into the diamond, we capture the
(14:11):
unique diamond spectral signature of that diamond, and no
2 natural diamonds are the same. Lab ones, they're all the
same, but no 2 natural ones are the same. We
copy that digital fingerprint, we put it in a
blockchain and it lives in the clouds. So if anybody ever scans
that diamond all the information on the diamond is there, the clarity
(14:33):
grade, the color grade, the proportions, everything. If the diamond is ever
lost or stolen and ends up at a pawnshop, they scan it,
and they can see who has the digital title. Very similar if you put, like,
a chip inside a dog and someone found the dog, they could read the
chip. Same kind of idea. Wow. Wow.
Interesting. Interesting. Everything can be found. Right?
(14:55):
And now 25 years ago, I'm not sure. I think
you bonded diamonds existed. In fact, we may not have talked about it,
but you can now buy diamonds that are what are called fully bonded
natural diamonds. So the diamond comes with a lifetime cash
buyback, blue book to price paid, lifetime breakage,
lifetime exchange policy. So if you pay a 1,000, 10000,
(15:17):
a $1,000,000 for the diamond at any point in the
future, if you wake up one day and go that was silly, I shouldn't have
bought that diamond, I don't need a diamond. Yeah. You can actually return it and
get 100% of your money back for the diamond, Doesn't count settings or
sales tax, but at least you know the diamond's worth the price that you
paid. So Mhmm. Like, when I was on the Today Show, they said, what is
(15:39):
your number one tip that you would give somebody in buying a
diamond? Certainly, if you have a bonded diamond, you're guaranteed it's
always worth the price that you pay. Great. Great. So where
do the most expensive diamonds come from? The most
expensive diamonds typically aren't white diamonds. Pink
diamonds, red diamonds, violet diamonds, those have
(16:01):
been coming out of Australia, the Argyle Diamond Mines,
very expensive. A red diamond can go for a few $1,000,000 per
carat. Pink diamonds can go also for over $1,000,000 per
carat. But they ran out of those, and they closed the Argyle
mine site there. A lot of those you can only buy if you go to
auctions or from private clientele and stuff.
(16:24):
Like the pink and the greens and those diamonds
are beautiful, but they must be difficult to find.
Oh, yeah. We've had clients come to us. In some cases, we've had to search
for 6, 7, 8 months to find a particular unique color that means a lot
to them and stuff like that. Jennifer Lopez, when she she's not
together with Ben Affleck anymore, but when she got her first time with Ben
(16:46):
Affleck, she got a pink one. And then when they rekindled their
relationship, she got a green one, but then that didn't work out. And
maybe she's done it with fancy colored diamonds. I don't know. Yeah. And those
are worth 1,000,000. Yeah. Yeah. Jennifer Lopez was worth about
$6,000,000. Yeah. Yeah. But they
were they were extraordinary, though. Yeah. Very pretty. Beautiful. Think
(17:07):
about the Hope Diamond that's in the Smithsonian. It's a beautiful, pretty blue.
Yeah. So that's the most expensive diamond in the world. Right?
God, it pretty up it's pretty up there. I don't know if you can put
a price on it. A few months ago, they found a very
large diamond, a 2,492 carat
large rough diamond, and they reached out to me.
(17:29):
This was found in Botswana to put a value on it,
and my estimate that it was worth about $60,000,000.
Oh, wow. Oh my gosh. So I don't I think the
Hope Diamond is priceless. I don't know that anyone's ever put a price on it,
but that 24.92 carat rough diamond I just found, that's pretty
expensive too. Didn't you give the Smithsonian or
(17:52):
lend them the Smithsonian Wow. You got a great memory. You
found? Red barrel. It's a red emerald we had found in
the Wawa Mountains in Utah long time ago, and we
donated a few pieces to the Smithsonian. Yeah. Yeah. Are
they still there? Yeah. Yeah. They're still there. Wow. Wow.
Wow. Those red diamonds are just gorgeous. Very pretty.
(18:13):
Pricing is also very important. That makes a difference for a lot
of people. So how do we know we're paying the right
price for the the diamond that we're purchasing? I'll give you
an example. Let's say you want you have a car that you wanna sell or
buy. You have something called Kelly Blue Book, which will tell you what the
spot price is. If you had an ounce of gold that
(18:36):
you wanted to buy, the first thing you would do is look up the spot
price of gold, and you would see, like, today it was around $26100
an ounce. That gives you a good anchor to know what a fair market
price is. In the diamond business, it's called the wrapped
value, which is kinda like the Kelley blue book value. So if you go to
so a jewelry store and say, hey. I know that a fair price is the
(18:58):
wrap, r a p wrap price. Can you please tell me what
the wrap price of this diamond is? And then you can compare your price to
that, then you can get a good idea if you're getting a fair price or
not. Where can we find that information? Just go to Google. You just
put in wrapaport.com, price guides and and you can see
a lot of those prices, or it's in my book. I I publish it every
(19:20):
single time in the how to buy a diamond book or anybody could call
the diamond helpline, which is a Diamond Casino National and say, hey.
I wanna look at the current spot price of a particular diamond in quality.
They could go on to the website, ask any particular question, says, what's the current
price of this diamond, and we'll be glad to give it to them. Mhmm.
Why are diamonds more expensive
(19:42):
than, like, I guess, other gemstones like the aquamarine
or the amethyst? Why are they more expensive? Anytime
you say something is more valuable, which is what you're saying,
it comes down to 3 things. How pretty it is, that's important.
Is it durable? Okay. And then how rare
is the item? It turns out that an amethyst, which is the
(20:05):
birthstone for February, or aquamarine, which is the birthstone
for March, one is made out of quartz, one is made out of barrel.
They're not as durable as stones, and they're more
plentiful. So it's just because there's so much of it. I went to one of
the AI models today to do some research, and I was curious
how many gem stone quality
(20:27):
quality natural diamonds have ever been found since 18
70. What it said was that if you were looking
for that good a quality stone, you're
probably somewhere around maybe 90,000,000
carats of gem quality stones of over a carat
in size. And so I thought to myself, wow. Okay.
(20:51):
90,000,000. If I adjust the clarity and color a little bit, maybe I can get
the numbers up a little bit. Then I was just curious, I was like, I
wonder how many people has lived on this planet since
18/70 for the last 150 years, and it said somewhere between
15 and 20,000,000,000. So the reality is
if every person that lives said I want a diamond, you got a
(21:12):
problem. There's just not enough product there. It's interesting.
99.5 percent of people who will ever live will
never own a 1 carat real diamond in their lifetime.
And emeralds are also just gorgeous. Very
pretty. They're the birthstone for May. They typically have what's called
conchoidal fractures, which is little tiny breaks inside the stone. So they're a little
(21:35):
bit more fragile, but they're sir certainly very pretty. They don't do good for
engagement rings because they can't take a beating. If somebody's
thinking of an alternative to a a natural diamond, typically,
they'll go with a sapphire or a ruby because that's 9 in the
Mohs Harper scale, and sometimes people use those. Rubies are
beautiful too. So I do they do lab
(21:56):
grown gemstones like that? Lab lab is exists for
everything. And I think one of the things that was a
little disingenuous by the people who were selling it is
they would always anchor the price of the lab grown to the price
of the natural. So they would say, gee whiz, a natural diamond of
this size is 10,000 and we're selling it at 50%
(22:19):
discount, which seems like a really good deal. The problem is they're not
chemically the same, they're not optically the same, they're not
physically the same, they're not rare, they have typically
have enhancements in them. If you're a person you're a young person in a jewelry
store, when someone shows you this big giant stone
for half the price, it's tempting to want to get
(22:42):
it, but what people need to know, and this was reported on the
KHOU piece that was just done after the Golden
Globes the other night, was that the average markup at a
lot of these stores is 1,000 to
2000% on lab grown diamonds.
Wow. That means they're taking something that cost them a $100,
(23:04):
and they're selling it for a 1,000 to $2,000.
Crazy markups. I mean, it's just really nuts.
Yeah. So everything you're telling me is incredible, and
I'm sure we can find all this information in your book, how to
buy a diamond. Absolutely. Or go to the website at
diamondcutters, international, diamondcuttersintl.com.
(23:27):
I have articles and stuff there too. Do you happen to have a phone number
people wanna call? Sure. Local, 713-222-2728.
Or if they're not local, 1-800-275-4047.
And Diamond Cutters International can also help
people design their jewelry. Right? Yeah. We do Super
(23:49):
Bowl rings and stuff like that. I mean, if we can design a ring for
the Kansas City Chiefs or the Dallas Cowboys or the Baltimore Ravens, we can
design a ring for you. Absolutely can design a ring. Yeah.
You also designed a pin for, a movie.
Right? Yeah. We've done so many pretty pieces. Yeah.
Yeah. Which are some of the movies that you've designed for? The pin
(24:10):
that you're talking about is the Mockingjay pin. Yes. So the whole
Mockingjay period, right when they got to the end, they wanna do a limited
edition piece done in gold with diamonds and stuff like that.
So that was fun working with Lionsgate and getting to meet
all those people there and do fun jewelry for them. Yeah. The jewelry is
beautiful, by the way. Thank you. And very unique.
(24:33):
I know that you have other books, the especially the
proposal book. Yeah. What's the best proposal that you got in
the book? Gosh. The the book contains 75 of the best
proposals I ever heard. I think one of the best ones that I've ever
heard it's kinda dangerous, so it comes with a warning. But it's
a it's a Saturday afternoon. The guy calls his girlfriend up on the
(24:55):
phone. He says, honey, I have something I have to
confess to you. And they would pray at the same church. He says,
I'm at the chapel, meet me there. And he hangs up. He
has something to confess to me. He's at the church.
What? She jumps in the car. She races
there. I think she runs through a few lights. There is no service going
(25:17):
on, and he's in one of the pews. And she races it. Her heart is
just pounding. And she sits down, and she's like, oh my god. What's he
gonna tell me? Is he breaking it off or what's going on? And
then he says to her, I just want you to know that when I look
back at my life, it really didn't start until I met
you. Oh. Imagine my life without you. You you're
(25:39):
my everything. And and then he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a beautiful
ring and says, will you be my wife? Will you marry me? She goes, yes.
And she starts crying and put the ring on and all that good stuff. And
then after a second, she wipes the tears and she said, but
why here? Didn't you propose in church? And he
said, I wanted God as my witness. Oh,
(26:01):
wow. That's pretty good. Beautiful. That's pretty
good. What was your proposal like? Gosh. It was such a long time
ago. Fred, don't say you forgot. It I've been
married for 36 years. I'd met my wife a couple
years prior to that, and I was
in a relationship. She was in a relationship. I I don't know if you've ever
(26:23):
met somebody that you just had that instant kismet with. That's what
happened. I met her and but the timing was off. She was on
her way to go to New York and be a big time model. She would
later go on to be an actress, and I knew she was the
right person. And I just thought to myself, gosh, what do I do?
What do I do? But before I could make up my mind, her reaction
(26:45):
was, he's tied up. I'm tied up. I've got commitments.
And she left me. And after she left, I went,
gosh, that's what love is. I didn't you think you know when
you're young what love is. I go, gosh, that's what love is. And
so I said, if I'm ever lucky enough to ever meet her
again, I can't be tied up. So I got out of
(27:07):
that other relationship, and a year and a half went by. I didn't know where
she was. And then one day, I was in New York City, and someone said
to me, hey, Fred, there's a party that's that I hear that's
going on. You should stop by there and stuff like that. And it'd been late
that night, and I wasn't sure if I was gonna go. And something just told
me I needed to go to the party, and I got dressed when I went
(27:28):
to this party at at the Plaza Hotel. And when when
I got there, I place was crowded, and there she was
sitting on a sofa. I hadn't seen her in a year and a half, and
I walked up to her. Everything just kinda just stood still, and I said, I
don't know if you remember me. And she says, yeah. You're the diamond
guy. And I said, yeah. Yeah. That's me. Anyway, we were
(27:50):
kind of inseparable, you know, that weekend. But
within a a little over 24 hours, the next day I said, I
let you slip out of my hands once. I'm not gonna let it happen again.
And so within 24 hours of seeing her again, I got
down to one knee and asked her to be my wife. Oh, wow. That
is amazing. Yeah. That's beautiful. That's a great
(28:12):
story. Great story. But anyway, people can
just look you up on your on your website. They can
come by. Right? Can they look at it for me? We have a wonderful staff
of gemologists that work there, and I might be there. So they can
always ask for me, and maybe I can stick my hand and say hi, but
I have a wonderful group of people that work there. Yeah. Yeah.
(28:34):
So just make an appointment if you want to go by there.
So thank you. Thank you so much for all the lessons that you've
given us today on what diamonds really are and
how to make sure we're purchasing the right diamond for
us. You're welcome. Thank you. Right. So I
hope we don't have to wait so many years again to see each other,
(28:56):
but, this was you made my day. Oh, that's great.
Yes. Thank you again for being on spotlight Houston.
And, of course, I'd like to thank everyone else for being
with me, for joining me as well. And if you have
any comments or story ideas, please send them my way.
And I hope that you feel, a bit more confident
(29:19):
in buying a diamond for yourself or for that special
person in your life or just for a special occasion?
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