Learning The Craft Over the past forty years, I have had the honour to work with a team of gifted goldsmiths. In the early years, I spent a few months on the bench learning how to pour a metal ingot and form it into plate and wire. The magic that happens when gold is soldered […]
Man-made vs Mined Diamonds Man-made diamonds are getting cheaper every year, which is to be expected of a product that can be produced at will. A few years ago, lab-grown diamonds sold at 30% below the Rapaport Price List which is universally used to value mined diamonds. Today, you can pick up a GIA certified […]
Introduction Today’s customer wants certainty about a diamond’s journey from mine to finger, and how eco-friendly the precious metal in their ring is. Were it legally mined, in which country did the community benefit, and have the stone and metal a low carbon footprint? Today’s retail jeweller must be able to answer these questions without […]
Who We Are Prins and Prins Diamonds is one of the longest-serving family jewellers in Cape Town.They trade from Huguenot House (ca 1752), an iconic Early Cape home they acquired in 1993. Magnificent wall paintings and an in-house water well, discovered duringrestoration, make a visit worthwhile. You can browse their showrooms without obligation, enjoy a […]
This a complicated question that many struggle with. Here’s our advice: You may have heard that tradition demands you spend two to three months salary on your engagement ring. Or a friend boasts (inflates?) the amount he has spent, which puts you under pressure. Others say your engagement stone must be at least half a […]
Reflections on Market Trends and Future Predictions As we predicted two years ago, the wholesale price of lab-grown diamonds has bottomed out, sooner than expected. When lab-grown diamonds hit the market in 2015, their selling price was about 30% below that of a similar certified natural diamond. In our newsletter of January 2020, I predicted: […]