'8X' Cut Grade Expanding to Fancy Shapes

RAPAPORT... Gem Certification & Assurance Lab (GCAL) is set to offer 8X reports for fancy shapes as it expands its service aimed at singling out the best diamond cuts. The grading reports, which GCAL launched for rounds last year, will move on to ovals and princesses this June, just ahead of the JCK Las Vegas show, management announced in a webinar last week. "These shapes have been in development for a long period of time and they will be released at JCK this year," said Angelo Palmieri, the US lab's chief operating officer. "We are not done yet on fancies: These are the first two fancy shapes that will be launched, but there will certainly be others to follow."The lab will likely add additional shapes later this year, Palmieri told Rapaport News in an email Tuesday.GCAL unveiled 8X in March 2021, arguing that the market needed a way of differentiating the finest stones from others carrying a "triple Ex" score from the Gemological Institute of America (GIA). That benchmark denotes excellence in cut, polish and symmetry, but GCAL claims some 85% of diamonds receive it. GCAL takes eight features of manufacturing quality and awards the 8X label to those that it considers "excellent" in all of them.Unlike GCAL, the GIA does not award cut grades to non-round diamonds, and therefore fancies cannot receive a triple Ex grade.Image: A woman working on a diamond at a polishing factory in Botswana. (Shutterstock)