The weight you give up

A piece of Sri Lankan rough came in at 9.4 carats with usable colour concentrated toward one end. Cut to preserve weight, it would have finished somewhere near 4.1 carats, with the colour sitting low and the table reading pale.

Cut to bring the colour into the face-up view, the finished stone came out at 2.68 carats. That is a loss of roughly a third against the alternative, and it is the version we would buy.

Why this is not a sales argument

The client is buying the stone that exists, not the rough that came before it. A 2.68-carat stone has to be worth its price on its own terms, and pointing at a carat weight that never existed is not evidence of anything.

We write it down because the decision is interesting, not because it is persuasive.