Before we get into the discussion as to what makes the 2 carat diamond ring so attractive, it would be nice if we could first get some background information as to this whole ‘carat business.’ At its core, the carat turns out to be the measure through which the size of a diamond is measured. It is equivalent to 0.20 of a gram – which works out to exactly 200 milligrams. Besides measuring the size of a diamond, the carat is of course also the unit measure that is used in diamond trading circles, so that diamond prices are typically quoted as ‘so many dollars per carat, so many Euros per carat’ and so on.
Getting back to our original question as to what makes the 2 carat diamond ring so attractive, it turns out that for some reason, the 2 carat diamond ring is considered in many diamond enthusiast circles as the best and most impressive ring you can give to someone. The origins of the idea that the 2 cart diamond ring is the most impressive ring you can give to someone could probably be traced back to the both the fact that it is the carat weight, rather than any of the other factors that are used in grading diamond that seems to explicitly determine what the market price for the diamond is (since price is quoted as so many dollars per carat of diamond).And since diamonds are in the category of products that economists classify as ‘prestige products’ where the more expensive a product is, the more attractive it is deemed to be, it would follow that the bigger (in terms of carat) a diamond ring is, the more expensive it would have to be (since the carat is the unit measure in the market), and hence the more attractive it would be to buyers who are buying it for prestige anyway. So because the 2 carat diamond ring is likely to be perceived as more expensive, it becomes the more attractive under this criterion.
It is notable that so great is this ‘obsession’ (for lack of a better word) with the 2 carat diamond that even people whose – or whose loved ones’ – fingers were too small to comfortably accommodate the 2 carat diamond ring tend to still go ahead to purchase it, only for the prestige value associated with such higher carat weight.
Diamond experts, however, tend to say that this obsession with 2 carat diamond rings is quite misplaced; especially where the 2 carat diamond rings are being bought to be worn by people whose fingers are obviously ill suited for them (since a large diamond ring – in terms of carats- will tend to be more conspicuous on a person with a small finger than a person with larger fingers).
According to these experts, the other Cs that go into determining the quality of a diamond (such as color and cut) are just as important, prestige-wise, as C that is carat; so that a person who would be obviously ill-suited by a large carat ring would be advised to opt for a smaller carat ring, that nonetheless rates highly on other attributes like color and cut.
