November 2020 - Lab Grown Magazine

November 2020 | e Lab Grown Diamond Resource Book 18 To advertise call (888) 832-1109 | November 2020 19 Success Guaranteed Based in Manhattan’s still bustling dia- mond district, a gem lab is tucked away from view. In the midst of an Autumn COVID crisis, I expected a short visit and empty halls. What I discovered was a diamond lab where business is booming. Here, approxi- mately 60% natural and 40% LG stones are continuously rushing in for grading, and lab- coated people are rushing them out. Welcome to GCAL (Gem Certification and Assurance Lab, Inc) where testing and tabulations have led to winning court trials. Here, all things diamond and gems thrive in trust and are relished in reliability. One might dismiss a lab with only one lo- cation to perhaps be “lesser than.” I did. I was wrong. Le’ts take a tour through the laby- rinth of a laboratory that GCAL calls home. Using the word “laboratory” seems to diminish the expansiveness of GCAL’s executives, facility, scope, and structure. GCAL has its fin- ger on the pulse of technology, and with patented instruments such as Gemprint ® (identifying diamonds like fingerprint scans), GCAL holds a winning hand. But you would expect top-notch technol- ogy to be in lockstep with this lev- el of lab. What is so impressive is what they do with this technology. Here, masterful minds meld into the machinery. Top-notch equip- ment can be expensive door stops if the machine operator isn’t up to speed. And things move fast at this lab. Very fast. Roller skates may be- come asmandatory as facemasks at this place. In the diamond grading business, however, there is fast and then there is agile. With GCAL you get both. But since “speed kills,” moving fast might mean mistakes. While the lab bases its success on analytics, the one thing that needs no quantitative study is the number of mistakes, or, in GCAL’s case, the lack of mistakes. The lab offers something as rare as a tennis-ball-sized natural red dia- mond for its reports: A guarantee. Since its creation in 2001, GCAL claims that it produces 100% accurate and defendable diamond grading reports. And it does so to such a degree that the certified documents are legally acceptable and enforceable… or they’ll pay. That is some claim. I wanted to learn more about that promise. With their corporation and subsidiaries do- ing business for 20 years and churning out countless certs, there must have been numer- ous lawsuits. If you lose a few lawsuits, you can say goodbye to your trust, reputation, and respect. “If our grading is not as we say it is, GCAL will reimburse that consumer, in cash, for the difference in value between the original grades and the agreed upon grades now,” stated Angelo Palmieri, VP and COO at GCAL and President of Gemprint®. When challenged, GCAL will make ev- ery effort to either confirm and provide evi- dence their original grades were correct, or confirm the original grades were not correct. >>