Ten structured courses for anyone who wants to understand this business properly. Built for family business successors, serious buyers, and anyone entering the trade who wants to know what they are doing before they spend serious money.
The curriculum page is your guide. Click each reading link, read the full article, come back, click the next one. That is the entire system.
By the end of this curriculum, you will be able to do all of the following without assistance or guidance from anyone else.
Identify a diamond's cut, colour, clarity and carat weight accurately and explain what each means for price.
Read a GIA or IGI certificate completely and know exactly what every field means, including what the certificate does not tell you.
Understand how the Rappaport Price List works and use it correctly in a transaction or negotiation.
Explain the full diamond supply chain from mine to polished stone and know where value is added at each stage.
Distinguish natural from lab-grown diamonds, explain CVD and HPHT production, and articulate the commercial implications of each.
Navigate Mumbai, Surat and Jaipur as a trade participant with a precise understanding of how each city functions in the industry.
Identify all nine Navratna gem species correctly, assess quality against classical text standards, and detect the most common fraud for each.
Recognise and avoid every major gem and diamond fraud, from glass-filled ruby to fake GIA certificates to the Jaipur tourist scam.
Evaluate whether a specific gem or diamond has investment-grade characteristics and explain precisely why most do not.
Participate competently in any trade conversation with a dealer, grader or buyer, understanding the vocabulary, the conventions and the unspoken rules.
Complete both tracks if your work covers diamonds and coloured gems.
Geology, chemistry, and why diamonds form where they do
Cut, colour, clarity, carat — the language the whole world uses
GIA vs IGI, how certificates are produced, and what they do not tell you
Rappaport, rough tenders, bourses, and the price system that runs the industry
CVD, HPHT, the price collapse, and what this means for the natural diamond business
90% of the world's diamonds are cut here. This is how that business works.
The system is different from diamonds. Here is why and how to navigate it.
The three species that drive 80% of the high-value coloured stone market
The system that drives a significant share of Indian gem retail and how to serve it correctly
The practical skills that protect money. Every buyer needs this. Every seller needs this too.
No account. No fee. No deadline. The Codex articles are the curriculum. Read them in sequence, come back here between each one, and move forward when you are ready.