Unmatched Sparkle, Brilliance, and Beauty

Introducing the Continental Diamond Legacy™ Collection

It's all in the name: Legacy. Because it's more than just a diamond. It’s a masterwork … an instant heirloom meant to bring joy to its caretaker and successive generations. It's skillfully crafted by a master diamond cutter cuts to standards that go well beyond the traditional definition of Excellent. Exacting attention to physical and optical precision, and adherence to the industry's tightest proportion targets, result in a symphony of white and colored light … what diamond connoisseurs call brilliance, dispersion, and scintillation. For you, it simply means enduring beauty and allure. A Legacy diamond really will last — because its caretakers will treasure it and its legacy … forever.

Cut determines the sparkle, brilliance, and beauty of a diamond.
It is why Continental Diamond developed the Continental Diamond Legacy™ collection.

Your Journey to the Perfect Diamond

Finding just the right diamond for any occasion is a journey — one that becomes a story. And everyone likes a story. You have a chance to weave one of your own around your diamond quest and your choice of a Legacy diamond.

You likely learned about carat weight, color, clarity, and cut at the start of your journey — the proverbial 4Cs. Many first-time diamond buyers start with carat size in mind. As their journey unfolds, however, they may make color, clarity, and cut tradeoffs to adhere to a budget figure. It's a perfectly sound approach — tried and true.

But, like the American poet Robert Frost, Continental Diamond encourages you to "take the road less traveled by" and focus primarily on cut. Prioritizing cut can make all the difference.

The Zenith of Craftsmanship

The Legacy diamond is a study in cut proportion, precision, and consistency — the pinnacle of a master diamond cutter's art and the cornerstone of beauty. The result is a diamond that looks bigger and brighter than one of equivalent color, clarity, and carat weight.  

Refined Proportions

The Legacy diamond is cut to what is commonly called “ideal” proportions. Ideal is a term used by the American Gemological Society (AGS) wherein a round diamond's table, girdle, crown, and pavilion are cut to a mathematical formula. That formula is expressed using the table size, girdle height, crown height, and pavilion depth as a percentage of the diamond’s total diameter. Alternatively, the crown and pavilion angles, expressed in degrees, can also denote an ideal cut.

The "ideal" cut, first described by Marcel Tolkowsky in 1919, excels in creating brilliance (white light reflected to the viewer), fire (dispersion), and sparkle (scintillation). Yet, even within ideal cut parameters, there is a range of acceptable proportions and angles — and this where the Legacy diamond departs from all other ideal cut diamonds.

Continental Diamond believes cutting to a more defined portion of the total available target proportions delivers a more magnificent diamond than the “average” ideal cut diamond. Master cutters cutting to this much tighter target proportion consistently produce an even brighter and more beautiful diamond than one that may be equally graded.

Precision Cutting 

The Legacy diamond gains additional light performance characteristics and an eye-pleasing cut pattern from both physical and optical symmetry — achieved through precision cutting.

Physical symmetry refers to the exactness of shape, overall outline, placement, intersection, and alignment of individual facets. It is sometimes referred to as "meet-point symmetry," wherein facet junctions meet equally.

Optical symmetry (or 3-D symmetry) ensures that facets reflect perfectly with their counterparts on the opposite side of the diamond. Achieving optical symmetry is extremely difficult and time-consuming because it requires a high degree of cutting precision by a master cutter. One of the defining characteristics indicative of a high-precision diamond is its hearts and arrows pattern.

With the aid of a specialized optical tool, it is possible to see a clear pattern of eight unbroken, consistently defined arrows while looking down through the table of a Legacy diamond. The uniform, aesthetic quality of the arrows indicates the degree of precision achieved.

Similarly, it is possible to reverse the diamond in the optical tool to see a kaleidoscopic, uniform pattern of eight hearts from the bottom. The trueness of the hearts (without irregularities of shape, size, or gaps) denotes optical precision more than the arrow pattern because more facets are involved in their creation.

Superior physical and optical symmetry produce a more defined, uniform, consistent hearts and arrows pattern. And that pattern is indicative of the Legacy diamond’s level of craftsmanship.

The symmetry also enhances light performance in all environments with visible light, in harmony with the ideal proportions. The goal of the Legacy diamond cutter is to achieve overall maximum beauty via both, where brightness, scintillation, and dispersion work harmoniously. The result? An enduring heirloom whose beauty and journey, from the selection of the rough crystal to the finished diamond, results in a treasure to be passed down through generations.

Visit Continental Diamond Online or In Our Store

We invite you to browse our carefully selected and expertly crafted selection of diamonds. Every diamond on our list is available, exclusively, through Continental Diamond: They’re not held by a third party. Each diamond has been independently graded and photographed. And each photograph is singular to the individual diamond and has not been altered in any way. Every Legacy Diamond will carry the top cut grade that AGS awards, we choose AGS because they  currently have the best cut grade of any of the major gem labs.

Browse Our Current Legacy Diamond Selection >

We have a larger selection of diamonds than our online inventory shows. Please contact us to learn more!

Why Continental Diamond?

Continental Diamond has been family owned and operated in Minnesota for over 40 years. Our success is founded on making each customer feel comfortable and welcome in our store. And now with Legacy, we will be establishing online relationships as well. We pride ourselves on providing education and counsel so you can make informed choices. We love what we do and the connections we make every day. Let us help you create life’s moments, with exceptional care.