Diamonds in the Rough?

The other day I took part in a Diamond Tender. Diamond dealers would come in to the office by appointment and bid on parcels of diamonds after inspecting them to see if they were of personal interest. Each parcel contained hundreds of diamonds with varying qualities. (e.x. A VS1 with a VS2) Realize, each dealer may use the diamonds differently which would make the worth of the package completely subjective to each buyer. (Note: some buyers may use lower quality diamonds if they sell to small retail stores or some may insist on higher quality for higher paying clients.)

I, the controller, would sit across from the bidder and present him with whatever package he was interested in. In truth, my job was security. There have been cases where people have hollowed out skin in their palm in order to steal diamonds, or slipped diamonds into their cuffs. Sometimes cameras are not enough, and I have digressed.

I would sit in the office for hours as bidders would sort the diamonds. One by one they would come in, inspect the diamonds through a loop for carbon or “feathers” (damage to a diamond’s value), weigh the stone and check its florescence. Some people would be skilled enough to sort through bags of a hundred diamonds in a matter of minutes. They would snap up the diamond with tweezers, flip it up to the light as they would glance through the loop and finally place it on the scale all within a matter of seconds.

What astounded me in watching this process was the similarity to our hashkafic outlook. In my mind, I could just see a G-d like presence, taking each soul, inspecting it with tweezers up to the bright light, noting the contrast of cleanliness to the black marks. Then He would make piles of different groups. Each would be weighed, its value determined.

The key difference is that most bidders would not bid on a group of stones that had flaws since it lowers the value of the entire parcel. G-d on the other hand, would probably always bid high on every pile.

Lucky us right?