engagement rings - buy loose diamond or from "reputable" store - Page 3

The dimaond i ordered was rated IF (Internally Flawless) and the secondary appraisal validated that.

What about the other criteria, i.e. cut, carat, color? Were those accurately validated as well?

I was talking about their more subject quality rankings, particularly cut. Many of the stones they rated as "excellent" cuts do not deserve that ranking by any objective standard, but they charge a premium for them. Lying about something like clarity would be intolerable. As a minor aside, getting an IF stone is an absurd waste of money, but whatever floats your boat.

An IF clarity rating is pretty much just an affectation or bragging right. Many fine jewelers recommend that you go with VVS1 or VVS2 if you are actually going to wear the ring and put the difference in an equivalent bigger stone.

There is also a clarity rating of F which is flawless both internally and externally, as opposed to IF, which is Internally Flawless. This too makes no sense if the ring is to be worn.

Hopefully you had a GIA Certification with your IF ring. If so then it is no surprise that your appraisal matched the specs of the ring that were presented to you. The GIA is ideally a 3rd party opinion and is neutral whereas appraisers are noted of sometimes being close to GIA specifications and also in some cases being wildly off the mark in their grading. I have never heard of an appraiser that has graded a stone tougher than the GIA.

Among professionals, a GIA Cert. ( at least a recent one ) definitey adds value to your stone. A stone with no GIA Cert. but with an appraisal not so much.




As I said, the GIA Cert. has credibility. Validation by an independent appraiser not so much. "Independent " appraisals are notorious for being all over the place.


I certainly agree with the bolded statement.

Are you talking about "Blue Nile" in the other part of your post?

I am aware of some major name diamond operations that fudge on their specs and ratings. Usually with some certification service that they control. But I thought that Blue Nile sells primarily GIA stones, so it would be very difficult to mislead on something like clarity if there is a GIA Cert. with the stone.

Even VVS is overkill IMO. A decent SI1 stone will be eyeclean, and even with a loupe most people wouldn't be able to see the inclusions in a VS1/2 stone.

Blue Nile has a search filter by cut quality. Many of the stones that they say are "Ideal" cuts fall WAY outside the Holloway cut advisor range for decent cuts. Having a good Holloway score doesn't guarantee anything, but almost no stone without a decent rating will be an excellent quality cut. I just got tired of fishing through their deceptive ratings.

I have no reason to believe they fudge on the more concrete factors like clarity and did not intend to imply as such.

Note: this way true two years ago when I was buying stones, it may not be now.

I was searching BlueNile's inventory a few months ago, and noticed that they will label stones as "ideal" even though the stone only comes with GIA certs, and as you know, GIA does not actually have an "ideal cut" rating - I believe "excellent" is as high as they go. On the other hand, they also carry many stones that have AGS certs, and AGS does in fact grade stones as "ideal." Of course, for many of the stones in their inventory, you are able to look a scan of the actual certificate yourself (have to be wary of the date, as grading criteria has changed over the years), so you are free to review the numbers and plug them into the HCA if you're so inclined. As you've noted though, a good HCA score in and of itself doesn't guarantee anything, but it certainly helps in trying to rule out certain stones, i.e. I wouldn't seriously consider anything that had a higher score than say, 3.5 or so. I also found some stones on BlueNile that got excellent HCA scores (sub 1.0), but are still not great because the angles were too steep for optimum performance. IME, this hasn't been as much of an issue with WhiteFlash, Brian Gavin, or GoodOldGold.

What kind of shoes, purse, car does your significant other prefer and why? The answer to this might help you decide if a brand name will be better appreciated. As much as people want to say it doesn't matter...for some it will. It will matter a great deal that they're wearing Cartier vs. Tiffany & Co. Just because the specs are the same doesn't mean the ring will be received the same. It also doesn't mean that your s/o isn't a great person because they've been dreaming of a Harry Winston ring. Just because a Merc S55 AMG will get you the same place as an S63 AMG doesn't mean it's the same thing. Some people just prefer different things.

I know of Potomac, MD...I'm very close to it at this very moment. In all honesty, and I know this goes against the grain, I am not the type of person who thinks I'm doing myself many favors by trying to piece together an engagement ring. I actually prefer the experience of walking into the jeweler and buying there. I would probably never truly be happy with trying to build a ring similar to one from Cartier. I would always think about the fact that I was trying to replicate something else. For me that isn't peace of mind. A diamond isn't a logical purchase in the first place. If it was me I would be very comfortable paying the Cartier premium.

I've purchased from Cartier, and Graff but not engagement rings. I still feel great about those purchases. How close are you with her parents? Perhaps you can steal her mother away to go ring shopping with you? She might appreciate the effort and may be able to steer you in a direction...

Sorry for the long post but I figured it might be helpful:

I've actually been in the market for an engagement ring for the past 3-4 months (I was working with roughly the same budget as you) and ultimately ended up with a Harry Winston solitaire after an exhaustive search (with the g/f's input as well).

After spending countless hours on pricescope learning all the various details, getting familiar with the HCA calculator (using it so much I got pretty good as estimating the HCA score by just looking at the proportions and angle measurements), going into jewelry stores/diamond brokers and comparing their stones against master stones, I was ready to purchase my ring from an online source (usual suspects of bluenile, goodoldgold, whiteflash, briangavindiamonds, jamesallen) since they all had comparable prices and sometimes even the same exact stone!

Long story short to cover all my bases, I ended up visiting Tiffany, Cartier, DeBeers, VC&A, Damiani, and HW back to back to back all in the same day, it was evident to me that the settings at HW were noticeably the most refined and better than most indepedent jewelers. My g/f actually accompanied me to all the stores (she was in the camp that she'd rather have a larger stone from an independent instead of a designer one) but after visiting HW and seeing the quality of their settings, she and I both realized the impact that a good setting will make on the diamond.

I ended up with a 1.25 RB solitaire, F, VS1 (cleanest VS1 I've ever seen), triple EX GIA, HCA 1.3. (I would've preferred to go lower in color for a larger size but HW doesn't go below F/VS1. Their minimum standards were the highest of all designer jewelers). They were asking $24k but I negotiated down to $22k with no added tax.

After pricing comparably spec'd diamonds through brokers/online retailers, a similar one would've run about $14k. Then having to set the solitaire in a platinum band at a jeweler would've run another $1k-$2k. If I wanted something similar in quality to the handiwork as a HW setting but still not quite replicating the original, the setting would've cost substantially more.

All in all, because of the experience with their SA, their buyback/upgrade plan, and most importantly the quality of the stone and workmanship on the setting, the premium was well worth it.

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!

Let me repost something I just posted on purseforum: "I really don't feel like writing paragraphs about jewelry, but point blank, if you are buying from a brand name jeweler you are getting scammed. Appraisal values also mean nothing. "Precious" metals are commodities much more-so than leather because of consistency and standardization. An example, a $48,000 ring from Chopard. Not an engagement ring, but one with a micropave setting allover, 18k white gold. Knowing what the weight was, tcw, the size of the stones (8 pointers), and stone quality (using a loupe to estimate F/vvs2) I quickly did some mental math to figure out that even with the mold, that an identical ring would cost less than $6xxxx." If you live in New York I can tell you a few places to buy a loose cut/polished stone. To enter some buildings you will need your TIN/EIN.

I was pretty well set on a Vatche setting, and ended up having Whiteflash source one for me. Worked out great. This is probably an option for quite a few designer settings.