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Engagement ring advice

PoundSand

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Originally Posted by jmoody15
There are different systems to grade the quality. I'm too far out to remember the specifics, but there are two that are commonly used, and reliable. There's a third that is notoriously generous in its ratings, and most B&M places refuse diamonds with those certifications. BN and other online vendors won't hesitate to sell you those diamonds.

i found it a LOT easier to find gia and ags certified stones online. i saw a LOT of egl and igi (and a whole lot of other random ones) in b&m stores, including many stores with NO gia certified stones.
 

TheFoo

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^^^ I spent months on Pricescope. It's a great learning resource, but beware of the terrible taste and catty women. I got sick reading about "upgrading."
 

makewayhomer

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bluenile doesn't hold inventory, so there's no such thing as getting rejects- the diamonds they have available are generally the same ones- and i mean the EXACT same ones- just about any other retailer (online or b&m) can order for you. the thing about b&m's is they obviously DO hold inventory that you can look at.
right, my story is more

- diamond wholesaler goes into building in diamond district
- shows a bunch of diamonds to dealers
- dealers buy some, hold them in their shops (I bought one of these)
- most of what wasn't bought that day or by other vendors ended up in online databases like BN
 

thekunk07

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lol8[1].gif


Originally Posted by dport86
I don't live in the Kunk's world, but in my world, what you think your girl would want and what she would consider too big might surprise you. I have a very down-to-earth, practical, non-designer-whore, non-golddigging girl with a 4.5 finger, and in the end, she would have been content with 1.5 carats--but much bigger was definitely not too big. The difference the size made to her happiness and just as importantly how her family reacted was well worth the money to me, but YMMV.

Yes diamonds have no instrinsic value other than as industrial cutting material. Yes the wedding industry and the diamond industry are all rip-off artists working emotional blackmail, guilt and ignorance. OTOH, quick perusal of the internet diamond sites indicate many, many women buy (or get their husbands to buy) the ring they really wanted later--as an anniversary present. With this economy and the odds on marriage, maybe that's a better bet. Just don't assume your girl wants or will be happy with what you do. Or that she doesn't know about diamonds or have a very highly developed idea of her dream ring. You might be in for a little surprise.
 

TheFoo

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So what if Blue Nile gets what the diamond dealers don't pick? That doesn't mean the stones are lower in quality. In fact, the diamond dealers are picking what they believe will sell for the most profit, which isn't necessarily the same as what a knowledgeable buyer is looking for.

Anyway, Blue Nile supplies scans of the GIA certificates, which tells you as much as what 99% of all diamond dealers will tell you. There's no voodoo going on.
 

thekunk07

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^ i bought from bluenile, got a very good cut 1.5 carat, vvs1, e color for under 10k and I (and she) was perfectly satisfied with it and the experience.
 

ScottMan

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Originally Posted by mafoofan
^^^ I spent months on Pricescope. It's a great learning resource, but beware of the terrible taste and catty women. I got sick reading about "upgrading."
x2 It's pretty horrible how the groupthink works over there and how they justify needing the upgrades.

Long winded personal experience...go...

I recently went through this process but I feel like I had a very different experience than most. My fiance and I had talked at length about getting married and when we should get engaged so there wasn't much in the way of surprise that a ring was coming soon. I dropped the usual hints to find out her tastes and realized quite quickly that she disliked the typical Tiffany style setting and wanted something more unique. We talked a bit more and I had what I felt was a good handle on things. After a lot of deliberation I asked if she would rather be a part of the designing process or be surprised. She was fine either way, but my apparent apprehension led her to decide to be somewhat involved.

I ordered a sample ring that was a lot like we had talked about (1CT center with a halo and side stones), she tried it on, and decided quite a few things about it. The center was too big (what?!), the halo was too small, and she thought the side stones were a bit gaudy. I ended up designing a custom ring with Ritani with a .5 center, halo stones exactly half the size of the center for more balance, and no side stones. She lost it over the ring. She would've been happy about any ring, probably ecstatic. But she's over the moon about the one she got because it is exactly what she wanted.

So, in this overly wordy post, my advice would be that some girls love the surprise, and some girls would be even more happy with a little input to get exactly what they wanted. In my case it actually saved me quite a bit of money. She has pretty expensive tastes on everything else but wanted a smaller stone. Go figure.

Here's the ring if anyone cares:

SDC10377.jpg
 

zalb916

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Originally Posted by PoundSand
the thing about b&m's is they obviously DO hold inventory that you can look at.

This isn't exactly the whole story. Many stores actually have very limited inventory. They bring in stones from a third party for you to look at.
 

makewayhomer

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Originally Posted by mafoofan
So what if Blue Nile gets what the diamond dealers don't pick? That doesn't mean the stones are lower in quality. In fact, the diamond dealers are picking what they believe will sell for the most profit, which isn't necessarily the same as what a knowledgeable buyer is looking for. Anyway, Blue Nile supplies scans of the GIA certificates, which tells you as much as what 99% of all diamond dealers will tell you. There's no voodoo going on.
the biggest problem with Blue Nile is that whoever who talk to there has no access to actually see the stones. so when you ask them if it's eye clean, they have no idea...they just ask someone else who may or may not be bs'ing them (I found this out the hard way). also, you can't get idealscope images through BN or get a cut analysis none of this is the case with other online vendors, so you really don't get 99% of the info with Blue Nile, or anything close to it really. you know it's Si1 but there is a huge range of Si1's. if I was going with an online vendor, I would actually go with someone who had all the info on the diamond or could actually go out and see it and report back to me personally. I did this with other online vendors and got actual experienced jewelers who got the stones shipped to them and did actual analysis on them. this is far, far beyond what BN will do for you
 

Aldehyde

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Here's a wild thought:

Don't get a diamond.

I bought an Alexandrite for my fiancÃ
00a9.png
es ring. And with the assistance of a jeweler, I'm making the ring myself. Which means far more than dropping big bucks on a 3C ring.

My brother bought his wife an art-deco era ring with no gemstone at all.

She should be marrying you for who you are and how you treat her, and it has nothing to do with how much money you spend on a ring. Which is all diamonds are about. A big flag you can wave and say
"I LOVE YOU $15000 MUCH, WHICH IS MORE THAN JEFF LOVES HIS WIFE - HE ONLY LOVES HER $7500 MUCH. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT? I LOVE YOU TWICE AS MUCH AS JEFF LOVES HIS WIFE!"

So. Don't buy into it. Think for yourself.
 

TheFoo

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Originally Posted by ScottMan
So, in this overly wordy post, my advice would be that some girls love the surprise, and some girls would be even more happy with a little input to get exactly what they wanted. In my case it actually saved me quite a bit of money. She has pretty expensive tastes on everything else but wanted a smaller stone. Go figure. Here's the ring if anyone cares:
SDC10377.jpg

My wife also wanted a surprise. Like you, I had a ring custom-made. In my opinion, the best approach is to treat a bespoke engagement ring like a bespoke suit: keep in mind there is actually a very limited universe of classic styles and it's more about refinement of execution than a broadening of choices. The ring I had made for my wife also has a halo, but the stone is a Royal Asscher and it has three-sided pave work all the way around the ring band. Interesting difference though: I tried to minimize the profile of the halo, not balance it against the stone.
Originally Posted by makewayhomer
the biggest problem with Blue Nile is that whoever who talk to there has no access to actually see the stones. so when you ask them if it's eye clean, they have no idea...they just ask someone else who may or may not be bs'ing them (I found this out the hard way). also, you can't get idealscope images through BN or get a cut analysis none of this is the case with other online vendors. if I was going with an online vendor, I would actually go with someone who had all the info on the diamond or could actually go out and see it and report back to me personally.
Yeah, I wasn't saying I'd pick Blue Nile myself. I was just pointing out that they don't sell sub-par stones.
 

jmoody15

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Originally Posted by mafoofan
The ring I had made for my wife also has a halo, but the stone is a Royal Asscher and it has three-sided pave work all the way around the ring band.

Asscher is the way to go to make it different from the start. I found a perfectly square asscher cut diamond for my wife, and in the two years she's been wearing it, she's only seen one other girl with one.

And +2 to the whole design it yourself thing. I was drawing up a design for my wife, when the jeweler pulled a setting from the back that was much better than what I could have designed on my own - he saw where I was going with it.
 

TheFoo

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Originally Posted by jmoody15
Asscher is the way to go to make it different from the start. I found a perfectly square asscher cut diamond for my wife, and in the two years she's been wearing it, she's only seen one other girl with one.

That's how I got "stuck" with a D/VVS2 stone. I wanted a particular size Royal Asscher and they are even more rare than generic Asscher cuts since only the Asscher family makes them. So when one finally showed up, I couldn't be so picky about the exact grading.

Originally Posted by jmoody15
And +2 to the whole design it yourself thing. I was drawing up a design for my wife, when the jeweler pulled a setting from the back that was much better than what I could have designed on my own - he saw where I was going with it.

Yeah, basically you pick solitaire or side stones, number and type of prongs, halo or no halo, pave or no pave (and what kind of pave), etc. It's not rocket science. Self-designed rings that break the classic mold are almost always ugly as sin.
 

jmoody15

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Originally Posted by mafoofan
Yeah, basically you pick solitaire or side stones, number and type of prongs, halo or no halo, pave or no pave (and what kind of pave), etc. It's not rocket science. Self-designed rings that break the classic mold are almost always ugly as sin.

Yeah, people should realize that subtly unique is best - if you tweak normalcy just slightly, then you get something unique, yet timeless
 

Reevolving

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Originally Posted by makewayhomer
regarding the inconsistency of grading: go on BN right now, and search for I color SI1 Ideal Cut 1.34 - 1.49 carats there is a 1.37 Carat stone that is $600 cheaper than a 1.35 carat stone. weird, right? per carat, prices range from $4,600 to $5,800. again, how could this be if they are all graded similar? the answer is that it could be for all kinds of reasons. each stone needs to be looked at and considered ,you can't just look at the 4 C's on the cert
Wrong. You are not comparing apples to apples. Just stick with GIA and then compare. Last I checked, BN (or any website with big volume and low overhead) will be cheaper than you local ripoff merchant or Zale's, et al.
 

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