Thanks for the input, Ana! I am going to have to wait until it arrives to see what it looks like close up....(I pmed you too)....the sellers are estate/antique people and not jewelry folks, so it's hard to say. I will trust your eyes on the age of the piece. I didn't know that about silver over gold (I'm such a newbie still) so thank you!
I'll be sizing it down most likely to a 6.5 but I have no problem replacing the shank if that seems like the best course of action.
So those look like beads and not just the old nubs/remains of prongs to you? Hmmmmm. I have no idea!!
The stone seems to be close to 5.2mm (holding it up to a chart on paper) and the seller told me that the actual opening on the head is around 1/8 inch (which is between 3.175 and 3.5mm???) If it were a bezel setting it'd be a problem, but since it appeared to be made for prongs? (Which is also what the seller said when we spoke on the phone) I went ahead and bought and figured I'd try to make it work! We'll see!!
(ETA: I'd never heard of bead-setting a center stone, I only knew of bead-set in terms of pave. How would that work?)
I'll be sizing it down most likely to a 6.5 but I have no problem replacing the shank if that seems like the best course of action.
So those look like beads and not just the old nubs/remains of prongs to you? Hmmmmm. I have no idea!!
The stone seems to be close to 5.2mm (holding it up to a chart on paper) and the seller told me that the actual opening on the head is around 1/8 inch (which is between 3.175 and 3.5mm???) If it were a bezel setting it'd be a problem, but since it appeared to be made for prongs? (Which is also what the seller said when we spoke on the phone) I went ahead and bought and figured I'd try to make it work! We'll see!!
(ETA: I'd never heard of bead-setting a center stone, I only knew of bead-set in terms of pave. How would that work?)