my diamond purchase experience in Boston

[soxfan2013]

I've spent countless hours on PS reading all the fabulous information available in preparation for my exciting purchase and figured it's time for me to share with you all. I viewed the YouTube videos from Good Old Gold on the tradeoffs of color, clarity, and cut. I used the HCA tool to weed out stones that seemed good on paper but may not be so great in real life.

What an amazing resource this website and its contributors are!!!

I decided to visit a few local jewelers to get a sense of what was available. It's always good to see the stone in person and I would prefer to support local businesses. I traveled to Downtown Crossing in Boston (the closest thing we have to the "jewelry district") and visited EB Horn, DeScenza, and Hefez and Sons. Hefez and Sons had a 1.58 J VS2 GIA triple x (HCA was low 2's) that was in the range of what we were looking for. After getting a sense of the prices locally, I went to various online vendors to compare and see what was available.

Joe Hefez (one of the sons) worked with us. His initial price was higher than what we wanted to pay, though it was very competitive compared to the other stores we visited. A couple of days later, we spoke and I told him what I found online. He came back with an offer "I couldn't refuse" that was very competitive. Since I preferred for such a big purchase to deal with a local jeweler directly, we ended up purchasing from him.

We couldn't be happier.

I would strongly recommend Joe. He was very pleasant, straight-forward, and most importantly, seemed to want to do right by his customers. It sure felt to me like his goal was to build a long-term relationship as opposed to maximizing profits on a single purchase.

 

[heididdl]

If you got what you were looking for that is terrfic. Did you also look at stones that were H-I SI1 quality As J is a little warmer than I prefer for a n Ering.

 

[Bonfire]

It sounds like you did your homework and ended up very happy with your purchase and experience.
Congrtulations to you and your fiancé. Be sure to come back and show us some hand shots!

 

[TechieTechie]

SoxFan...thank you for the posts. Since I am local to you, this is of particular interest.

Wondering if you went to Barmakian at all? They get rave reviews (and Boston Mag's top award). Same with Long's...any feedback? It's interesting....the Jewelry Building in downtown has a warren of small shops, but the outposts of our local chains in Downtown Crossing are tiny (For example, I was not impressed AT ALL with EB Horn's downtown location, they couldn't even verify my Breitling, even though they are an authorized retailer).

Did you visit any custom jewelers (e.g. Gemvara, Karenna Maraj, Serjeo)...any feedback there?

Any other feedback on local jewelers would be very welcome.

 

[simplesimon]

I wrote about my experiences here:

[URL='https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/b-m-experience-engagement-ring.208877/']https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/b-m-experience-engagement-ring.208877/[/URL]

I didn't mention it at the time but those two stores are in Boston. The first one is Descenza's in Downtown Crossing and the second one is Long's in Burlington.

 

[soxfan2013]

We went back and forth in the H-J range. We felt that for us, having a really good cut would make up for the J color and there was just not enough of a difference to justify the significantly higher cost of even moving from J to I color. We decided to spend the extra money and err on the side of caution with a VS2 because we wanted to be eye clean, even though I suspect an SI1 would have also been fine.

We only visited the places I mentioned because the next day we identified a couple of diamonds online, one on BlueNile and another on JamesAllen.com that seemed perfect on paper and were mostly set to purchase online. If we did not get such a competitive price, we would have just bought from one of the two online sellers. We did not really look at the custom jewelers since the stone was set in a basic 6-prong, platinum Tiffany setting.

 

[canuk-gal]

HI:

Congratulations!

And if you do not share pictures I think I will likely end up crying in my cheerios!

cheers--Sharon

 

[soxfan2013]

She is not letting me take the picture until she gets her manicure done We will try to get one tomorrow in daylight.

 

[canuk-gal]

She is not letting me take the picture until she gets her manicure done We will try to get one tomorrow in daylight.

All good!

 

[two_little_birds]

She is not letting me take the picture until she gets her manicure done We will try to get one tomorrow in daylight.

LOL this made me chuckle! Please come back and post a few photos though.