Cut Advisor Score 3.2 | ||||||||||||
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The HCA graded it this way:
Cut Advisor Score 3.2
Factor Grade Light Return: Very Good Fire: Good Scintillation: Good Spread: Very Good HCA Score : 3.2 - Very Good - Worth buying if the price is right
The comment says "Probably sparkles and looks a good size for its carat weight. If the HCA is less than 2.5, and you can see good Hearts and Arrows, it can be a nice diamond. Confirm with Ideal-scope, ASET scope or send to an appraiser."
Most PSers will only consider buying if the diamond scores under 2.
If you're paying Tiffany markup, tbh I would want to get superideal cut quality, but that's probably not going to happen. You will need to give the "cheat sheet" numbers to your sales associate and have them only pull diamonds within them, and then run all those through the HCA until you find ones that score well.
Also I don't know what the price is, but here's a comparable in specs superideal, and add around $2k we'll say for a solitaire and you have a comparison of what you would be paying for absolute top cut quality:
So basically if you were to get a superideal in a similar setting, you'd be paying around $11k. This diamond is not a superideal - similar diamonds are selling for 6-7k on other websites, so you could guess maybe a comparable ring would be, say, $7-9k depending on the cost of the setting.
Do you and your boyfriend want a Tiffany diamond - this Tiffany diamond - enough to tolerate whatever markup it is?
I'm by no means an expert, but I figured I'd give my advice. I plugged the measurements into the HCA calculator found on this site. That diamond scores a 3.2, when ideally you'd want a diamond to score 2 or below. This doesn't mean the diamond is garbage, but it may not have the very best light return, and with that Tiffany markup, you expect the best, am I right?
I also recently purchased a Tiffany diamond ring (but on eBay), and I used the HCA tool and also the AGA CUT Grading Chart found on this site under the Knowledge tab. Ideally, you want all the numbers to fall within the Class 1A range on that chart and at a 2 or below on HCA tool. Then you'd want to see the diamond in person and make sure it looks good to your own eyes -- beauty is subjective, of course. If you are buying directly from Tiffany, you can tell your sales associate that you are looking for diamonds within these cut measurement ranges, in whatever carat/color/clarity ranges you prefer, and they can pull from worldwide inventory and should be able to let you see more than one. If you are doing this via eBay or another such secondhand market, you would need to do this legwork yourself and make sure you have a nice return window available. I did this with success earlier this month actually; you can look at my post history to find it. Good luck!
If you go back to the store to look at it again, get it away from the Tiffany lights. Take it over to a window, if there is one. Bring a white piece of paper or white shoebox to create your own sort of diffused lighting lightbox - shine your phone at it. Jewelry stores have lighting made to make everything sparkle and look good, but that doesn’t mean it’ll look amazing in every lighting environment.
Here is a picture of the interior of a diamond display at a jeweler I was at recently, to show you how many lights they put in this thing to make sure light is entering the diamond from every angle (picture taken from below the display - the lights aren’t visible from above/normal viewing angles):