San Francisco
Rough_Rock
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2005
- Messages
- 16
When your wife opens a package containing a gift from you and says WOW!!!! you know you have done something right.
Here is the final concluding chapter to my story about upgrading my wife’s stud earrings. I thought other prospective buyers might benefit from hearing of my journey.
I originally titled my earlier post “Buying is a lot easier than selling, isn’t it?” But I now think that is an inaccurate statement. While it took me almost 5 months to sell the pair of diamond stud earrings discussed with me by the Pricescope community in this thread: https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/buying-is-a-lot-easier-than-selling-isn%E2%80%99t-it.36227/ it has taken an additional 8 months to find their replacements. The Gray’s at Niceice.com, who found a diamond for my wife’s pendant a couple years ago, taught me the real 4 C’s of diamond analysis. It is Cut, Cut, Cut and Cut that makes the difference between “oh that’s nice and WOW!!!” So buying turned out to be a much tougher project than I ever envisioned and it involved viewing a number of diamonds from a number of different sources, both brick and mortar retailers and Internet dealers, before I found what I wanted.
I sought F or G, no worse than VS2, AGS Ideal Cut (with new certs) matching pair of 1.25 round brilliants for a price of around $20k. To find two VERY closely matched diamonds meeting that criteria is apparently not easy for there were several dealers here who tired unsuccessfully over the past 8 months to find them to enable a sale to me.
But to make a very long story short, my wife’s beautiful new diamond stud earrings arrived last night. With the able assistance of Lesley Harris at Whiteflash and the comprehensive services of the ever reliable RockDoc, I found and purchased the replacement pair of stud earrings I wanted.
The money was wired this week, so at this writing the comparison of my two stones is still up at Whiteflash.com, but it may be removed by the time you read my comments.
http://www.whiteflash.com/diamonds/Compare_Diamonds.aspx?idnos=179763,59305
They are AGS Ideal Cut, Hearts & Arrows, 1.236 and 1.245 round brilliants. Measuring 6.88x6.90x4.25 and 6.89x6.91x4.24 and both are G, VS2.
RockDoc did the independent third part analysis and provided me with voluminous documentation supporting his opinion that these were two very closely matched superior diamonds and a good value, given Whiteflash.com’s just under $18k price for the pair, after receiving a Pricescope.com member discount. RockDoc does not do a rubber stamp analysis, even if the diamonds being analyzed are AGS Ideal cut stones. The first pair of ACA’s from Whiteflash that he did an initial analysis on we returned. While they were very nice diamonds, they simply did not face up as closely as we wanted. Fortunately, Lesley received a new ACA diamond (AGS cert is dated 12/13/06), that was a very close match to another one she had in stock and they turned out to be what we sought and I purchased them after RockDoc’s analysis. As he said, their “Fire is nearly off the Gemex chart” and their Brilliance and Scintillation are almost as dramatic. For those who have not used an independent certified gemologist like RockDoc before when purchasing a diamond, I can only say it enable me to see many pictures of them in many different formats before deciding to buy and feel comfortable enough to wire the funds to the seller and have the diamonds mounted in their setting and shipped to me before I ever saw them in person. And to have my expectations greatly exceeded when I finally did see them.
Here is RockDoc’s web site http://www.consumersgemlab.com/ for those who are seeking that level of professional service and here is Whiteflash.com’s web site for those seeking exceptionally well cut diamonds http://www.whiteflash.com/diamonds/Default.aspx
Thanks to Lelsey and RockDoc and all those here at Pricescope.com who offered advice and assistance on this nearly year long project to trade up my wife’s earrings. Needless to say, a picture does not begin to do them justice but for what it is worth here they are mounted in a three prong Martini style 950 Platinum setting.
San Francisco
PS Now my beautiful wife keeps looking at her wedding ring and mumbling “upgrade”….. I wonder what that could possible mean???
Here is the final concluding chapter to my story about upgrading my wife’s stud earrings. I thought other prospective buyers might benefit from hearing of my journey.
I originally titled my earlier post “Buying is a lot easier than selling, isn’t it?” But I now think that is an inaccurate statement. While it took me almost 5 months to sell the pair of diamond stud earrings discussed with me by the Pricescope community in this thread: https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/buying-is-a-lot-easier-than-selling-isn%E2%80%99t-it.36227/ it has taken an additional 8 months to find their replacements. The Gray’s at Niceice.com, who found a diamond for my wife’s pendant a couple years ago, taught me the real 4 C’s of diamond analysis. It is Cut, Cut, Cut and Cut that makes the difference between “oh that’s nice and WOW!!!” So buying turned out to be a much tougher project than I ever envisioned and it involved viewing a number of diamonds from a number of different sources, both brick and mortar retailers and Internet dealers, before I found what I wanted.
I sought F or G, no worse than VS2, AGS Ideal Cut (with new certs) matching pair of 1.25 round brilliants for a price of around $20k. To find two VERY closely matched diamonds meeting that criteria is apparently not easy for there were several dealers here who tired unsuccessfully over the past 8 months to find them to enable a sale to me.
But to make a very long story short, my wife’s beautiful new diamond stud earrings arrived last night. With the able assistance of Lesley Harris at Whiteflash and the comprehensive services of the ever reliable RockDoc, I found and purchased the replacement pair of stud earrings I wanted.
The money was wired this week, so at this writing the comparison of my two stones is still up at Whiteflash.com, but it may be removed by the time you read my comments.
http://www.whiteflash.com/diamonds/Compare_Diamonds.aspx?idnos=179763,59305
They are AGS Ideal Cut, Hearts & Arrows, 1.236 and 1.245 round brilliants. Measuring 6.88x6.90x4.25 and 6.89x6.91x4.24 and both are G, VS2.
RockDoc did the independent third part analysis and provided me with voluminous documentation supporting his opinion that these were two very closely matched superior diamonds and a good value, given Whiteflash.com’s just under $18k price for the pair, after receiving a Pricescope.com member discount. RockDoc does not do a rubber stamp analysis, even if the diamonds being analyzed are AGS Ideal cut stones. The first pair of ACA’s from Whiteflash that he did an initial analysis on we returned. While they were very nice diamonds, they simply did not face up as closely as we wanted. Fortunately, Lesley received a new ACA diamond (AGS cert is dated 12/13/06), that was a very close match to another one she had in stock and they turned out to be what we sought and I purchased them after RockDoc’s analysis. As he said, their “Fire is nearly off the Gemex chart” and their Brilliance and Scintillation are almost as dramatic. For those who have not used an independent certified gemologist like RockDoc before when purchasing a diamond, I can only say it enable me to see many pictures of them in many different formats before deciding to buy and feel comfortable enough to wire the funds to the seller and have the diamonds mounted in their setting and shipped to me before I ever saw them in person. And to have my expectations greatly exceeded when I finally did see them.
Here is RockDoc’s web site http://www.consumersgemlab.com/ for those who are seeking that level of professional service and here is Whiteflash.com’s web site for those seeking exceptionally well cut diamonds http://www.whiteflash.com/diamonds/Default.aspx
Thanks to Lelsey and RockDoc and all those here at Pricescope.com who offered advice and assistance on this nearly year long project to trade up my wife’s earrings. Needless to say, a picture does not begin to do them justice but for what it is worth here they are mounted in a three prong Martini style 950 Platinum setting.
San Francisco
PS Now my beautiful wife keeps looking at her wedding ring and mumbling “upgrade”….. I wonder what that could possible mean???