Blue Nile Ideal?

[Allisonfaye]

I am looking for diamond stud earrings and I am using the Holloway calculator. Diamonds that Blue Nile designates as 'ideal' are coming up between 2.7 and 5.0 on the Holloway calculator. What's up with that?

 

[kenny]

They ain't 'ideal' enough.

Anyone can call any diamond anything.
I trust the HCA.
After finding diamonds that score under 2.0 get an idealscope image.

https://www.pricescope.com/tools/ideal-scope

Compare it to this chart.



This 2-step process is a simple and bulletproof way to find a well-cut round.
It may reject a few rounds that experts with tons of knowledge and experience may have not rejected ... but you and I are not experts with tons of knowledge and experience.

 

[Christina...]

Lately I feel like a 'Kenny clone' because I come along behind him and +1 everything that he has to say. HCA is a rejection tool not a selection tool...it's possible to find gorgeous stones that score poorly but perform beautifully and vice versa...some stones will score very well but be lacking IRL performance. That said though, HCA does it's job very well...it's job being to help you, the consumer, weed through a very long list of virtual list of stones and end up with a very short list of possible candidates that a worth a closer look. This is my biggest problem with BN...they don't offer any additional information pertaining to the stones performance such as ASET and IS images that Kenny already suggested so you have no idea how they might perform IRL regardless of HCA score. The exception being AGS0 stones...it's not necessary to run these stones through the HCA since AGS has already graded them based on performance. So, if one of the stones that you are considering happens to be an AGS0 then you can disregard what the HCA predicts and take a closer look for yourself.