bubbletrouble
Rough_Rock
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2014
- Messages
- 9
Hello there,
First time poster but have been reading voraciously through this forum recently. A big thank you to everybody who contributes - your wealth of knowledge and expertise is amazing and has been so helpful as I research diamonds for an engagement ring.
My query is about the buying through an online vendor (James Allen, Whiteflash and Brian Gavin) vs using a vendor such as Good Old Gold or Victor Canera which has a human element. My partner and I are in Sydney, Australia and are planning to have our e-ring made by VC as we can't seem to find anyone here locally who delivers the high levels of craftsmanship or matches our aesthetic tastes.
We are yet to source the diamond. After doing our research, we have been comfortable plugging in our desired specs (including proportions found in the cheatsheets here on this forum and working out HCA scores) into the online vendors like JA, WF and BGD and are trying to do our best learning to interpret the ASET and Idealscope etc. However the option of being able to use a service like GoG, where they do a lot of the interpretation for you (and can show you videos before you buy) is very appealing to us. We'd like to avoid buying online, being disappointed and shipping it back etc. Another option would be to ask VC to source our diamond for us which adds to the convenience factor further.
I guess I would like to know:
- What are the pros and cons of doing it all ourselves vs enlisting the help of the pros?
- Do you think we will miss out on the range of diamonds available by asking either GoG or VC to source for us? Of the two, who would you recommend? We have found GoG and in particular Jonathan's online presence very helpful so feel we could trust him/his team and VC will be setting the stone and provides the option of finding us a diamond but we do not know much about his diamond sourcing service.
- Re GoG policy, we would be unable to see the GIA/AGS certificates until we commit to a stone. Being our first big online purchase, we are slightly uncomfortable with not having all the information (not that we are qualified to interpret it anyway..). Thoughts about this?
Overall, we simply want the best diamond we can afford in our price range and are exploring the best ways of doing this given we are both diamond novices at best and live on the other side of the world. This forum has been invaluable and without it we would still be trawling haplessly through our local stores.
Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated, big thank you in advance!
First time poster but have been reading voraciously through this forum recently. A big thank you to everybody who contributes - your wealth of knowledge and expertise is amazing and has been so helpful as I research diamonds for an engagement ring.
My query is about the buying through an online vendor (James Allen, Whiteflash and Brian Gavin) vs using a vendor such as Good Old Gold or Victor Canera which has a human element. My partner and I are in Sydney, Australia and are planning to have our e-ring made by VC as we can't seem to find anyone here locally who delivers the high levels of craftsmanship or matches our aesthetic tastes.
We are yet to source the diamond. After doing our research, we have been comfortable plugging in our desired specs (including proportions found in the cheatsheets here on this forum and working out HCA scores) into the online vendors like JA, WF and BGD and are trying to do our best learning to interpret the ASET and Idealscope etc. However the option of being able to use a service like GoG, where they do a lot of the interpretation for you (and can show you videos before you buy) is very appealing to us. We'd like to avoid buying online, being disappointed and shipping it back etc. Another option would be to ask VC to source our diamond for us which adds to the convenience factor further.
I guess I would like to know:
- What are the pros and cons of doing it all ourselves vs enlisting the help of the pros?
- Do you think we will miss out on the range of diamonds available by asking either GoG or VC to source for us? Of the two, who would you recommend? We have found GoG and in particular Jonathan's online presence very helpful so feel we could trust him/his team and VC will be setting the stone and provides the option of finding us a diamond but we do not know much about his diamond sourcing service.
- Re GoG policy, we would be unable to see the GIA/AGS certificates until we commit to a stone. Being our first big online purchase, we are slightly uncomfortable with not having all the information (not that we are qualified to interpret it anyway..). Thoughts about this?
Overall, we simply want the best diamond we can afford in our price range and are exploring the best ways of doing this given we are both diamond novices at best and live on the other side of the world. This forum has been invaluable and without it we would still be trawling haplessly through our local stores.
Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated, big thank you in advance!