Buying on the internet

[robdav]

My son is getting married and asked my advice and help in selecting a diamond. I''d never experienced this challange as a young man as I inherited my mothers wedding diamond and reset it for my bride. As I''ve learned from your forum and links I realize it to be an old european heavy cut with little excitement. Any fire and brilliance generated is from my eyes not the stone as I view it through my memory scope! So it being relatively lifeless compared to the fantastic ideal cuts you all have introduced me to it is more incentive for me to help my son get a superb brilliant diamond for his bride. We did the mall circuit and in retrospect were bombarded with exageration and overrating of average diamonds under solar flare lighting to get into our price range. So I turned to the internet and found this site, what a deliverance! The passion and thirst for knowledge I see in your comments is infectious and if I were a young man I would race to this profession,I envy you in this ancient and honorable profession. So,initially we were unsure of purchasing on the internet but with your help and much research have changed our opinion. Here is our dilemma- We set parameters for the diamond and based on budget sacrificed color and clarity to- I maybe J and SI1 to get a better cut. Is this a mistake? For cut(in order of priority) pav depth-60-62%, Pav ang 40.7-41.3, crn ang 33.7-35.8, table 53-57.5%, polish/symmetry/proportions-ideal, girdle .7-2.0. We have been able to verify all these if we have the AGS cert and Sarin which we can get on some of the vendors sites. My problem is I have gone beyond this with the sites that have intoduced me to "Scope-mania".I now find I go beyond the satisfaction of good angles and percentages and search out the Brilliance Scope, Fire Scope, I See 2 Scope, Mega Scope Leakage Diagrams....etc.I am rejecting stones for scope readings and diagrams when it meets the angles and percentages I know make an Ideal stone. Especially the firescope and the white, color and scintillation bar graphs from the Brilliance Scope. I want them all very high. If I see leakage I can''t stand it! Have I gone insane? I guess my question is this-If I purchase a stone (unseen) that meets the parameters I set above, ie an AGS 0 with the Sarin data to complete the information. Can I be safe with the assumption that it will give me the best brilliance, fire and scintillation I can get without seeking out this scope information to verify it.Or is it worth the time and effort to get this information. Also if I limit my search to H&A stones could this be a good way to gain this assurance I''m after? I apologize for rambling. Thank you for your time and your expertise I ask to borrow from.

Regards,
Robert

 

[niceice]

Well to coin your phrase Robert, yea, you've gone (a bit) insane

Personally, we don't put much weight in the Brilliance Scope, some dealers do, but it's essentially a computerized pixel counter and we're not all that impressed with it... As we understand it, both the AGS and GIA laboratories have evaluated the Brilliance Scope and neither establishment felt that it was worthy of being added to their collection of gemological equipment.

We do feel that there is something to be said for the Fire Scope which was recently replaced by the SymmetriScope and we use that as part of our selection process... If nothing else, it is interesting to see where a diamond is leaking light and the effect that different crown and pavilion angle depths can have upon how light travels within a stone... We believe that Jonathan at GOG calls his machine a Light Scope and no doubt he has found it to be useful. What we disagree with is the posting of pictures from the device for people to make a buying decision upon because the fact is that the pictures are not accurate because when you look through the scope you are not looking at the diamond, but actually a reflection of the diamond and the image seen by each person will be different depending on their position when looking through the eye piece... So when you look through the device and say "what about the white spot in the three o'clock position?" and the sales person looks through the scope and says "what white spot?" it's not that the white spot wasn't there, it's just that you are both looking at the diamond from a slightly different perspective / position. So when somebody takes a picture of a diamond through one of these devices, they are not really taking a picture of the diamond, but rather a picture of the reflection of the diamond. Now how accurate is a picture that you take of yourself in a series of mirrors? We believe that the device is an essential tool when buying a diamond in-person, but over the web we think it misses the mark.

Now as far as the range of angles and degrees that you've indicated, we'd like to make some adjustments just to make it easier for you to find diamonds with greater potential for increased light return within the range of proportions for "ideal cut"... Try to keep the total depth of the diamond below 61.8% and the crown angle between 34.3 - 34.8 degrees and the pavilion angle between 40.6 - 40.9 degrees, this will increase the odds of your finding a diamond with higher than average light return... Other combinations of crown and pavilion angle will work, but they require a bit more effort so we're going to skip that right now because we're already writing a book as it were... Buy the diamond from somebody like GOG, WF, SC or ourselves who actually SEE the diamonds that they offer for sale... Why? Because the numbers don't tell the entire story, you can get the numbers "right" and still end up with a diamond that fails to exhibit the light return that you expect simply because the cutter did not cut the diamond with the orientation of the grain so to speak... No doubt that some of my competitors would agree that they have opened up more than a few parcel papers which contained a diamond cut to "super ideal" (as specified above) and thought "Hmmm, this one just isn't doing it for me" and the reason is usually because the cutter didn't pay any attention to the orientation of the grain when he / she produced the stone... Agree or disagree with our opinion on this, but think about it.

I/J color, SI-1 clarity in a well cut ideal cut diamond is not a concern from our perspective providing that the proportions are "right" and the diamond was cut in orientation to the grain the visual performance of the diamond will block out most of the body color of the stone... We're not all that fond of J color ourselves, it's a little too warm for us, but Todd's Mom prefers a warmer stone and maybe you do as well... Diamonds are after all a matter of personal preference, buy what YOU like

 

[Toska]

niceice what do you mean by orientation of the grain?

 

[Mikesgirl]

Robert, based on you're level of cut nut, you sound like someone who should contact Rhino at Goodoldgold or Barry of Superbcert. Not to dismiss any of the other vendors (I bought from Blue Nile) but you won't pay much more for one of these guys to help you satisfy your yen for the whole gamut, and you'll be happier and more secure about your purchase.

 

[Richard Sherwood]

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when you look through the scope you are not looking at the diamond, but actually a reflection of
the diamond.....So when somebody takes a picture of a diamond through one of these devices, they
are not really taking a picture of the diamond, but rather a picture of the reflection of the
diamond.
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I don't really understand this comment, NiceIce. When you're looking through an IdealScope (imagescope, etc.), you're looking at the actual diamond through an optical magnifier. Not a reflection.

Do you mean the "reflections within a diamond" as opposed to "a reflection of the diamond"?