Feedback on 4 stones (and customer setting advice)

[spon]

Hello all. I would appreciate everyones opinions on the following 4 stones. Here is some background. My original budget was $6-7k. I found a very good local jeweler (Los Angeles) and they have 3 stones that I liked. I also found one stone that "looks" good online. You can see the stones below. The local jeweler is going to charge $1500 for the custom ring setting plus the stone and sales tax (8%). As you can see all of these rings will be higher than my budget, but i'm starting to think i'm just going to have to pay more to get what I want. Also, the local jeweler price of $1500 for the setting would be higher if I didnt buy the center stone from him.... Any advice or opinions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!!

STONE 1 (B&M)
Carat: 1.225
Color: G
Clarity: VS2
Cut: Ideal (was graded VG by EGL but Sarin showed Ideal cut)
Depth: 62.2
Table: 58
Crown Angle: 35.5
Pavillion Angle: 40.6
Girdle: Thin-Sl Thick
Sarin Brilliancy Rating: VG (72)
Sarin Fire Rating: VG (72)
Sarin Scintillation Rating: VG (77)
Cost: $6800 plus tax

STONE 2 (B&M)
Carat: 1.013
Color: H
Clarity: VS2
Cut: Ideal
Depth: 62.3
Table: 57
Crown Angle: 33
Pavillion Angle: 41.2
Girdle: Sl. Thick- Thick
Sarin Brilliancy Rating: Excellent (87)
Sarin Fire Rating: VG (76)
Sarin Scintillation Rating: VVG (84)
Cost: $6200 plus tax

STONE 3 (B&M)
Carat: 1.079
Color: G
Clarity: SI1 (very eye clean)
Cut: Ideal
Depth: 60.3
Table: 59
Crown Angle: 34.5
Pavillion Angle: 40.7
Girdle: Thin- Sl. Thick
Sarin Brilliancy Rating: 75
Sarin Fire Rating: 66
Sarin Scintillation Rating: 69
Cost: $5900 plus tax

STONE 4 (online)
Carat: 1.042
Color: G
Clarity: SI1 (looks very eye clean supposidly)
Cut: Ideal
Depth: 60.4
Table: 57
Crown Angle: 34.8
Pavillion Angle: 40.8
Girdle: ??
Sarin Brilliancy Rating: ??
Sarin Fire Rating: ??
Sarin Scintillation Rating: ??
Cost: $5400 no tax

The jeweler had a Sarin machine in his store, so it was very interesting to see the tests run. There was something called CutGrade within the Sarin machine that analyzed light return similar to the Halloway Cut Advisor only using the actual stone instead of the formulas. Very interesting.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, but I'm leaning towards the 1.25 carot stone but with tax I'm looking at like 9gs and that's $2k more than I wanted to spend... I guess I thought a white gold custom setting would be much cheaper.

Thanks for any feedback/opinions/advice!

 

[ame]

$1500 for WG? Is this a particularly ornate setting? Are there little pave stones, etc. in it? Have you found anything similar elsewhere made by other companies or online vendors?

 

[spon]

Hi Ame,

My fiancee wants an antique-type band, so there would be etchings along the whole band and then on the top she wants pave diamonds set in a circle around the center stone (round cut stone btw), which will be a bezle setting. The jeweler said about .4 ct on the paves or less so theres not much expense in the extra stones. I was hoping to get closer to .7 ct for around $1000-1200 but I think that might be unrealistic.

 

[ame]

I would message some of the vendors on here, whiteflash makes halos and I know a few others do as well. You might be able to get a price that is near that in Platinum even and a great stone as well, hell WF uses hearts and arrows melee in their settings that use melee. Also check out that thread Mara started about halos and melees (the little tiny pave stones) because several on here have experienced stones falling out of the halos, etc.

 

[spon]

Thanks Ame. I''m going to check with White Flash today and see what they would charge for the customer ring and then compare it with the local jeweler.