GCAL report

[aussie_jo]

Hi everyone,

After visiting your website many times over the last 6 months, I firstly want to say thank-you for having such an informative website available to everyone about diamonds.

One of my questions that I put forward is comparing the GCAL report to ASET and Ideal Scope. I''m particularly interested in GCAL as i have noticed that BLue Nile use GCAL in conjunction with a GIA or AGS report. GCAL works out the optical brillance and symmetry analysis of each diamond. Isn''t that the objective of ASET and Ideal Scope also? If so, is the GCAL report just as good as ASET and IS?

I''m interested in buying a loose diamond from Blue Nile online, but I''m a bit hesitant as they do not provide ASET and IS. However on the other hand other online retailers who do supply photos of ASET and IS, I find is not completely useful as I''m not a professional diamond buyer and I don''t have a trained eye to properly analyse these photos. Atleast GCAL do provide some sort of scale from excellent optical brillance/symmetry to fair along with a photo.

So my bottom line question is, do you believe that if a GCAL report is provided in conjunction with a GIA/AGS report provides enough information that I would be purchasing a well analysed diamond?

Finally I have been very narrow minded and have just looked at Blue Nile, as another website, named the top 3 online diamond sellers as BN, union diamonds and i can''t remember the third...So I have only just begun looking at the vendors listed on this website...in particular the ones that people keep on recommending

very interested to hear your thoughts.

 

[oldminer]

You will likely find the GCAL report accurate in terms of color and clarity. The light perfomance grading is a good step in the right direction, but may not equate to ASET, IS or other methods in some exact or precise way. Since there is no single standard lighting scenario, each system of light grading remains unique rather than universal. Surely, GCAL''s light grade system works better for some stones than for others, just as the other systems out in the market currently do.