Hi, just wanted to follow up with how my diamond story ended....
After using this great web site, the cut advisor, and all your great help, I finally made my purchase!
As it turned out, I passed on the diamond I described above which I was previously considering and I kept looking instead.....That diamond represented my best deal from countless hrs of internet searching and beating up every diamond dealer in town. The effort I put into educating myself definately paid off though because I'm sure that without it, I would have settled for any one of a half dozen or more other diamonds I had looked at which were all nice and not too bad a deal for my budget but were smaller (3/4+ct range) or none were that ONE "incredible zero compromise absolute beauty that I can't take my eyes off of and would never wish I had anything else and just had to have this one" diamond (which also describes the girl I'm giving it to!!!
) But I digress....I went to a local jewelry supply store, bought myself a 10x loupe for about $25 and made the pilgrimige from San Diego to the jewelry plaza in downtown L.A.
There I went to several booths and found that by walking up with loupe in hand and making fairly specific requests (in this case round brilliant 1+ct G VS2 or better) I was able to easily find very nice but non ideal cut diamonds as good or possibly better than the "I Love You diamond" above (AGS1-2 cut, sometimes colour was maybe more like H or I), anywhere from $2600 to $3600 all day long.After a bit of looking around, my dad introduced me to a guy there whom he'd been buying diamond jewelry from for about 16yrs. After showing me 3 more round brilliants which were higher quality cut than most of the previous ones I'd looked at that day but also at a slightly higher price...but not quite yet THE ONE...he showed me something a little
different!
He pulled out a princess cut 1.01ct F VS2 Very Good cut (if there were ever such a thing as an ideal cut princes....THIS WAS IT).
THIS THING WAS ON FIRE!!! He even set it next to the RB 1.08 G AGS0 ideal cut I was looking at earlier and it was like holding a piece of white hot burning magnesium next to a scrap of dull glass from an old coke bottle.The clarity under the loupe was outstanding, the quality of symmetry and polish
on this diamond just left my mouth hanging open.
With the exception of some pinpoint inclusions invisible to 10x magnification but
indicated on the plot on the EGL cert, there were only a couple small clear/white
inclusions near one corner which were visible under 10x with a bit of searching around for them but in no way detract from the experience of staring directly into the heart of this
diamond with a loupe and gazing at apparent perfection.My mom, who was also along to look at diamond bracelets for herself looked over and
saw me looking at this thing and before I got a price out of the dealer she
exclaimed, "Oh my God! That's the most beautiful diamond I've ever seen!!!"I told the dealer to ignore her and give me his best price
and I managed to get that
1.01ct F VS2 princess VGcut, EGL cert mounted in a 950plat 4 prong solitaire
for just under $4K!By going to a princess cut, I was able to get a much higher cut and colour
quality that I could find in a round brilliant and by putting a little extra work into education and shopping around, I got an unbelieveably better diamond than I ever thought
I could have been able to afford! zero compromise! great cut, great clarity, over 1ct, and in the colourless range!All I need now is to hear my girl say "YES!" when I give this to her as a total suprise!
