ame
Super_Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2004
- Messages
- 10,875
and to John Pollard, Paul Slegers, Jim Summa and Todd Gray for tolerating my craziness while I worked on this top secret project. Hopefully I wasn't too much of a burden on your own sanities during this process.
My little brother proposed yesterday to the girl of his dreams, with a diamond from Wink at HPD that we snatched up immediately upon spotting it. I have helped lots of folks pick out diamonds just fine, picked out my own (not without loss of sanity), but when it's got an emotional attachment, I have a very hard time really taking myself out of the equation. I didn't want to let anyone down. I wanted it to meet my ridiculously high standards. I needed them to keep reminding me "IT'S NOT FOR YOU" so that I could get back to my objectivity and going for a knockout stone without micromanaging it. However, since then, I have had a serious hankering for a just barely misshapen (or even wildly misshapen) pepperoni pizza comprised of equally misshapen pepperoni slices from Deweys.
I spent quite some time poring through the stocks of our vendors here, looking for the perfect stone for my future sister, that met all of the criteria my brother and I discussed in what he referred to as the "ame brain dump" I shared with him, with details galore about how to figure out the best stones, ASETS, IDEALSCOPES, etc. I am guessing that was overwhelming...
I took him to Summa to look at stones there, as well as settings. He thought on a lot of things after that visit, and took a beach vacation as well, and we ended up changing the original specs after he and the intended had more discussions. (They were pretty open about all of this despite her lack of inclusion in the selection process.)
From then on we were looking for a clean, bright 1.5ish carat stone, to provide good coverage on a 7 1/4 ring size, and his original color and clarity requirements changed, which opened the door to a bigger selection. We found ourselves staring at an AMAZING GIA XXX through HPD, weighing in at 1.51ct, graded J VS1 (I was pretty surprised this was graded a J, frankly because it's not warm at all, not really even from the side). It's a STUNNER. The colors this thing throws are astounding. It's big and bright and amazing. I was ticked when it originally showed up and we had no sun in STL. In fact it was pouring rain. But later that day, we got some great sun and that allowed me to snap a few photos for him of this fireball.
Getting it to and from Boise for my viewing and approval, and then setting, was NOT without drama and a few near-strokes. Thank you to Mother Nature and FedEx for providing the opportunity to experience so many emotions all in one 24 hour window. After discussions about settings, we decided to not set the stone in a setting similar to her inspiration photo, and let her be involved in the setting process when they start looking at rings. So I selected a simple Stuller platinum solitaire for the stone. I have a few tweaks I would like to make to the current setting in terms of prong size, but otherwise, it's secure and shows the stone beautifully.
I am going to post a few more photos over in SMTR but here's a few for this little review. I had it shipped to my office, which has horrible pale yellow-olive walls. They were behind me in many of the photos I took.
If ANYONE is on the fence about going through HPD (or Summa even), DON'T BE. The service is top notch, and the stones, are obviously incredible. THANK YOU AGAIN. (enjoys chocolate bar... no I didn't steal them this time!)
My little brother proposed yesterday to the girl of his dreams, with a diamond from Wink at HPD that we snatched up immediately upon spotting it. I have helped lots of folks pick out diamonds just fine, picked out my own (not without loss of sanity), but when it's got an emotional attachment, I have a very hard time really taking myself out of the equation. I didn't want to let anyone down. I wanted it to meet my ridiculously high standards. I needed them to keep reminding me "IT'S NOT FOR YOU" so that I could get back to my objectivity and going for a knockout stone without micromanaging it. However, since then, I have had a serious hankering for a just barely misshapen (or even wildly misshapen) pepperoni pizza comprised of equally misshapen pepperoni slices from Deweys.
I spent quite some time poring through the stocks of our vendors here, looking for the perfect stone for my future sister, that met all of the criteria my brother and I discussed in what he referred to as the "ame brain dump" I shared with him, with details galore about how to figure out the best stones, ASETS, IDEALSCOPES, etc. I am guessing that was overwhelming...
I took him to Summa to look at stones there, as well as settings. He thought on a lot of things after that visit, and took a beach vacation as well, and we ended up changing the original specs after he and the intended had more discussions. (They were pretty open about all of this despite her lack of inclusion in the selection process.)From then on we were looking for a clean, bright 1.5ish carat stone, to provide good coverage on a 7 1/4 ring size, and his original color and clarity requirements changed, which opened the door to a bigger selection. We found ourselves staring at an AMAZING GIA XXX through HPD, weighing in at 1.51ct, graded J VS1 (I was pretty surprised this was graded a J, frankly because it's not warm at all, not really even from the side). It's a STUNNER. The colors this thing throws are astounding. It's big and bright and amazing. I was ticked when it originally showed up and we had no sun in STL. In fact it was pouring rain. But later that day, we got some great sun and that allowed me to snap a few photos for him of this fireball.
Getting it to and from Boise for my viewing and approval, and then setting, was NOT without drama and a few near-strokes. Thank you to Mother Nature and FedEx for providing the opportunity to experience so many emotions all in one 24 hour window. After discussions about settings, we decided to not set the stone in a setting similar to her inspiration photo, and let her be involved in the setting process when they start looking at rings. So I selected a simple Stuller platinum solitaire for the stone. I have a few tweaks I would like to make to the current setting in terms of prong size, but otherwise, it's secure and shows the stone beautifully.
I am going to post a few more photos over in SMTR but here's a few for this little review. I had it shipped to my office, which has horrible pale yellow-olive walls. They were behind me in many of the photos I took.
If ANYONE is on the fence about going through HPD (or Summa even), DON'T BE. The service is top notch, and the stones, are obviously incredible. THANK YOU AGAIN. (enjoys chocolate bar... no I didn't steal them this time!)
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