Ideal criteria

[SirTitan]

Hello all. I have been lurking on this board for a few weeks trying to learn about diamonds by reading the tutorials and reading posts on RT. My chief concern is attempting to identify the point of diminishing returns, more explicitly, at which point in upgrading color and clarity can no differences be detected with the naked eye (with a realistic assumption of visually inspecting the diamond at whatever distance one desires and for as long as one desires). I plant to buy online, but have been going to various jewelers to see the stones in person. Most jewelers do not have an inventory beyond a trivial number of permutations in grading criteria. Based on my findings, for clarity VS seems to be my personal cutoff point, I''ve seen too many diamonds at SI that just look noticeably worse (i.e. D SI1 looks worse than G VS1). For color, I could not distinguish E F G at a VS1 clarity (I wish the jeweler had H VS1 also). Do you think H would have had a noticeable change in color? Since pricescope is adamant about cut, so am I. All the candidate stones I''m finding on the net I filter through using the Holloway cut advisor, ideal scope, and hearts and arrows views (I was very disappointed to learn that just b/c its AGS Ideal 0, it just doesn''t cut it). At this point, in terms of color and clarity, I''ve narrowed it down to the G-H, VS1-VS2 grades. I unfortunately haven''t seen that many stones in my limited research thusfar, therefore I invite anyone on the forum to comment on my observations.

 

[Lorelei]

Date: 4/22/2010 2:35:10 PM
Author:SirTitan
Hello all. I have been lurking on this board for a few weeks trying to learn about diamonds by reading the tutorials and reading posts on RT. My chief concern is attempting to identify the point of diminishing returns, more explicitly, at which point in upgrading color and clarity can no differences be detected with the naked eye (with a realistic assumption of visually inspecting the diamond at whatever distance one desires and for as long as one desires). I plant to buy online, but have been going to various jewelers to see the stones in person. Most jewelers do not have an inventory beyond a trivial number of permutations in grading criteria. Based on my findings, for clarity VS seems to be my personal cutoff point, I've seen too many diamonds at SI that just look noticeably worse (i.e. D SI1 looks worse than G VS1). For color, I could not distinguish E F G at a VS1 clarity (I wish the jeweler had H VS1 also). Do you think H would have had a noticeable change in color? Since pricescope is adamant about cut, so am I. All the candidate stones I'm finding on the net I filter through using the Holloway cut advisor, ideal scope, and hearts and arrows views (I was very disappointed to learn that just b/c its AGS Ideal 0, it just doesn't cut it). At this point, in terms of color and clarity, I've narrowed it down to the G-H, VS1-VS2 grades. I unfortunately haven't seen that many stones in my limited research thusfar, therefore I invite anyone on the forum to comment on my observations.

Hi Sir Titan and welcome!

Its difficult to answer your question because the answer can be different for everyone. You are on the right track viewing diamonds in person, make sure to view those which are well cut, same size, lab grade, shape etc in order to compare apples to apples. Your summary of G -H colour and VS clarity is a good range to work within, as you look at more diamonds, particularly those which are well cut you might find you have a little more flexibility or not as the case may be. H colour I find is still very white, perhaps a softer white to the crisp and icy white of a D, but white nevertheless. It really comes down to personal preference in the end.