James Allen and ASET images

[astro]

Hi all!

I've been lurking for several months as I have been on the search for an engagement ring. First of all, thanks for all the advice posted, it definitely helped me out a great deal! I spent some time looking online, but eventually settled for something from a local jeweler and which I'm happy with.

I had been a bit shy to post before, but there's this question which has been bugging me so I figure might as well ask now. When I first started my search, I was mostly looking at JA since I wasn't very familiar with the other PS vendors at that time. I had a couple awkward experiences with them, which ultimately led me to shop at my local jeweler.

Anyways, I asked for an ASET image of one of the stones (princess cut) I was looking at, but the rep highly discouraged me from getting it saying it wasn't very useful. At the time I was just learning about these things, so I took her at her word and went on my way. Looking back now, it seems like they are very recommended here and one can get a good amount of information from them.

So I guess I was curious if anybody else has had a response like that from PS vendors and what you guys thought about what I was told by them...

 

[jaebond]

Don't forget BGD's signature cut (Brian Gavin Diamonds)! Also, I don't believe HPD (High Performance Diamonds) carries princesses anymore. I don't really know what the deal is, but none of Infinity's vendors seem to have any princesses listed anymore.

 

[Paul-Antwerp]

Thank you, jaebond, for mentioning us.

We have indeed taken our princess-cuts temporarily off the market, as we are conducting some experiments with them.

Our strategic decision to always strive for the best possible cut-quality, regardless of the minimum-levels of a lab's cut-grade, I must say that our line of princess-cuts has not been a commercial success.

At first, the inability of AGS (and ourselves) to widely communicate the virtues of the AGS cut-grade has led to an overwhelming competition of princess-cuts, graded by other labs (mainly GIA), where the world-market prefers to look at table and depth only as cut-quality-factors and the more discerning PS-like consumers are content with a semi decent static ASET.

Since we have a very limited production, it has been impossible to let most professionals actually observe them, and as such, we remain with a limited following of believers.

In our procurement of rough, this has led to us being incapable to compete. Cutting-houses aiming at weight-retention can offer far more for the same rough, and we can either follow and charge very high prices for our product, or abstain from producing more.

All in all, us having to ride this race without any support of 'natural allies' is gradually leading us to stop the production of new princess-cuts. It is a shock to see, in our current experiment, that we can probably sell our princess-cuts for more on the wholesale-market while they are carrying GIA-reports without a cut-grade, and with our wholesale-customers complaining that they do not have the depth they want.

Live long,

P.S. Some of our princess-cuts might be listed again in the near future, but I fear that we will not have any new production soon.

 

[yssie]

That is sad news, Paul. Well-cut princesses are already rare, well-cut two-chevron princesses are going to be all but impossible to find. I confess that I am surprised that the princess line specifically was not more successful - after all a branded precision-cut princess offers so much more security than a branded RB does, given currently available knowledge and grading metrics...

I hope you'll consider sharing some of the results of your experiment with us, I am certainly very curious

 

[jaebond]

That is sad news, Paul. Well-cut princesses are already rare, well-cut two-chevron princesses are going to be all but impossible to find. I confess that I am surprised that the princess line specifically was not more successful - after all a branded precision-cut princess offers so much more security than a branded RB does, given currently available knowledge and grading metrics...

I hope you'll consider sharing some of the results of your experiment with us, I am certainly very curious

+1. The princesses were beautiful and I loved that they had a solid X and no little green spot in the middle. Unfortunately, they were a little over budget, but I definitely wished I could have afforded them on more than a few occasions.