This intro would be a good start to a person looking for help. This will help them understand how much they don’t know.
Hey! These are actually being shipped to me as studs today.
I have never seen a super ideal in person but have been super curious. So when I saw these I waffled for about a day, then requested a hold and a picture. I figured as studs, even if I saw color from the side, on my ears it would be much less noticeable for me (or really anyone else.) Plus, knowing I could upgrade the color if I wanted made it a no lose situation.
Diamond | 0.807 ct L SI1 A CUT ABOVE® Hearts and Arrows Super Ideal Round Cut Loose Diamond AGS Certified | 4329666
This Whiteflash A CUT ABOVE® super ideal cut hearts and arrows 0.807 carat L color SI1 clarity loose diamond is graded by the American Gem Society (AGS) Laboratories. | 4329666www.whiteflash.com
Diamond | 0.828 ct L SI1 A CUT ABOVE® Hearts and Arrows Super Ideal Round Cut Loose Diamond AGS Certified | 4219800
This Whiteflash A CUT ABOVE® super ideal cut hearts and arrows 0.828 carat L color SI1 clarity loose diamond is graded by the American Gem Society (AGS) Laboratories. | 4219800www.whiteflash.com
you bought one of the ones I wanted to buy!! I'm so happy for you
My first H&A was also a GIA graded stone. It was a GOG H&A and Jonathan featured it in a few of their older videos. It's a K, VS1 that I still have (it's in a pendant.)
The stone came with all the tests back then, Sarin report, BrillianceScope report, pics of hearts and arrows, etc. I remember being awed..
It's definitely a beautiful stone.
Thankful we aren't quite so OCD today!There is a reason we call it things like the upgrade train.
start with what you can afford since the trade up policy is so generous.
I wore the .56 for a year or two as a solitaire on my 7,25 finger and every time I looked at it, I couldn’t believe how big it looked. Visually, it had the presence of my .75 that I wore for 16 years as an ER.
Since that and another one became side stones, I restarted again with I think a .64 I solitaire.
(I have had 3 surgeries in 7 months and I’m now 6 months out from the last one so I do have anesthesia brain. I think I stated in a different post that the sapphire side stones were E and F but I think it’s either E and G or F and G— sorry for the confusion if anyone caught that).
I am very comfortable for HP diamonds (and if I ever purchase an ACA) with lower clarity, even SI2 because if the stone made it as a HP Diamond or an ACA, that means the inclusions don’t affect the performance. Plus, I don’t like paying for things I can’t see).
I have upgraded the .64 I for the 1.09 K si. As an aside, someone here now owns that .64 I but I can’t remember who (sorry) and I think she made a 5 stone with it.
So one day you may find you can afford a little something, see it and decide if you like it, and then get on the upgrade train.
I love my setting and it is Stuller scroll band with a stuller peg head, so all I do is change out the head, if needed.
Yes!!! At that time the Tolkowsky company was cutting H&A diamonds and they preferred GIA grading since it is the industry standard! Jonathan did do all the light return tests to prove they were true H&A!!! We even looked at Helium scan results back then, and I now realize that was a little over the top!
The real irony is, my new studs are the size of that first H&A diamond! I do wish I had kept it, but I sold it to help me with the next diamond!
Still waiting on a final competing stone to come in to see if I'll ultimately swap it (which several members here are aware of). But with this stone, honestly it's an H. It's graded an I, but it's an H, and feeling/knowing I "won" all that value inherent in a color grade shift (a completely arbitrary decision a human that had to make a call made) appeals to me greatly lol
I'm coming back in as sort of a "speaker for the dead" on the part of mx5_dvr, and in part just to weigh in with my own thoughts since I think the OP approaches the subject in many ways similarly to how I do (with some distinct caveats as well). Just speaking for myself, I'm obsessed with efficiency, and that's translated into the process by way of trying to game out where the most "gain" per $$ can be found, across the various metrics, while at the same time avoiding a situation where the cost/benefit gets away from me.
Long story short is that that process can absolutely be distilled into the whole super-ideal vs ideal discussion; we know that at super ideal levels, light performance/return/scintillation/etc WILL be better than at non-super ideal levels. But whereas that performance itself could probably be quantified in some manner one stone to another, there's just no way to easily translate that into what one would be expected to see in real life. If a super ideal diamond and an ideal diamond within the recommended specs both show up at a cocktail party, will the casual observer be able to tell which is which? Will distance effect it? Diamond knowledge on the observers part? Time spent in proximity of the diamond? None of us can know these answers; they're unknowable. What we know is given confirmation via scope images, and certain proportions, both stones will absolutely impress.
I think the OP's main point of contention was, when a stone is a 1.0 on the HCA, and when a stone has great scope images, and when a stone has the right proportions on paper... how much is that price premium to super ideal worth? And can it be detected visually?
The following applies only to the 2.00ct+ range of carat weights, but such is my obsession with this line of thinking that I drew up by hand the below chart two weeks ago to try and visualize for myself what the inflection points were between "levels" on the various criteria. The hard numbers used are the average wholesale prices currently up on RapNet, so the volume of data points is deep - as deep as can be. And what I found is that, at least in this carat range, for sure color is the greatest differentiator in price. Going from a K to a J is like a 30% increase right there. And *within* J? People don't really seem to care about clarity as much; whereas at some of the higher color grades there's a sharp jump from SI1 to VS2, at J it's not bad.
But you see other behavior trends as well... people buying H colored stones *also* seem to value clarity more. In fact that's the sort-of-obvious-but-still-compelling thing shown... the more one cares about color in general, the more they generally tend to also value clarity. The percentage shifts for clarity improvements in the colorless grades are *substantially* greater than they are for clarity shifts in the K/J range.
BUT, again this is for 2.00ct-2.99ct stones.... at sub 0.25ct weights, I'm sure it's completely different in terms of what carries a premium to what.
NOW, this is going to seem crazy but I'm going to take the complete opposite tack to a lot of what I just said above, and present my reasoning for why a super-ideal cut is in fact "worth it," such as it were.
We want GIA certs because we trust GIA. Implicit in that is the idea that fallible humans are making the calls on criteria that have immense impact on how these stones are priced. Within the I color grade, there's a range. Within the VS2 clarity grade, there's a range. If there's an I stone at the bottom end of that range, and it stays an I, or it gets graded a J, that has huge implications for the pricing of that stone. Someone out there is walking around with an SI1 stone that *should* have been VS2... and more likely, many more are walking around with VS2's that should have been SI1's, because the certs were shopped. That's where the trust for GIA and AGS comes in; but trust doesn't mean perfection.
Everything else aside, I think that the super ideal 'level' warrants it's premium because it's the one single factor we as humans can control - the way that the diamond will sparkle in the end. We don't know how much more brightly that stone will shine against a near-miss competitor (and I certainly trust that several members here could detect that difference), but we know no stone will shine brighter, and it's that confidence/assurance that we're paying for. The idea that no more could be done by man to improve this particular diamond. We suspect that this stone or that stone is a high J or a low G, but there's no numbers for us... whereas super ideal is a level of attainment either reached or not.
Personally, beyond the optical properties, I think that super ideals have several other advantages that follow from their having that certifiable 'attainment.' People can trust that it's well cut - if nothing else, they trust that. A Cut Above diamond, or a Brian Gavin Diamond, or a Victor Canera, or a Crafted by Infinity... I have *zero* doubt that these diamonds would have significantly more value retention on the open/secondary market simply by virtue of having those credentials behind them. Fifty years from now, an appraiser looking at one of these diamonds... that cert is going to mean something immediately to them. And the irony is that due to the best-in-class upgrade policies these vendors carry, these diamonds rarely leave the vendors own ecosystem to begin with!
**********************************************************
With all of that being said I can't help but be that efficiency-minded hunter I said at the beginning I was. For myself, I ultimately landed on an ideal proportion I-colored SI1 stone with impressive light return and... ring came in yesterday and it sparkles like crazy!! More than any diamond I've ever seen at least lol but then again I haven't seen any super ideals in person (that I know of)
I'm coming back in as sort of a "speaker for the dead" on the part of mx5_dvr, and in part just to weigh in with my own thoughts since I think the OP approaches the subject in many ways similarly to how I do (with some distinct caveats as well). Just speaking for myself, I'm obsessed with efficiency, and that's translated into the process by way of trying to game out where the most "gain" per $$ can be found, across the various metrics, while at the same time avoiding a situation where the cost/benefit gets away from me.
Long story short is that that process can absolutely be distilled into the whole super-ideal vs ideal discussion; we know that at super ideal levels, light performance/return/scintillation/etc WILL be better than at non-super ideal levels. But whereas that performance itself could probably be quantified in some manner one stone to another, there's just no way to easily translate that into what one would be expected to see in real life. If a super ideal diamond and an ideal diamond within the recommended specs both show up at a cocktail party, will the casual observer be able to tell which is which? Will distance effect it? Diamond knowledge on the observers part? Time spent in proximity of the diamond? None of us can know these answers; they're unknowable. What we know is given confirmation via scope images, and certain proportions, both stones will absolutely impress.
I think the OP's main point of contention was, when a stone is a 1.0 on the HCA, and when a stone has great scope images, and when a stone has the right proportions on paper... how much is that price premium to super ideal worth? And can it be detected visually?
The following applies only to the 2.00ct+ range of carat weights, but such is my obsession with this line of thinking that I drew up by hand the below chart two weeks ago to try and visualize for myself what the inflection points were between "levels" on the various criteria. The hard numbers used are the average wholesale prices currently up on RapNet, so the volume of data points is deep - as deep as can be. And what I found is that, at least in this carat range, for sure color is the greatest differentiator in price. Going from a K to a J is like a 30% increase right there. And *within* J? People don't really seem to care about clarity as much; whereas at some of the higher color grades there's a sharp jump from SI1 to VS2, at J it's not bad.
But you see other behavior trends as well... people buying H colored stones *also* seem to value clarity more. In fact that's the sort-of-obvious-but-still-compelling thing shown... the more one cares about color in general, the more they generally tend to also value clarity. The percentage shifts for clarity improvements in the colorless grades are *substantially* greater than they are for clarity shifts in the K/J range.
BUT, again this is for 2.00ct-2.99ct stones.... at sub 0.25ct weights, I'm sure it's completely different in terms of what carries a premium to what.
NOW, this is going to seem crazy but I'm going to take the complete opposite tack to a lot of what I just said above, and present my reasoning for why a super-ideal cut is in fact "worth it," such as it were.
We want GIA certs because we trust GIA. Implicit in that is the idea that fallible humans are making the calls on criteria that have immense impact on how these stones are priced. Within the I color grade, there's a range. Within the VS2 clarity grade, there's a range. If there's an I stone at the bottom end of that range, and it stays an I, or it gets graded a J, that has huge implications for the pricing of that stone. Someone out there is walking around with an SI1 stone that *should* have been VS2... and more likely, many more are walking around with VS2's that should have been SI1's, because the certs were shopped. That's where the trust for GIA and AGS comes in; but trust doesn't mean perfection.
Everything else aside, I think that the super ideal 'level' warrants it's premium because it's the one single factor we as humans can control - the way that the diamond will sparkle in the end. We don't know how much more brightly that stone will shine against a near-miss competitor (and I certainly trust that several members here could detect that difference), but we know no stone will shine brighter, and it's that confidence/assurance that we're paying for. The idea that no more could be done by man to improve this particular diamond. We suspect that this stone or that stone is a high J or a low G, but there's no numbers for us... whereas super ideal is a level of attainment either reached or not.
Personally, beyond the optical properties, I think that super ideals have several other advantages that follow from their having that certifiable 'attainment.' People can trust that it's well cut - if nothing else, they trust that. A Cut Above diamond, or a Brian Gavin Diamond, or a Victor Canera, or a Crafted by Infinity... I have *zero* doubt that these diamonds would have significantly more value retention on the open/secondary market simply by virtue of having those credentials behind them. Fifty years from now, an appraiser looking at one of these diamonds... that cert is going to mean something immediately to them. And the irony is that due to the best-in-class upgrade policies these vendors carry, these diamonds rarely leave the vendors own ecosystem to begin with!
**********************************************************
With all of that being said I can't help but be that efficiency-minded hunter I said at the beginning I was. For myself, I ultimately landed on an ideal proportion I-colored SI1 stone with impressive light return and... ring came in yesterday and it sparkles like crazy!! More than any diamond I've ever seen at least lol but then again I haven't seen any super ideals in person (that I know of)
When these discussions arise, I think that one thing that is undervalued is the time involved in hunting a beautifully cut diamond. I think that it is definitely possible to find an unbranded great performing stone if you put in the time. A few years ago, when I was having a 5 stone made, I called Michelle at WF and said, "please send 5 matching 0.3 ct J VS2 ACAs to David Klass." Within a day, they were on their way, without a doubt in my mind they would be beautiful and well matched. I could have spent hours searching but super ideals and the vendors that sell them make it unbelievably easy. Too easy for my pocketbook sometimes!
When these discussions arise, I think that one thing that is undervalued is the time involved in hunting a beautifully cut diamond. I think that it is definitely possible to find an unbranded great performing stone if you put in the time. A few years ago, when I was having a 5 stone made, I called Michelle at WF and said, "please send 5 matching 0.3 ct J VS2 ACAs to David Klass." Within a day, they were on their way, without a doubt in my mind they would be beautiful and well matched. I could have spent hours searching but super ideals and the vendors that sell them make it unbelievably easy. Too easy for my pocketbook sometimes!
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