New shopper looking for opinions on 1.36 H&A..

[banzai]

Hi I''m kind of new but have been looking for a hearts and arrows. I''m curious as to what distinguishes a TRUE hearts and arrows. I''ve read on different websites (including this one) and all point to different things. Is an AGS 0 considered a H&A?

I''m really interested in this stone but don''t know if its a good price. Asking for $9500.

1.36 G, VS1 (Round)
Depth % - 61.7 %
Table % - 57 %
Crown Ang. - 34.9
Pav Ang. - 40.9
Girdle - 1.0% - 1.7%
Polish - ID
Sym. - ID
Fluor. - None

Thanks everyone!

 

[Mara]

Hearts and Arrows was created to essentially be a mark of excellent symmetry. Does this mean that diamonds with an EX for symmetry or an ID for symmetry are H&A? No. To be a true H&A stone. it needs to exhibit the typical Hearts and Arrows when viewed wth an H&A scope. I will post a picture for you below. If a diamond when viewed with a Scope does not exhibit the hearts and arrows to perfection, then its not considered a true H&A. Some diamonds exhibit mostly hearts and arrows, or sharp arrows with broken tips, or strong tips with light shafts, or elongated hearts, you get the picture...etc etc. The differences can be very subtle..I have seen some pictures that I could not distinguish real H&A from almost H&A. Those that do not make it into the true H&A category would probably be pretty close and would probably still be pretty great stones anyway!

I wouldn't narrow your search down to just H&A unless you are really sure of the benefits that doing so would bring. You can definitely find non branded stones that exhibit the same great characteristics of H&A but are not branded H&A. Branded stones carry a slight premium on price as well.

The stone you note below sounds great, the price sounds inline with the carat weight, and the G, VS1 characteristics. The HCA gives it a score of a 1.4..excellent, excellent, very good, very good. Did you run similar pricing searches on Pricescope or elsewhere to try to get an idea of a competitive price? Is it advertised as an H&A? Did you see the H&A images? Does it have other info such as the certificate copy, a sarin/megascope report, an idealscope image, or brilliancescope images?

Hope this helps a bit. Your stone sounds like it has great potential! Get it appraised when it arrives so you can be sure what you bought it is as it says. If you are looking for more H&A stones, you will find alot of them on goodoldgold.com, superbcert.com, diamondoptics.com, whiteflash.com, etc. They all carry H&A and SuperbCert H&A diamonds as well.

Good luck!

 

[banzai]

Thanks Mara! That was very helpful. So to proceed I should request a copy of a sarin/megascope report, an idealscope image, and a brilliancescope image along with the certificate?

I've looked on pricescope and that price seems to be inline with other diamonds with those characteristics.

 

[optimized]

Hi banzai,

Part of the confusion over the "true" characteristics of a H&A stone is that there isn't exactly a codified "standard" of true hearts and arrows. It's not exactly an ISO standard, as it were. I've heard there are more concrete standards for them in Japan, but our markets aren't exactly dominated by Japanese H&As.

To me, hearts and arrows themselves don't mean that much. Many fabulous diamonds aren't H&A, and many H&A diamonds would be considered less than "ideal" by a lot of people. Although the marketing dollars thrown at the cut would say otherwise, I think it's important to remember that an H&A cut is only a definitive indicator of the overall symmetry of the diamond's facets, and doesn't always mean it's a well-proportioned stone. In my experience H&As typically are also very well proportioned (probably due to the fact that a cutter who puts the level of craftsmanship required into producing an H&A will also go to the trouble of making sure the proportions/angles are ideal as well), but the H&A pattern isn't a concrete indicator of brilliance/fire/scintillation all by itself.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't be looking at H&A diamonds (I ended up getting one myself), but you might not want to get too hung up on the marketing surrounding them. There are lots of great diamonds out there (branded, unbranded, H&A, non-H&A) and restricting yourself exclusively to H&A will exclude an awful lot of great, and often more economical, possibilities.

-Tim

 

[Rhino]

What Tim is saying is true. However finding very brilliant, fiery non ideals can be tough and by the time you've spent the money having a handfull of non H&A's shipped in to find that ONE non H&A with the brilliance and fire of *most* H&A's you'd have been better off and would have spent less finding it within a fraction of the amount of stones that were H&A.

Does that make sense?

Also ... there are many diamonds on the net being advertised as H&A THAT HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING CALLED H&A.

We recently called in a stone for a client that they had found here on pricescope but wasn't about to drop the bucks on it until we inspected it for them. A D IF at that. The internal symmetry was so far off it was a disgrace. The client covered our shipping but in the end saved themselves alot of headache and heartache because in determing whether a diamond is a true H&A or not DEPENDS NOT UPON BRILLIANCESCOPE, MEGASCOPE OR SARIN ANALYSIS. It doesn't even depend upon light return (as Tim has pointed out you can get various degrees of brilliance, fire and scintillation even within the H&A's). It depends upon one thing alone. Internal or 3 dimensional symmetry. This is why we show the invididual images of each and every stone. This is so a person can tell just how perfect the alignment is within the stone. I cursory review of the stones on our website and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. There are also examples of AGS "0" stones there which are not H&A's and from the images you can clearly see why they would not qualify as such. Feel free to browse even if it's only for your education.

Peace,
Rhino