I have been looking for engagement rings for awhile now and thought myself pretty knowledgeable for a first time diamond buyer...and then I was thrown the curve ball. I was recommended to a jeweler by a friend who had recently purchased one and had been diligent in checking prices. My friend is very happy with the ring he got and told me that the diamond he got was 30% cheaper than a similiar one he found on blue nile. This all sounded great to me and so I went to see the jeweler. I had written down some price ranges for various color/clarity combinations so I could check for myself how good these prices were. As he was showing me different stones I asked about whether they were GIA or AGS and he told me they were EGL. Not being familiar with EGL I had no price references points, or for that matter, how much more leanient the EGL grades. I was able to confirm with him they were graded by EGL-USA, not overseas, and he said EGL-USA is more strict than the other EGL labs but less strict than GIA/AGS (I have since confirmed this on PS). When I said I wasn''t quite sure about buying an EGL stone because I''d heard I needed to stick with GIA/AGS, he was very polite and showed me some GIA stones (these of course were not 30% cheaper than blue nile, although still priced comparably), he did tell me that while EGL-USA grading vs GIA/AGS is important for borderline clarity (I-SI''s) and color (J-H). If I were to get an EGL-USA stone in the VS clarity and E-F-G color range that it didn''t make much of a difference because the stones in this range from both labs are very high quality so it didn''t matter as much which lab graded them and I could save money going the EGL-USA route if I was comfortable with it.
Now to my questions:
- Are there noticeable differences between RB ideal cut diamonds in the colorless and eye-clear ranges graded by top tier labs (GIA/AGS) and 2nd tier (EGL-US) ? Or is this just more of an issue if I were ever try to sell/trade up my diamond in the future?
- I have seen it insinuated on these boards that cutters send diamonds to the EGL they feel will be borderline at GIA/AGS in hopes of getting a higher grade, if the EGL is just getting borderline diamonds, if I bought say an EGL-US F, VS2 would that be as good as a GIA G, SI1 with similiar cut/polish/sym?
- Eye-clean and "sparkliness" are very important to me, I saw on the EGL-US website that they consider diamonds with a Depth% up to 63.5% to still be ideal cut. This is outside the range i''ve seen as considered ideal range (58-62%) so even if the GIA and EGL are both ex/ex/ex for cut/polish/sym, I''m not really comparing apples to apples am I?
- Is it possible to get an EGL diamond with ideal proportions/light performance? Or is this going to be like looking for the proverbial (''diamond'' in a haystack) because all the diamonds that actually do fall in this ideal ideal range were sent to the GIA/AGS so they could be sold for more money, and the EGL primarily diamonds just outside this ideal range that still fall within EGL-USA''s definition of ideal proportions?
Now to my questions:
- Are there noticeable differences between RB ideal cut diamonds in the colorless and eye-clear ranges graded by top tier labs (GIA/AGS) and 2nd tier (EGL-US) ? Or is this just more of an issue if I were ever try to sell/trade up my diamond in the future?
- I have seen it insinuated on these boards that cutters send diamonds to the EGL they feel will be borderline at GIA/AGS in hopes of getting a higher grade, if the EGL is just getting borderline diamonds, if I bought say an EGL-US F, VS2 would that be as good as a GIA G, SI1 with similiar cut/polish/sym?
- Eye-clean and "sparkliness" are very important to me, I saw on the EGL-US website that they consider diamonds with a Depth% up to 63.5% to still be ideal cut. This is outside the range i''ve seen as considered ideal range (58-62%) so even if the GIA and EGL are both ex/ex/ex for cut/polish/sym, I''m not really comparing apples to apples am I?
- Is it possible to get an EGL diamond with ideal proportions/light performance? Or is this going to be like looking for the proverbial (''diamond'' in a haystack) because all the diamonds that actually do fall in this ideal ideal range were sent to the GIA/AGS so they could be sold for more money, and the EGL primarily diamonds just outside this ideal range that still fall within EGL-USA''s definition of ideal proportions?
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