Should I buy an Ideal Scope?

[JeBri31508]

I''m going to do a "first look" at some diamonds in the next for my potential diamond upgrade. I am wondering if anyone who is a "novice" at diamonds has purchased an Ideal Scope to help in the process of picking out a diamond? If so, was it easy for you to use and understand? I don''t want to waste $$ if I won''t be able to use it right lol, but I really want to make sure that my diamond is sparkly and doesn''t have any light leakage. If anyone could give me some info on how to read the IS images that would be great too--thanks!

 

[jet2ks]

This is one of the best tutorials on reading IS images

http://www.highperformancediamonds.com/index.php?page=education-performance

Also make sure you read through the tutorials and look at the reference charts at www.ideal-scope.com

 

[denverappraiser]

At the risk of pissing off my jeweler friends, one of the big values of the thing is when you pull one out of your purse during the shopping experience you immediately tell the salesperson several things:

1) You are a serious customer. You’re not killing time waiting for the restaurant next door or whatever, you’re there to shop for diamonds.

2) You’re an Internet educated shopper. These things are virtually unheard of outside of the world of Pricescope. If they expect to land this sale they better be prepared to give you attractive prices and they had better be prepared to defend their grading, especially the claims of cut quality.

This tends to get you shuffled off to their very best sales person and it tends to get you good prices right out of the gate. Not bad for a $25 doodad, even before you look at the first stone with it.

One qualifier. Show it to them first and ask permission to use it. They may or may not know what it is and folks are worried about security with customers who bring their own tools. For this reason, use the stores tweezers and loupes as well. If they have one, use their idealscope instead of your own (and give them brownie points for both knowing what it is and for having one).

Neil Beaty
GG(GIA) ICGA(AGS) NAJA
Professional Appraisals in Denver

 

[Jim Summa]

Best $25 you ever spent. The ASET is also a very useful tool for looking at, comparing, or matching diamond cut.

 

[JeBri31508]

I just placed my order, hooray! So....let me make sure I get all this straight. When I see a diamond I like, I should get the specs and plug it into the HCA. Use the Ideal-Scope to check for light leakage. Then, if I think it checks out, give images and all specs to the PSers to make sure I''m getting the best diamond?

Thanks so much for everyone''s replies

 

[Garry H (Cut Nut)]

Date: 1/10/2010 6:29:21 PM
Author: denverappraiser
At the risk of pissing off my jeweler friends, one of the big values of the thing is when you pull one out of your purse during the shopping experience you immediately tell the salesperson several things:

1) You are a serious customer. You’re not killing time waiting for the restaurant next door or whatever, you’re there to shop for diamonds.

2) You’re an Internet educated shopper. These things are virtually unheard of outside of the world of Pricescope. If they expect to land this sale they better be prepared to give you attractive prices and they had better be prepared to defend their grading, especially the claims of cut quality.

This tends to get you shuffled off to their very best sales person and it tends to get you good prices right out of the gate. Not bad for a $25 doodad, even before you look at the first stone with it.

One qualifier. Show it to them first and ask permission to use it. They may or may not know what it is and folks are worried about security with customers who bring their own tools. For this reason, use the stores tweezers and loupes as well. If they have one, use their idealscope instead of your own (and give them brownie points for both knowing what it is and for having one).

Neil Beaty
GG(GIA) ICGA(AGS) NAJA
Professional Appraisals in Denver

Thanks Neil,
You left out that it works well as a shot glass too

(have to get that one in for our dearly departed and loved appraiser friend Bill).

JeBri the ideal-scope is all you need for rounds, but for other than round the ASET is what you should have. If you neeed to change your order let me know - I can probably interceede.

 

[Dreamer_D]

Date: 1/10/2010 9:28:31 PM
Author: JeBri31508
I just placed my order, hooray! So....let me make sure I get all this straight. When I see a diamond I like, I should get the specs and plug it into the HCA. Use the Ideal-Scope to check for light leakage. Then, if I think it checks out, give images and all specs to the PSers to make sure I''m getting the best diamond?

Thanks so much for everyone''s replies

Yes.

I have an idealscope, but personally have found running the numbers through the HCA and then using my own eyes to be a much simpler way of choosing diamonds. It is very easy for a novice to see a crappy cut using their IS, but you can see it with your own eyes too. For me, discriminating between amongst diamonds that made the cut on the HCA was not really aided by my IS. Seeing slight variations in leakage takes some practice I think. So I find it a fun tool but not *super* helpful in person for choosing amongst diamonds that I have already chosen based on the numbers and my own eyes.

Just my 2c.

 

[JeBri31508]

Garry--thank you, I am actually going to be looking at round diamonds, so I am very excited to get the IS! It will be interesting to look at the diamond studs and e-ring I already have...

Dreamer--thanks for the advice ...I''m sure I''ll be looking through the IS but I will probably need everyone''s advice on here when it finally comes down to purchase time! I''m just going for a first look this week though, so no buying yet!

 

[Garry H (Cut Nut)]

Date: 1/10/2010 10:17:46 PM
Author: dreamer_dachsie

Date: 1/10/2010 9:28:31 PM
Author: JeBri31508
I just placed my order, hooray! So....let me make sure I get all this straight. When I see a diamond I like, I should get the specs and plug it into the HCA. Use the Ideal-Scope to check for light leakage. Then, if I think it checks out, give images and all specs to the PSers to make sure I''m getting the best diamond?

Thanks so much for everyone''s replies

Yes.

I have an idealscope, but personally have found running the numbers through the HCA and then using my own eyes to be a much simpler way of choosing diamonds. It is very easy for a novice to see a crappy cut using their IS, but you can see it with your own eyes too. For me, discriminating between amongst diamonds that made the cut on the HCA was not really aided by my IS. Seeing slight variations in leakage takes some practice I think. So I find it a fun tool but not *super* helpful in person for choosing amongst diamonds that I have already chosen based on the numbers and my own eyes.

Just my 2c.

Take what you see with an ideal-scope over what the HCA results are DD

 

[Rockdiamond]

Date: 1/10/2010 6:29:21 PM
Author: denverappraiser
At the risk of pissing off my jeweler friends, one of the big values of the thing is when you pull one out of your purse during the shopping experience you immediately tell the salesperson several things:


1) You are a serious customer. You’re not killing time waiting for the restaurant next door or whatever, you’re there to shop for diamonds.


2) You’re an Internet educated shopper. These things are virtually unheard of outside of the world of Pricescope. If they expect to land this sale they better be prepared to give you attractive prices and they had better be prepared to defend their grading, especially the claims of cut quality.


This tends to get you shuffled off to their very best sales person and it tends to get you good prices right out of the gate. Not bad for a $25 doodad, even before you look at the first stone with it.

One qualifier. Show it to them first and ask permission to use it. They may or may not know what it is and folks are worried about security with customers who bring their own tools. For this reason, use the stores tweezers and loupes as well. If they have one, use their idealscope instead of your own (and give them brownie points for both knowing what it is and for having one).


Neil Beaty

GG(GIA) ICGA(AGS) NAJA

Professional Appraisals in Denver

JeBri31508, by all means, read the tutorials, buy the IS, and use it if you want to.
All due respect Neil, but the advice you gave is contradictory....more likely to piss off a consumer who does not get the expected results.
The reason is what I put in bold above.
You mention that the device is virtually unheard of outside PS ( and I agree- many very fine jewelers don''t know about it)
That being the case, the other things you mention would not happen.
If a jeweler has not heard of IdealScope/ASET, or PS, whipping one out won''t mean you get taken more seriously, or get the best salesperson.
Many jewelers carrying very fine makes do not use IS/ASET- a consumer could certainly let them know about PS- but to get the effect Neil mentioned, the seller would have to be familiar with PS/ASET/IS

 

[Stephan]

Most of the jewelers know H&A viewers, I even saw H&A viewer in Vietnam, in 2 different places.
So IdealScope shouldn''t scare serious dealers.
It''s a great tool!

 

[Rockdiamond]

I believe H&A viewers are more common- as H&A is a fairly well known term.

I do believe Neil was correct in thinking a lot of retail jewelers won''t know what an IS is.
That might be a reason not to use them, if one is liking the results provided by IS...

 

[Jim Summa]

I disagree with Neil that it is unheard of. I''m guessing there are about 1000 AGS-member stores that make some use of these tools. For those that do not I would expect it in the coming years, especially with the diamond''s ASET image on the Platinum Report now. In my years around diamonds a lot of systems have been developed. My GIA and AGS classes touched on only the most recent at the time I took them but those of us who have been around since the 80''s remember the "Firescope" developed to design some pretty amazing diamonds in Japan. Then Al Gilbertson expanded that to a multi-color angular spectrum and I think AGS bought the patents from him. Although it was introduced to consumer''s in 2005, and was published by the Society of Optical Engineers after that, I would say the technology has been around for a long time. From following this website I think Pricescoper''s knew about it before ASET because of Garry Holloway''s brilliant Ideal Scope.

My customer''s get pretty excited to see the science behind what they are seeing. I am not convinced a photo of the Ideal Scope or ASET image can do this. If it is all you can get that''s one thing but I think they can be compared to clarity microphotographs,telling only a part of the story,especially when a lot of these IS and ASET systems are not standardized. The most effective teaching of these tools happens at a jeweler live,who has these expensive standardized tools and can show you how they work.

Of course even 1000 stores is relatively few, so in support of Neil''s point I am usually the one teaching my customer''s about how to use them. I get pretty excited when customer''s come in who are aware of them, it is happening more often,not less. It would be nice if a large chain store picked up ASET and did consumer training classes in every major city.

 

[denverappraiser]

The Pricescope community is large and growing rapidly and it includes MANY jewelers. Most just don’t post in the forum out of fear that they’ll get eaten alive or that it’ll suck up too much time (not entirely unfounded fears by the way). I would venture to guess that it’s up to perhaps as many as 25-50% of the jewelers have now come across it and a significant fraction of those have discussed it with at least a part of their staffs. A store that plans to make sales in the technical world needs to be prepared to address techy type questions that come from their clients and folks who show up with unknown tools and who are asking questions about cut grading fall firmly in that category. Of course, if they’ve got someone who is familiar with using it as a sales tool, and they’ve got some merchandise that does well with it, it’s nothing but good news to have this happen because they’re already ahead of the competition.

Neil Beaty
GG(GIA) ICGA(AGS) NAJA
Professional Appraisals in Denver

 

[Rockdiamond]

Eaten alive?
Whatever do you mean Neil

Neil you mentioned 25-50% have come across "it"
Did you mean PS, or IS?

I honestly believe that if a broader sample of people in the diamond trade posted, it would show that there are a lot of stores carrying fine makes that are not using IS.

I''m not saying that''s right or wrong- just that the advice you gave about how bringing an IS into a store would only work if the store''s personnel were familiar with it.
There''s certainly nothing wrong with asking.

 

[denverappraiser]

By ‘it’, I meant Idealscopes but really it’s a matter of the Pricescope community at large and enough exposure to come here and poke around to see what’s the hubbub is about. I see idealscopes at tradeshows, and in the hands of jewelers and appraisers. AGS and GCAL are both promoting reflector technologies in a big way and it’s clearly an up and coming idea both as a way to both buy things and to sell them. It’s hard to spend much time poking around Pricescope without encountering it. The GCAL thing is prominently featured at Blue Nile and James Allen and other big online players have embraced the Idealscope as a way of communicating with their customers. Like it or not, it’s here to stay.

Eaten alive… Some of our participants are not especially polite in their postings and not everyone has as thick a skin as you do David. There are some strong opinions expressed about brick and mortar stores in general , and especially about those who choose to be located in the mall. Few have the fortitude, time and tenacity that you do to take on such a battle.

I agree that there are a lot of excellent stores with fine makes who aren’t using any sort of reflector technology. They go off of the trained eyes of the buyer and the silver tongues of the sales staff. I think they would benefit enormously by being able to demonstrate what makes their stones special in a simple and straightforward fashion to their customers although there is a lot of fear of change to overcome. That worked 30 years ago so why change? You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. I have no idea what the worldwide sales of idealscopes is like and I would expect that to be proprietary information but I would fully expect it to be growing every year and that a major growth area is in sales to jewelers, not just consumers.

Neil Beaty
GG(GIA) ICGA(AGS) NAJA
Professional Appraisals in Denver