Where are the reviews from experts on Lightbox?

[MamaBee]

I was so sure that once Lightbox launched there would be a whole ton of reviews from experts in the diamond field buying a Lightbox diamond and examining it and basically doing an appraisal. I’m thinking that if the cut was bad it would be all over in reviews. My take is that they must be pretty good because we hear crickets. Has anyone seen a review? I find it strange..

 

[blueMA]

I think they're mostly fine to layman from the discussions I've seen. I'm personally disappointed that they've not yet offered larger 1 carat sized round stone options, and most of the rounds I've seen are deep cuts with noticeable light leakage, not up to the PS standards. Pretty sure they're concentrating on offering smaller carats mostly to cut their production cost, only to crush the competitions with their marketing and the supposed transparent pricing model.

Not impressed... but I suppose what's DeBeers if they don't control their own supply?

You can see some photos here
https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/photos-of-lightbox-jewelry.243885/page-4

 

[rockhoundofficiando]

I was so sure that once Lightbox launched there would be a whole ton of reviews from experts in the diamond field buying a Lightbox diamond and examining it and basically doing an appraisal. I’m thinking that if the cut was bad it would be all over in reviews. My take is that they must be pretty good because we hear crickets. Has anyone seen a review? I find it strange..

I wonder about that too. I suspect the Lightbox mmd may be higher quality (not near ideal of course) but better than some of the experts hoped....

 

[DoeEyes]

My totally unprofessional opinion is that no one in the industry is reviewing them because they ARE good. Like @blueMA said, not necessarily PS standard, but definitely better than, or at least as good as, the diamonds an uninformed boyfriend would be sold from a mall jewelry store.

 

[MamaBee]

My totally unprofessional opinion is that no one in the industry is reviewing them because they ARE good. Like @blueMA said, not necessarily PS standard, but definitely better than, or at least as good as, the diamonds an uninformed boyfriend would be sold from a mall jewelry store.

I’m pretty sure they’re better than most mall stores..

 

[MamaBee]

I'm a jewelry professional and the Lightbox stones I've seen have been gorgeous (2 1 carat white princess cuts and 1 1 carat pink princess).

The reason that jewelry professionals aren't talking about them is that it's very hard to know how to position them from a sales standpoint. Lightbox isn't accepting reseller applications, so you can't sell them for a profit right now. And they're not sending out samples, so as a jewelry professional, if you want to see a Lightbox diamond, you have to pay full retail, knowing you won't be able to sell it for a profit (something you always try to avoid in sales).

Bringing attention to Lightbox has no earning potential right now but it has the potential to undercut your other lab grown diamond inventory. It's hard to explain to a customer why this 1 carat lab grown princess cut is half the price of the 1.25 carat lab grown princess cut you're selling (and the reason is because you paid twice as much for that 1.25 carat).

Anyway, that's why you don't see jewelry professionals reviewing them right now. There are two kinds of jewelry professionals 1) The type who like to act like lab grown are worthless and don't want to acknowledge them, period 2) The type who have embraced lab grown, but still don't want to talk about Lightbox because it's undercutting their other lab grown sales and inventory (which is the real reason DeBeers launched Lightbox in the first place).

So nobody's talking about it.

But if Lightbox diamonds had been ugly, trust me, you would have been hearing about it.

That’s what I thought was happening...They are releasing pieces very slowly which is frustrating. You can see the items that will be coming out on Twitter but they don’t have them available yet. I think they’re holding out until the holidays hoping to crush their sales.

 

[blueMA]

I’m pretty sure they’re better than most mall stores..

Mall stores and most brick and mortal stores' diamond inventories are jokes - they're absolutely horrible, mostly SI2 or worse with poor cuts with hardly any sparkles - waaay too low of a bar to bother a comparison.

In the meanwhile, typical machine cut CZs less than 10 bucks out of China are almost perfectly cut nowadays. Anyone can order the exceptionally sparkly well cut Swarovski Pure Brilliance CZs for less than $20 that'll sparkle more than typical diamonds, so I can't give any excuse for DeBeers' lackluster initial offerings, doing the bare minimum for the cut to be passable.

 

[MamaBee]

I don’t know about the cut because I haven’t seen them in person..but from what I can see from photos here they don’t look bad..actually pretty well cut. I think if they were truly mediocre there would be tons of negative reviews but I haven’t seen one.

 

[DoeEyes]

Mall stores and most brick and mortal stores' diamond inventories are jokes - they're absolutely horrible, mostly SI2 or worse with poor cuts with hardly any sparkles - waaay too low of a bar to bother a comparison.

In the meanwhile, typical machine cut CZs less than 10 bucks out of China are almost perfectly cut nowadays. Anyone can order the exceptionally sparkly well cut Swarovski Pure Brilliance CZs for less than $20 that'll sparkle more than typical diamonds, so I can't give any excuse for DeBeers' lackluster initial offerings, doing the bare minimum for the cut to be passable.

Did you get a lightbox diamond? Curious where you are getting the info that the cut is the bare minimum to be passable. I have one and it's gorgeous, but I'm not an expert on diamond cut.

 

[blueMA]

Did you get a lightbox diamond? Curious where you are getting the info that the cut is the bare minimum to be passable. I have one and it's gorgeous, but I'm not an expert on diamond cut.

I've seen plenty photo evidences so far @frogplus
My point is that DeBeers could've definitely done better than the deep/steep cut diamonds with obvious light leakage, especially while China and India are producing cheap CZs with much better cuts for less than $10.

I'm however glad that you're very happy with your own choice of the engagement ring option.

 

[MelloYello8]

Given how slow lightbox has been to restock 1ct items, I wonder if they had to let a lot of stones end up on the cutting room floor, so to speak, and are trying to tweak their production line methods. Everyone who has gotten a white lightbox rock has remarked how bright it is but if you look at the inventories at other stores that include IGI or AGS certs, there are way more stones in the I-K part of the spectrum than on the D and E side, and plenty of SI and even I clarity. Just a guess, since I understand it’s harder to grow a diamond without nitrogen or boron, and as it gets bigger, the slower it is to grow, thus risking more inclusions. I think.

 

[blueMA]

Given how slow lightbox has been to restock 1ct items, I wonder if they had to let a lot of stones end up on the cutting room floor, so to speak, and are trying to tweak their production line methods. Everyone who has gotten a white lightbox rock has remarked how bright it is but if you look at the inventories at other stores that include IGI or AGS certs, there are way more stones in the I-K part of the spectrum than on the D and E side, and plenty of SI and even I clarity. Just a guess, since I understand it’s harder to grow a diamond without nitrogen or boron, and as it gets bigger, the slower it is to grow, thus risking more inclusions. I think.

I don't believe that's the issue. Most lab diamond producers have no problem producing clear stones up to 2 carats and more nowadays, especially with the C.V.D. process DeBeers is using. DeBeers had planned on selling a lot of smaller pink and blue diamonds from the start under the Lightbox brand, and not a lot of larger ones, especially not white. They had announced this plan during the original announcement - probably to increase their profit margin and to dissuade people from using/repurposing the lab stones for engagement rings. Their whole strategy is to discredit the competitors selling the lab created stones for special event jewelry, and to play down lab stones for "fun" fashion jewelry niche while using it as a hedge.

 

[MamaBee]

@blueMA I would really be interested to see the photo evidence you have seen. It would be very helpful.

 

[blueMA]

@blueMA I would really be interested to see the photo evidence you have seen. It would be very helpful.

This should be more than enough evidence. As your eyes develop you could see the light leakage from plain photos as well.
https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/photos-of-lightbox-jewelry.243885/page-4#post-4423804

I searched out a quick Whiteflash page with the info you might be interested in.
https://www.whiteflash.com/about-diamonds/news/gia-ex-examples-to-beware.htm

More
https://www.pricescope.com/wiki/diamonds/diamond-cut