talonferguson, on Monday, Dec 11 2006, 02:21 AM, said:
Bump... Opinions please.. on these photos? I'm 24 hours from closing the auction.
Talon,
I"m not a huge fan of basing much on pictures but the picture I was trying to upload above is the one from the advertisement. It's quite different from what you've presented. What you learn from the pictures of a marquise is the overall shape of the stone, a bit about the symmetry, perhaps something about the clarity and a token clue about certain kinds of damage. This assumes, of course, that the photo is unaltered. What you do not learn is anything about the light behavior, anything about the bowtie or anything about the optics of the stone. The problem is that a picture taken out of context has a huge number of variables that you don't know about. The lighting, camera and post processing can make a mudball look pretty good and, conversely, can make a pretty stone look like glass. If you don't otherwise have some reason to trust the dealer and therefore trust that the picture is a good representation of the stone, take them with a huge grain of salt. In this case, where the pictures sent to you are considerably different from the picture in the advertisement (look at the outline of the stone), I would call this evidence of a problem with the dealer. Get an explanation.
Neil
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