14 replies to this topic

[swy81]

Found a diamond online and the specs are good.

Only thing, there is no idealscope image. Asked the sales rep and they did not have 1 for this diamond.

They offered to send me a hearts and arrows viewer but thats after I already purchase the diamond.

Is it ok to purchase the diamond without looking at a diamonds idealscope image?

Thanks.

[denverappraiser]

Most diamonds are sold without idealscope images and, mostly, it works out just fine. There's a significant debate whether your odds of happiness are actually improved by getting one although there are some people who swear by it. I rather like mine but the problem is that there is a significant disconnect between a stone seen through an idealscope and an image created using one. The same holds for the h&a viewer by the way.

You say the specs are good? What do you mean by that?

What is the dealer's return/refund policy?

[swy81]

[url]http://www.diamondreview.com/forum/topic/6725-need-help-on-diamond-im-about-to-purchase-for-future-wife/page__pid__29841#entry29841[/url]

Sorry don't mean to be lazy. Am typing from my phone so it's a bit hard.

Their return policy is 30 days

[denverappraiser]

The reason it got a 'very good' cut grade instead of 'excellent' is the tall crown and shallow pavilion. This'll make it brighten up in low light conditions like candellight at the expense of how it looks in bright overhead lighting. Whether that's good or bad is a matter of taste. One side effect of the VG cut is that it drops the price so, if you like the look, it's gravy.

30 days is good. Make sure to read the fine print but it looks like your only real risk is a few dozen dollars for shipping and a week or two of tying up your money if you decide against.

[swy81]

=(. Now I'm second guessing this diamond now. Is the pavillion and crown no good?

What is an ideal pavilion and crown range?

[davidelevi]

It's not a matter of being "no good". It's a question of what you like.

Let me use a car analogy. The "ideal" list that someone came up with is:

0-60 in 4.0 sec, 50 mpg, seats 5 adults and their baggage in comfort, cost $200/month in leasing.

Can you get all of the above? Not together. You may be able to get one, two or perhaps even three, but not all four. Does this make a Porsche 911 a bad car? By no means; it just does not fit that someone's ideal list on more than one criterion. Not to mention that the list of criteria may not fit with your needs or wants.

With diamonds, it's the same. Do you want lots of fire and nice brightness in low lighting? The optics then give you little contrast in bright light. Any list of "ideal" proportions is an attempt to trade off these various aspects - and it probably does more ill than good, since some combinations work together but others don't, or you end up with an unachievable "perfect point" (the 50 mpg 4.0 sec car at $200/month) that leads you to discard perfectly acceptable options.

Let me put it yet another way - there is nothing wrong with the stone you picked, but why did you pick that particular one? What is on your list of "ideal" characteristics?

Edited by davidelevi, 15 February 2011 - 03:38 AM.

[swy81]

davidelevi, on 15 February 2011 - 01:51 AM, said:

It's not a matter of being "no good". It's a question of what you like.

Let me use a car analogy. The "ideal" list that someone came up with is:

0-60 in 4.0 sec, 50 mpg, seats 5 adults and their baggage in comfort, cost $200/month in leasing.

Can you get all of the above? Not together. You may be able to get one, two or perhaps even three, but not all four. Does this make a Porsche 911 a bad car? By no means; it just does not fit that someone's ideal list on more than one criterion. Not to mention that the list of criteria may not fit with your needs or wants.

With diamonds, it's the same. Do you want lots of fire and nice brightness in low lighting? The optics then give you little contrast in bright light. Any list of "ideal" proportions is an attempt to trade off these various aspects - and it probably does more ill than good, since some combinations work together but others don't, or you end up with an unachievable "perfect point" (the 50 mpg 4.0 sec car at $200/month) that leads you to discard perfectly acceptable options.

Let me put it yet another way - there is nothing wrong with the stone you picked, but why did you pick that particular one? What is on your list of "ideal" characteristics?

I picked it because of a number of reasons.

1) The price is within the $14,000 - $15,000 range I'm looking to pay.
2) Depth and Table seem to be in the ideal range.
3) Color is good.
4) Polish/symmetry are excellent with Clarity of VS2 which is good.
5) Medium girdle with no fluorescence.

The negatives as mentioned are the cut which is only a very good and the pavillion which is not ideal.

I guess I'm looking for a clean minimal inclusion diamond that produces the most "fire" and brightness.

I guess I can't have my cake and eat it too.



Appreciate the help you've given me so far.

Edited by swy81, 15 February 2011 - 06:22 AM.

[davidelevi]

swy81, on 15 February 2011 - 06:21 AM, said:

I picked it because of a number of reasons.

1) The price is within the $14,000 - $15,000 range I'm looking to pay.
2) Depth and Table seem to be in the ideal range.
3) Color is good.
4) Polish/symmetry are excellent with Clarity of VS2 which is good.
5) Medium girdle with no fluorescence.

The negatives as mentioned are the cut which is only a very good and the pavillion which is not ideal.

I guess I'm looking for a clean minimal inclusion diamond that produces the most "fire" and brightness.

I guess I can't have my cake and eat it too.



Appreciate the help you've given me so far.

Well, there is some inconsistency in your stated goal (minimal inclusion - I assume you mean inclusions not visible to the naked eye, AKA "eye clean") of getting sparkle and fire, and your criteria:

1) Irrelevant... but limiting
2) Irrelevant. There is no such thing as an "ideal" table (or crown angle, or pavillion depth). And ranges only work if you look at them collectively. A 40.2 pavillion angle works fine if in association with a relatively steep and high crown (as in the case of the diamond we are discussing), but it can look rather mirror-like and lifeless if the crown is also flat. Conversely, a relatively flat crown will work well with a deep pavillion (up to a point).
3) Irrelevant. You can get a D that is as dull as a bottle-end glass, and an S-T that is lively and sparkly like a firework.
4) Polish and symmetry will help, but are no deal breakers. And clarity is again irrelevant - firstly because up to I2 it generally doesn't have any effect on sparkle and fire, and secondly because you can find eye clean I1s with a bit of work.
5) Irrelevant. And by insisting on no fluorescence you may pass on stones that come at 5-10% discount and look as nice as or nicer than inert ones.

So, where does that leave us? With cut. Which GIA rates "Very Good", presumably because of the shallow pavillion and high crown, and thus relatively far from average taste. In the 19th century, this diamond would have been regarded as cut in an exemplary fashion, and it would have made the most of the limited artificial light in existence then. Some people may even like it better than a "superideal" average of all averages modern - for example I suspect I would.

But remaining within all of your constraints, it's actually pretty easy to find diamonds that GIA grades Excellent in cut (whether you'd like them more or not, only you can decide and find - buying sight unseen is fine when you are fully informed and/or the product is totally standardised), F/VS2 etc. etc.

Just buy a 1.40 (for example this one http://www.diamondre...5024&cid=diamrw). This will drive the price down way below your budget, for no visible difference in dimension (0.15 mm - at the threshold of visibility with both diamonds unset and right next to each other).

I still maintain that you should see diamonds with different cut qualities and characteristics, to understand what you like best. But doing that online is difficult, and finding a dealer that is ready to invest time and money on teaching before selling is as difficult.

Edited by davidelevi, 15 February 2011 - 07:08 AM.

[denverappraiser]

Diamonds are, by their nature, a bundle of mirrors with a window at the top and a key element that get's routinely left out in the charts you're looking at is the relationship between the angles of the mirrors is at least as important as the individual angles themselves. Davide is absolutely correct that a tall crown pairs well with a shallow pavilion and visa versa. This is one of the big changes in the way people started evaluating cutting in 2005-06 and it seems to have stuck. Both GIA and AGS have a moderately complicated formula for analyzing stones and the table/depth approach has long been dismissed as insufficient by nearly everyone.

The difference between 'Very Good' and 'Excellent' is a much more tricky problem. What's theoretically being evaluated here is beauty, not light return or even light behavior, and not everyone agrees on what is most beautiful. That's why the GIA grade encompasses so many different loks and why it's so important to actually look at the stone(s) in a variety of lighting conditions and see what trips YOUR fancy. A more specific and easilly observable thing is that GIA-excellent or AGS-Ideal pedigree drives up the price. This ain't about beauty, it's about money. The GIA-ex combinations are carefully designed to capture the most popular stones and that's definitely useful for dealers to know. It might even be useful for YOU to know but it's important to bear in mind that 'popular' is not a synonym for 'better' and 'ideal' isn't a synonym for either.

Fluorescence is a similar problem. For people who spend little time in the disco and tanning salon, even strong fluro has no effect on the appearance of the stone and, thanks primarily to the way people shop on the Internet, it drives down the price. That's either good or bad depending on what's important to you. Personally, I rather like it.

By the way, if you want to play with the GIA grading system, go to www.facetware.gia.edu, enter your specs from the lab report and then play with changing things to see what happens.

Edited by denverappraiser, 15 February 2011 - 09:31 AM.

[jan]

swy81, on 15 February 2011 - 06:21 AM, said:

davidelevi, on 15 February 2011 - 01:51 AM, said:

It's not a matter of being "no good". It's a question of what you like.

Let me use a car analogy. The "ideal" list that someone came up with is:

0-60 in 4.0 sec, 50 mpg, seats 5 adults and their baggage in comfort, cost $200/month in leasing.

Can you get all of the above? Not together. You may be able to get one, two or perhaps even three, but not all four. Does this make a Porsche 911 a bad car? By no means; it just does not fit that someone's ideal list on more than one criterion. Not to mention that the list of criteria may not fit with your needs or wants.

With diamonds, it's the same. Do you want lots of fire and nice brightness in low lighting? The optics then give you little contrast in bright light. Any list of "ideal" proportions is an attempt to trade off these various aspects - and it probably does more ill than good, since some combinations work together but others don't, or you end up with an unachievable "perfect point" (the 50 mpg 4.0 sec car at $200/month) that leads you to discard perfectly acceptable options.

Let me put it yet another way - there is nothing wrong with the stone you picked, but why did you pick that particular one? What is on your list of "ideal" characteristics?

I picked it because of a number of reasons.

1) The price is within the $14,000 - $15,000 range I'm looking to pay.
2) Depth and Table seem to be in the ideal range.
3) Color is good.
4) Polish/symmetry are excellent with Clarity of VS2 which is good.
5) Medium girdle with no fluorescence.

The negatives as mentioned are the cut which is only a very good and the pavillion which is not ideal.

I guess I'm looking for a clean minimal inclusion diamond that produces the most "fire" and brightness.

I guess I can't have my cake and eat it too.



Appreciate the help you've given me so far.

This stone is not in the ideal cut range based on the pavilion angle. So I would say the main thing that you like about it, since you haven't seen it is the price. You get what you pay for. The stone is only a Very good cut grade even by GIA standards not an excellent cut grade and based on the pavilion angle is why the price is low. That effects the sparkle of the diamond.


I highly recommend that you at least look at a photo of the stone versus buying by paper alone.

I saw a boat one time that looked great on paper, price was low, specs where there. Got there and the boat was full of mold and had been out in the weeds for 2 years. The whole boat smelled horribly. Make sure to at least look at what you are purchasing.


Here is a picture of what I mean. Had a client come in with one the other day that he purchased sight unseen. This stone had a nice, color, clarity and paper, however, the stone had yellow fluorescence and was not notated on the GIA lab report. It made the stone have an overall haze. The same color and clarity and cut grade are next to this stone but it is a big difference.

Edited by jan, 16 February 2011 - 10:18 AM.

[davidelevi]

Jan - I would think that GIA (or any other lab) not noting fluorescence which is so strong as to cause haziness is frankly a rare occurrence... Or not?

It's the first time I see this. The stone is clearly hazy, but if anything I find GIA notes even faint fluorescence to a fault (i.e. stones I would call inert).

I'm also reminded of the famous 1997 GIA study on fluorescence, where they had problems finding enough overblues to test...

[LaurieH]

I would think that esp now that GIA doesn't ever let something like that slip through. My understanding is that multiple people grade each stone. I've got a friend who was a grader there and I could ask for verification (for some reason, never thought to ask her before). I think scaring folks away from a stone on something that is a one in a million is a little off... and, am I wrong, but hasn't he said that he's SEEN this diamond in person?

[Britani17]

Actually, in the five years that I have worked at Diamond Brokers I have noticed three incidents where GIA did not add something to the lab report and that is just in this store. The graders are only human and do make mistakes more often than you think, but out of all the laboratories they still get credit for being the most consistent along with AGS. What I think Jan was trying to prove is that Swy81 wanted an ideal cut diamond, or had concerns with the cut only being very good, and that the diamond that he may or may not have seen may look good on paper but is not ideal cut. If he wants an ideal cut diamond he needs to look and compare other diamonds even compare against the one he found. The example Jan put up is a very good representation of good numbers do not necessarily equate to a beautiful diamond. So Swy81 in your future diamond hunting, ask for photos, videos and any other information that can verify what you want the diamond to look like when the diamond is not available for viewing

[jan]

LaurieH, on 16 February 2011 - 11:35 AM, said:

I would think that esp now that GIA doesn't ever let something like that slip through. My understanding is that multiple people grade each stone. I've got a friend who was a grader there and I could ask for verification (for some reason, never thought to ask her before). I think scaring folks away from a stone on something that is a one in a million is a little off... and, am I wrong, but hasn't he said that he's SEEN this diamond in person?

Unfortunately there have been quite a few times even from the best laboratories like GIA and AGS that we have caught mistakes, from not labeling fluorescence, to missing inscriptions, wrong dimensions, and sometimes even the wrong cut grade. For example, I had sent a stone to AGS for grading once that was a octagonal cut that they had graded as a triple ideal cut diamond before they had such a thing. They actually sent us a corrected report later on. That is why it is so important to have a trained grader to look at a stone, even with a lab report.

[jan]

davidelevi, on 16 February 2011 - 10:35 AM, said:

Jan - I would think that GIA (or any other lab) not noting fluorescence which is so strong as to cause haziness is frankly a rare occurrence... Or not?

It's the first time I see this. The stone is clearly hazy, but if anything I find GIA notes even faint fluorescence to a fault (i.e. stones I would call inert).

I'm also reminded of the famous 1997 GIA study on fluorescence, where they had problems finding enough overblues to test...

This particular stone was listed as no fluorescence on the lab report. It didn't really have a strong one but it was a medium yellow fluorescence. It was a stone that was trading under market price. There was nothing on the lab report to indicate the hazy look. In fact it was a GIA EX EX EX.