Q&A: Wants Most Brilliant Diamond Possible with Light Performance Proof (ISEE2 or Gemex) for $6000

Hey G.  Thanks for writing.  Regarding ISEE2 or Gemex (brilliantscope) and the others, I can tell you from experience that they’re all pretty gimmicky. They’re there to convince the customer that walks into the store to buy diamonds there and nowhere else.  These “tools” weren’t created by scientists, they were created by marketing executives.

AGS and GIA cut grades, on the other hand were created by scientists.

Hey G.  I knew the two guys who started DBOF.  I was actually in their store once in Florida on a sales trip (back when I was a traveling diamond salesman in the US).  They’re great guys, and I’m sure they run a great business.

But their problem is they own their own inventory, so it’s very hard, if not impossible, to compete with the online vendors that don’t own their own inventory.

The virtual loop is 100% legitimate.  I was just writing another reader of my site about this today, so I’ll just copy what I wrote him:

There are 3 different business models of online diamond vendors.

1) Most borrow lists of loose diamonds from industry web sites, add a fixed percentage of profit, and list the stones as their own.  When a sale is made, they have to call the vendor and hope that the vendor’s feed is updated and the diamond they just sold is still available.  Mondera, Abazias, and others are in this category.

2) A select few stores own their own inventory.  The advantages are obvious – the diamonds are always available if they say they are.  Customer service can examine the stones for you and answer questions, etc.  The disadvantage is clear too – these stones are significantly more expensive. IF the company had to invest in their inventory, they need to make a higher profit margin.

3)   JA and BN are unique among the crowd of vendors.  They have exclusivity agreements with their vendors to list their diamonds online only with their respective sites.  Since they’re so big, they also have leverage to force their vendors to list their diamonds for a lower base cost (upon which both BN and JA add a fixed profit percentage).

So there are two reasons why I come off as biased towards JA over BN.
1) I know from the inside that their fixed markup is slightly lower than BN’s.  They’re a smaller, privately held company. BN is a big sloth of a public company.  They’re far less efficient.  They have massive overhead that they need to compensate for.
2) JA’s business model is slightly different from BN’s. While BN recruits vendors all over the US and world at large, JA only works with vendors within walking distance of their office in NY’s diamond district.  This proximity allows them access to diamonds to photograph them (the photos are the main reason I recommend JA over BN), and to have them pulled if customers have questions about them.  Also, JA themselves ship you the diamonds.  BN has the individual diamond vendors ship the diamonds directly to the customers.  JA checks each stone before it leaves their office, BN can’t offer that kind of control.

So that’s the reason why they’re the only site to offer that.  And that’s the reason I endorse them so strongly.

I’m not sure, with the TRUE5 discount code, that the “true hearts” really cost anything significantly more than regular AGS triple zeros or GIA triple excellents.   If they did, I wouldn’t recommend them.  You’re right, the whole H&A thing is a gimmick.  It’s true, that most ideal made round stones will exhibit this particular pattern when looked through a colored lens, but that it should be the ultimate decider of quality is nonsense.  I’ve bought and sold probably over a hundred million dollars of diamonds in my career with Leo Schachter, and I never once used an idealscope to judge the quality of the stones I was trading.

I guess the true litmus test for these kinds of tools are – who’s using them the most?  Is it primarily the person in the store trying to sell a diamond to the end-consumer, or are dealers using them to trade diamonds?  The answer with all of the tools we’ve mentioned so far is they are used exclusively as marketing tools to the end consumer.  The only small exception would be dealers who buy H&A stones to sell them as H&A stones.  They might use an idealscope just to make sure they’ll be able to sell the stone with the same gimmick.

So I guess DBOF is a combo of the first two business models I listed.
Not any more than any other ideal cut stone.   But with the discount, they’re priced like regular ideals, so I have no problem recommending them.

I’m off to bed now.  It’s a quarter to 1 here in Israel, and tomorrow night starts a big week-long holiday.  I need my rest!

Yes.  Exactly.

….

I hadn’t heard from you in a few days.  I was just curious to know if you had made your decision yet, and if so, what direction you decided to go in in the end?

Sounds good. Just make sure to contact me when you’re ready, as it’s very possible these will be sold already, and most likely there’ll be some new interesting stones in stock.

Hey G.  Before I begin – what kind of setting are you going to be putting this stone in?  I ask because, it’s important to match the color of the center stone with the side stones.  So if the setting you choose has side stones, please send me a link to the setting so I can check it out for you.  Here’s my comments:

1212701 – Great looking stone

1247572 – Very Good cut grade from GIA – reject

1261940 – Looks good.  Small center inclusion, but most likely eye-clean.

1231071 – Looks a little too clean to be an SI1.  Might be a sign of a cloud.  Worthwhile to contact JA customer service to have this stone checked by one of their gemologists.

1260902 – That comment on the AGS cert is really weird.  I’d ask customer service about it. I have no idea what it’s referring to.  Other than that, the stone looks really good

1263685 – Looks good

As far as the color is concerned, I don’t think it’s relevant.  This is a very common question people have about James Allen’s pictures.  I have found that their pics are only useful for judging clarity (and sometimes make quality – specifically with fancy shapes).  The reason is that these pics are taken at the office of the diamonds’ owners.  They probably work with about 15-20 different vendors in NY, and each one has its own camera set up on loan from JA.  So that means 20 different people taking the pictures with 20 different lighting combinations.

Plus, even if you had the diamond in front of you, you never evaluate color face-up.

Let me know about the setting.

First off, I want to tell you that you have great taste.  That’s one of my favorite rings on James Allen.

Unfortunately, though, we need to start over with the diamond search.  If you notice in the description of that ring, the color grade on the side stones is F-G. So you should probably shoot for a G color center stone, but you could also get away with an H color.  But an I color is too low for that setting.

take a look at these:

https://www.jamesallen.com/diamonds/H-SI1-Ideal-Cut-Round-Diamond-1248435.asp?a_aid=dmnd1357
https://www.jamesallen.com/diamonds/G-SI1-Ideal-Cut-Round-Diamond-1260291.asp?a_aid=dmnd1357
https://www.jamesallen.com/diamonds/G-SI1-Ideal-Cut-Round-Diamond-1231089.asp?a_aid=dmnd1357

I know this must be frustrating, but it’s something you only have to do once in your life!

I agree mostly with what the rep said. Had the ring had pave stones down the shank only, I wouldn’t have said anything.  What concerned me was that the pave stones were a halo around the face of the stone.  Such a direct juxtaposition, I worried, would make the color difference noticeable.  But the truth is, my experience is much more rooted in loose diamonds than jewelry.  The reps at JA have more experience than I do when it comes to these things, so you should feel comfortable relying on their advice.

So back to your previous email:  If the only thing holding you back from the VS1 is the concern that something must be wrong with it since it’s so cheap – then I think you should reconsider.  Firstly, you can always have the people at JA physically inspect the stone.  But secondly, just to put your worries to rest, let me explain how JA handles pricing.  For every price level, JA has a fixed profit margin.  So for $5000 stones, they might make 16%, for 30,000 stones, they might make 7%, and so on. They don’t differentiate between qualities.  It’s all based on price.  The important thing to remember is that in reality, JA doesn’t set their prices.  Their vendors do.  If a vendor wants to move a stone that’s been around a while, he’ll lower the price he has it listed with JA at.  JA probably works with 20 or so vendors in NYC, so 20 different vendors can greatly vary their pricing.  JA just decides how much profit to make on top of those prices.  Also, JA has a back-office site for their vendors that lets them see how much their competition is listing stones for.  This creates a free market whereby their vendors compete against each other to be the cheapest in a category.  So maybe the owner of the VS1 wants to be the cheapest in this very category of diamond that you’re looking to buy.

I think that’s definitely the right way to play it. Whatever help I can offer can only go so far. Pictures are great, stone measurements help, but there’s no substitute for seeing the diamond with a pair of eyes.