Q&A: Best Eye Clean Round Brilliant Between $5000 and $6000

Thanks for writing. Lets assume you get one of the simpler rings available from James Allen which will be about $300-$400 in white gold. This’ll leave us with about 4500-5500 for the diamond. Having that in mind, here’s what I found for you:

https://www.jamesallen.com/diamonds/J-SI1-Ideal-Cut-Round-Diamond-1265831.asp?a_aid=dmnd1357 – Excellent Cut. Medium blue will make the J color look slightly whiter. Definitely clean to the naked eye.

https://www.jamesallen.com/diamonds/J-SI2-Ideal-Cut-Round-Diamond-1276375.asp?a_aid=dmnd1357 – Excellent Cut. Eye clean. A little cheaper.

https://www.jamesallen.com/diamonds/I-SI2-Ideal-Cut-Round-Diamond-1260161.asp?a_aid=dmnd1357 – AGS triple zero. Eye clean. I color.

https://www.jamesallen.com/diamonds/I-SI2-Ideal-Cut-Round-Diamond-1264666.asp?a_aid=dmnd1357 – ditto

Have a look a these suggestions and let me know what you think!

My pleasure!

Here’s my answers:

1) True hearts vs regular ideal/excellent cut – generally not enough of a visual difference to justify the extra cost.

2) J + MED *MIGHT* look as white as an I, but must likely it’ll look like a high J. It almost certainly won’t look more white than an I.

3) AGS triple zero means the stone got AGS’s (a different lab on par with GIA) highest grades for polish, symmetry, and cut. Similar to a GIA triple excellent.

4) For your budget, you probably wouldn’t save much, if anything, using my buying service and you’d lose many of the benefits working with JA (generous return period, sells e-ring also, better packaging, etc)

Did you like any of my diamond suggestions?

If you’re nervous about the SI2, you can call JA’s customer service and ask them to inspect the stone face to face to see without doubt if it’s eye clean or not. They’re completely honest and objective – they want you to be happy and they have tons of alternatives. So they gain nothing convincing you to buy a stone you’re only going to return later.

As far as grey star vs. black star goes – it’s 100% a lighting issue. JA doesn’t own their own diamonds. They work with a number of wholesale vendors within walking distance to their office. Each vendor does their own photography in their own office. So you have like 20 different photographers photographing the various stones listed on JA, and each has his/her own slightly different technique. That’s what makes the different colors/shades in the pics. I find that the pics are really only good for showing me the orientation/size/color of the inclusions.

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See below in red:

Bottom line, I like the first one the best. It really looks sharp.

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 3:39 AM, XXXXXX XXX <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Ira,

I was browsing through some diamonds and wanted to get your opinion on these.

https://www.jamesallen.com/diamonds/H-SI1-Ideal-Cut-Round-Diamond-1268988.asp?a_aid=dmnd1357 – beautiful stone. nothing negative to say at all.

https://www.jamesallen.com/diamonds/I-SI1-Ideal-Cut-Round-Diamond-939538.asp?a_aid=dmnd1357 – inclusion on the right is 90% sure eye clean, but it is rather long. So I’m not 100% sure. Other than that, it’s a beauty as well.

https://www.jamesallen.com/diamonds/I-SI1-Ideal-Cut-Round-Diamond-1160282.asp?a_aid=dmnd1357 – very good cut GIA. I’d pass on this one.

https://www.jamesallen.com/diamonds/H-SI2-Ideal-Cut-Round-Diamond-1219301.asp?a_aid=dmnd1357 – Also a beauty but significantly smaller than the others.

These are all really really nice. If you went with the least of these four, you’d still come away completely satisfied with your purchase. Having said that, here’s my order of preference from best to worst:

1) 1.36 J SI1 – I’m a sucker for large stones. The cut is Excellent, and the Medium blue fluorescence will whiten up the J color just a bit. All around an amazing value.

2) 1.12 H SI1 – THe picture is just so fine, it’s hard not to fall in love with this one.

3) 1.15 I SI2 – Everything’s great about this stone, except that the picture is a bit cloudy, so it’s hard to tell if the picture is just slightly out of focus, or if the diamond is cloudy. In all likelihood, it’s just the photograph.

4) 1.26 I SI2 – there’s an inclusion in the table that looks white now because light reflected off of it from the flash of the camera, but very well might be black and visible to the naked eye.

yes, I know all about extra faceted stones. I worked for Leo Schachter for 7 years. They created the “Leo Diamond” which was the first truly successful special cut diamond brand. They sell them at Kay and Jared. It’s mostly a gimmick. These stones were invented as a way to break the commoditization of diamonds.

My pleasure.

1.25 J SI1 – no picture, so can’t really comment

1.26 J SI2 – Looks great. But if you can fit a higher color stone in your budget, I think that’s a better idea. A J color will still look white, but it’s borderline.

1.16 I SI1 – Very good cut grade. So I’d pass on this one.

Sounds good. I’m curious to hear what they say about cloudiness. Please let me know!

They do get new inventory fairly steadily, but in my experience helping people it’s always smart to grab a nice diamond when you find it. Just because they get new goods in doesn’t always mean they get NICE goods in.

I’ve helped numerous people who kick themselves for not buying a stone when they found it becuase it got snatched up. In general, JA customers are well educated and know what to look for. So even though JA has thousands of diamonds, there’s a large number of customers fighting over a much smaller number of really nice diamonds.

“The magnified image of our 1.15ct-I-SI2 doesn’t appear cloudy to me at all. Actually, I would consider this picture to be a great example of just how clear and nice our magnified images can be at times. Have no concern regarding the SI2 either. It is an eye-clean diamond. Great choice!. : )”

I have no experience working with them so should I just take their word for it that it’s not cloudy? You think diamond is a good buy to pair up with my setting?

Diamond – https://www.jamesallen.com/diamonds/I-SI2-Ideal-Cut-Round-Diamond-1279509.asp?a_aid=dmnd1357

Setting (platinum) – https://www.jamesallen.com/engagement-rings/settings-with-sidestones/Bow-Tie-Engagement-Ring.html

A: Ido have a lot of experience dealing with them and I can tell you with certainty that you can trust them. Returns cost them money, they try to avoid them at all costs. So they would never recommend a diamond to you that you would just want to return anyway.

If the diamond isn’t cloudy, then I say definitely go for it. That was the best stone left out of the group. It’ll look amazing in that setting.

Let me know if it’s still around!

That’s a very nice stone. The thing with IGI is that their a bit more lenient in color and clarity. So that stone would have probably just missed getting an SI2 from GIA. But the truth is, it doesn’t matter. The inclusion is all wisps which aren’t noticeable to the naked eye. So even if technically it’s a GIA I1, it would have been in the top 5% of all GIA I1s. And it’s priced accordingly anyway.

Also, the color is most likely a G or even a high H. But again, it’s priced accordingly, so it’s fine. And the cut on the stone is very nice as well (as you can tell from the measurements and the picture itself).

I think you made a nice find.

…….

I just wanted to check up with you to see if you had made your decision yet.  I’d love to know what you went with!

About the blue color you see – that’s definitely not a serious thing. It’s either being reflected off of something blue in the room where you are, or it’s just the natural colored sparkle of a diamond when the light inside is refracted around. There’s no fluorescence in that stone, so any blue you see isn’t coming from anything negative in the diamond.

As far as the cloudiness is concerned – is it possible it has finger grease on it? Finger smudges can easily make a stone look cloudy.

regarding the other question of where you can get it looked at for free, it would help if I knew where you lived.

I have a few professional contacts in Seattle, but unfortunately nobody I’m close enough with that I could ask a favor from.

Maybe you should call a few independent appraisers (not ones that work in jewelry stores) and ask them what their fees are. It might be a good idea anyway to give you peace of mind about what you bought online.

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What did you end up doing in the end? I’d love to hear how everything turned out!

My pleasure!  I’m glad to hear it all worked out in the end.  Best Wishes!