Found the diamond?

Maybe!

It was so awful and muggy out today. When it got cooler, Greg and I decided to take the dogs for a walk down to the green. Last week we had decided to use the jeweler Derek Simpson in New Haven, who is going to design and build the ring that we'd like. We hadn't heard back from him about diamonds (he was going to get some quotes for us from his supplier), so on our walk with the dogs we stopped by. It turns out he had two stones for us to see - meanwhile, we have two dogs tugging at their leashes and jumping on everyone walking by. So we did something you're never supposed to do in New Haven: we tied them to a tree. (There's supposedly lots of illegal dog fighting out here, so you should be careful about leaving your dog where it could be stolen). But we watched them the whole time out the window. When we were not staring at the sparkly diamond. Or examining it under a scope. Yeah, totally focused on the dogs.

The diamonds were beautiful (of course!!). So sparkly!! He showed us two stones:

Stone A: 0.71K, F color, higher quality cut
Stone B: 0.80K, G color, lower quality cut

And what was interesting was that even before he described the stones to us, he took them out and held them up to the light. For stone B, I was like "Wow, pretty". For stone A, I was like, "WOW! Amazing!". I could really tell the difference in color, even though it was subtle. And it was literally impossible to tell the difference in size. Stone A was much prettier, more sparkly, and a better cut and far preferable to both Greg and I, even though stone B was about $600 more.

Good-to-know...

So I got to put the diamonds on my hand (excuse me while I drool) and see if the 0.71 was big enough. Plenty big. Looked huge on my hand. I have a 3.5 ring size, so frankly anything would look huge (finally an advantage to my irritatingly small hands that require special order XS size latex lab gloves that we never seem to have enough of)

Anyway, it was really interesting. He quoted us a price which sounded about reasonable for what I had seen online, and he made a photocopy of the GIA report for us to keep. I I just talked to my cousin Tracey, who is a GIA certified gemologist. She grades diamonds for a living and thought that this diamond sounded reasonable - she's going to call me tomorrow at lunch to give me a more professional opinion

There are some options if we want to be patient. We could look for a better color and sacrifice clarity. Or a better cut and sacrifice color. Whatever it is - there are so many options.


Greg just got home and we talked it over. I think the 0.71k is going to be it. We both agreed we could keep shopping, but why? We're the sort to stress out over decisions and micromanage everything to death. Seriously bad micromanaging (we call each other M&Ms - micromanagers). So we don't want to do this with the ring. We found a setting we love. We found a diamond we love. Why torture ourselves over decisions? It's beautiful, it's not a ripoff, and I know going with this jeweler, with his preferences, will mean that for the life of this ring, we have someone who will polish it, resize it, and take care of it just down the block from us. I think this is a good decision.



And I'm uber excited!!

So assuming my cousin still has good things to say tomorrow, we'll call Derek Simpson tomorrow night and tell him to go ahead with the ring. He will make a wax model based on our photograph so we can easily make changes and shape the ring. Then he'll make a silver cast model with a fake stone and I can try it on. Then he'll make the real thing.

Cool.

I can see why diamonds are so popular. In theory I'd like to do the socially responsible thing and not get a diamond...but jeez, they're just so pretty. Doesn't matter if the price isn't related to any utilitarian value. It's sparkly!