Engagement ring buying advice: Online / UK / Abroad

retepetsir

I bought my OH her engagement ring and few years ago and actually ended up using Blue Nile (online) as I knew exactly what she wanted. Received a beautiful ring at a good price, including certificate, and it still looks great now. It's recently been valued quite a bit higher than the original purchase price.

I did also carry out quite a bit of research, and she was more interested in the colour/clarity than size, so I found one that ticked all the boxes.

Pollycat

John-K wrote: »

Years ago I did my research about clarity, colour etc, and went to the diamond district in New York to get some stones for stud earrings for my wife.

I browsed a decent selection of the same sort of quality that the big name jewellers use in their rings, and picked a couple out.

I then asked him to show me the really good stones, the top of the range, assuming that they would be indistinguishable, and the difference was like night and day.

Unfortunately it was reflected in the price, too, so I ended up buying none of them, as I was not happy with the look of the cheaper ones or the price of the good ones.

A friend of mine was looking for a diamond ring for his wife's 40th birthday.
He said to me 'a diamond is a diamond, right?'.

I took him to Warren James and we looked in the window at 2 carat diamonds in which you could see the inclusions from 5 feet away and told him to note the colour (definitely on the yellow spectrum) and the price.
Then I took him to an independent jewellers and showed him a different quality diamond ring altogether. And of course the price reflected that.

Once we'd agreed that all diamonds are not the same , I sent him off to a manufacturing jewellers where he chose a very nice stone and they made a ring to his design.

I think when you've seen a very good quality stone that you can't afford, you need to decide which of the 4 Cs is most important to you.
A jeweller in India showed us a diamond that was a very good colour but the cut was so appalling that it had no fire.
The girdle looked like it had been cut with a hacksaw.

need_an_answer

Always interested to know how someone stumbles on a thread that's 18 months old then starts to make named recommendations.

op is hopefully sorted now and may have even taken a trip up the aisle.

HampshireH

:rotfl: did something get deleted? Pollycats is the last visible post then this one from need an answer today about old posts

Pollycat

HampshireH wrote: »

:rotfl: did something get deleted? Pollycats is the last visible post then this one from need an answer today about old posts

Yes, a newbie posted with recommendations for various companies.

gettingtheresometime

Apparently the 'on-trend' thing for 2020 will be 2nd hand engagement rings