Need advice on purchasing engagement ring

Good advice...provided your fiances' ex is not a scorned gemologist!

DL

 

Bruce wrote:

BUY HER A 3 CARAT ZIRCONIA.SHE WONT KNOW THE DIFFERENCE AND THE REST YOU SAVE, PUT IN ON YOUR FERRARI MAINTENANCE BILL

GOOD LUCK.

BRUCE

Not right away, but she will notice in time. If you are in this marriage for the long haul, buy a real lump of carbon.

How do I know? It's a sad story.

About 2 years ago, my wife took her ring in to our local jeweler for cleaning. He told her that it was a cubic. WTF? I know I bought a diamond 12 years earlier. The corners of the stone were chipped and there was a scratch across the top. We thought back and remembered a time where we let a jeweler in a city we were visiting "clean" the ring while we waited. We figure he cleaned us out, by swapping stones.

I ended up buying a GIA certified diamond from an on line diamond seller. Price was great. Our local jeweler set the stone. He admitted there was no way he could compete on the price of the stone.

To make a long story short. Cubic Zirconia is not as hard as diamond and 8 or 9 years of daily wear can make one look like sh(&t.

Erich

 

Care to share the online dealer info?

 

alxlee wrote:
Care to share the online dealer info?

Sure.

http://www.dirtcheapdiamonds.com/

I kid you not.


Erich

 

Also pricescope.com has a wealth of info and links to online dealers.

 

Speed, congratulations, and don't overpay! (excellent advice, I know) As far as the insurance goes, you will need to insure the ring seperately from your home, because there is probably a cap on your homeowner's policy for luxury items. I have a "collectibles" policy which insures all my memorabilia, watches and wife's ring. My State Farm agent told me that I could insure the ring for however much I liked, but if it ever came down to replacing it, they will go out and determine its actual value based on the ring's certification. Anything more will only be wasted premium payments. Right now, my extra policy runs about an extra $500/year, and it provides about $60K in coverage. That's a pretty good deal IMO.

 

Erich and Challenge, thanks.

 

I'm really sorry guys - no need to flame me but...

and

Something is wrong here. This has nothing to do with what's important: you and her spending the rest of your lives together.

Joe

 

Speed, I've been know to type incoherently, so let me clarify:

You decide what you want to insure the ring for. Say, $50,000 (intentionally high). You pay whatever the premium is for a $50K policy. The insurance company will also have on file the specifics of the ring (size, clarity, band metal, etc.). You will need an authentic appraisal for this. If you lose the ring and file a claim, the insurer will then take your ring's specific info, price it out, and pay you the real value, not necessarily $50,000. The purpose of this obviously is to prevent insurance fraud. If you only insure something for $1, then they will only send you $1.

My agent offers the collectible rider policy in increments of $5000 of coverage. The initial policy was about $250/year for the first $25,000 of coverage. Each $5K after that costs another $50 or so. Everything you cover under this must be documented and submitted for verification by the insurer to verify the values of the items under coverage.

Does that make more sense?

 

DON'T DO IT!! DON'T DO IT!! DON'T DO IT!! DON'T DO IT!! DON'T DO IT!! DON'T DO IT!! DON'T DO IT!! DON'T DO IT!!

 

Anyone have experience with bluenile.com?

I brought some diamond earrings about a year ago, and was happy with the experience. However I'm not sure if I want to buy sight unseen a more expensive stone.

BTW, anyone have suggestions on how to find out her ring size WITHOUT letting her know why????

.......also, someone talk me out of it!!!

 

I have a close friend who owns a jewelry store in Troy, Michigan (PM me if you want his name and number). I trust him and buy all of Alissa's baubbles from him. The most important thing to me is that I have someone who knows what he/she is doing and that I can trust them...because I know less than nothing about buying a stone. He showed me several loose stones and I picked the one that I liked the best, never really asked her what sort of ring she would want so I went with a very simple 1.0 + Carat brilliant cut stone with excellent dimmensions and took my jewelers advice by buying up on color and not worrying about the clarity as much...he told me that buying a stone that has some flaws in it but great color is much less than buying an internally flawless stone at a lower color grade...so I went with a VS1 clarity but an F color. By buying this stone there are some occlusions in the stone but they are visible only under magnification and are more line strands of a feather other than big chunks of carbon.

Buy what you can afford, there is no need to break the bank. Afterall you are going to have a wedding to pay for that is going to make buying the diamond look more like the tip at the catering hall.

 

When I plan on buying a ring for my wife (I can never remember her size) I take one of the her old rings that she never wears out of her jewerly case. Your jeweler can size it and figure out what the size should be for the new ring.

BTW- In buying an engagement ring, size DOES matter to her.

Matt