Frank,
<Maybe, we can start a new thread,Buying diamonds
for your loved ones>
Recently I did just that. Used a friend who is a jewerly designer as our broker to find a 1.4-1.7 carat stone. Among others, he found a newly cut 1.6 carat stone in England which we viewed on approval, and bought. It's a VVS2, "F" color, class 1 stone. I'll skip the other details about it, but it seems such good stones are in short supply in our local market.
We executed our own design for the mounting, and after paying a 5% broker's fee plus design/mounting costs, we saved 40-45% on what would have been comparable retail cost.
For anyone wanting to try this "back door," I would recommend using someone who is less interesting in selling stones than they are in design and mounting work. ...but do a lot of looking first because you can't make good comparisons without an educated eye. Don't trust anyone who will not show you stones under a microscope, nor share GIA valuation guides which, I believe, are published monthly.
ValuePro |
