Diamond Engagement Rings – Advice For Guys Who Don’t Have a Clue

clue

Buying a diamond engagement ring can often be a confusing and intimidating experience for a man. Most men are simply not interested in diamonds. When they pop the question, they need an engagement ring but have no idea what to look for.

This article provides some simple, straightforward advice for guys who don’t have a clue about buying their first diamond engagement ring.

1. What style of engagement ring should I be looking for 婚戒?

Unless your girlfriend has told you she has a particular style in mind, the safest bet is to buy a simple and elegant gold ring setting with a single diamond set at the top. This is called a diamond solitaire engagement ring. The gold setting alone will cost you less than $200. If she wants to choose a fancy setting later, you can remove the single diamond from this ring and use it as the center diamond in a fancy ring setting without sacrificing much on your first investment.

2. What color gold should you choose for the ring?

Take notice of what your girlfriend wears. Yellow gold girls usually wear bright colors and have olive or darker skin tone. Most girls these days prefer white gold. If she has dark hair and tends to wear a lot of black or white clothing, she is a white gold girl.

3. What size should the diamond be in her engagement ring?

This is the answer that’s going to hurt your wallet. A 1/4-carat diamond is out of the question, way too small for a solitaire engagement ring. A 1/2-carat diamond may be okay if that’s all you can afford, but it is not going to be an impressive engagement ring. A diamond between 3/4 and 1-carat is going to really get her excited. When she shows it to her girlfriends they will be a little envious that she got a man of status (you) and they didn’t. This is good for her self-image, and every woman needs a little boost in that department.

4. What is the best price I can pay for a big diamond ring?

If you make a smart purchase, you can get a 3/4-carat diamond ring for between $950 and $2000. You can get a 1-carat diamond ring for between $1200 and $3500. The trick is to find a lower quality diamond that is not downright ugly. You have to shop the right balance between diamond cut grade, diamond clarity grade and diamond color grade on the GIA rating scale. You should also buy a diamond that is certified by a reputable gem lab such as GIA, IGI, IGL, or EGL-USA.

5. Where should I shop for my diamond ring?

First take a trip to your local mall. Look, but don’t buy your diamond ring there. In a couple of hours you will become familiar with “The 4 C’s”, and you want to judge with your own eyes the difference between the lowest grade diamond, and a high grade expensive diamond. The jewelry salesperson will most likely pressure you to buy their most expensive diamond. Don’t be shy: ask to see their least expensive diamond as well. Then move on to the next jewelry store.

Retail jewelry stores generally make a 50% markup on their diamonds. There are plenty of reputable diamond dealers on the internet that make between 7% to 15% markup on the same diamond ring.

Get online and do a search for “3/4 to 1 carat certified diamond”. Make sure your diamond is certified by one of the labs mentioned above, and that the website offers a 30-day no questions asked return policy. Don’t try to buy a diamond from an auction website.

6. Narrow your diamond ring choices on several fine jewelry websites.

Now is when you need to exercise your smart buying ability.

About diamond Clarity: on the GIA grading scale certified diamonds are rated for Clarity grade by a gemologist using a 10-power magnifying loupe. A Clarity grade of SI or higher means that there are no inclusions (flaws) visible to the naked eye. This means that unless your friends have a magnifying glass handy, there is no perceptible difference between a Clarity grade of SI and VVS, but there is a large difference in price. Consider SI as your top Clarity grade. A clean I1 Clarity diamond can be a great bargain. If the visible flaws are white crystals or needles and they are on the outer perimeter of the diamond (the crown angle), you will save from $500 to $1000 over an SI Clarity and there won’t be much visible difference. You could get lucky with an I2 Clarity diamond, but be prepared to return it. A drop to I2 Clarity will save you another $500 to $1000 over an I1 grade. However, most I2-I3 diamonds are called in the trade “white smash” or “frozen spit”, because that’s what they look like. When your I2 Clarity diamond ring arrives, take it into the sunlight and examine it. If it is completely dull and foggy, return it. If it is full of black crystals and doesn’t refract sunlight, return it. If it is mostly clear in the center (the table) and you can see flashes of brilliance and scintillation (rainbow colors), then you have a good I-2 Clarity diamond and you have saved yourself some money.

About Diamond Color: if you want the largest diamond ring for the lowest price, judging diamond Color grade is pretty simple. Most people will not notice a big difference between a “colorless grade” (D-E-F) and a “near-colorless grade” (G-H-I) on the GIA grading scale. You can save money with confidence if the diamond is certified as a G-H Color. You may notice a warm cast if the diamond is certified as an I Color, but this has no effect on the brilliance of your diamond. A K or lower Color diamond will have a definite dirty-yellow cast, so you should not buy these Color grades.

About Diamond Cut: The Cut Grade of a diamond is the most important factor when it comes to the beauty and brilliance of your diamond ring. Some diamond certificates don’t state the Cut grade, so here is where you have to depend on the reputation of the dealer you are buying from. If you can be certain that your diamond is an Excellent or Very Good Cut grade, then you have made a good investment. An Excellent Cut diamond will return a shower of white light, fire, and scintillation to the viewer’s eye. A Fair or Poor Cut diamond, regardless of the Color and Clarity grade, will be lifeless and dull. Look for the highest Cut grade you can find.

7. Make your final diamond solitaire ring decision.

It’s not a bad idea to purchase two diamond rings on from different internet dealers. Make certain they have a clearly stated return policy for your full purchase price. Compare both rings side by side in the sunlight, and return the one you don’t like.

From everything you’ve read above, you can tell three things about saving money on a big diamond ring:

First, the “safe spot” is to choose a diamond of SI Clarity, G-H Color and Excellent Cut.

Second, the “best value” is to choose a diamond of I1 Clarity, G-H-I Color and Excellent Cut.

Third, the “possible bargain” is to choose a diamond of I2 Clarity, I-J Color and Excellent to Very Good Cut.

Make sure your diamond ring is lab certified, and make sure you can return it for a full refund if you don’t like it.

Invisible But Brilliant Branding – Diamonds Are Forever But Monopolies Don’t Last

Monopolies

Powerful, emotional and consistent branding helped to create the De Beers diamond monopoly. When it was threatened in the 1990s by conflict diamonds and producers such as Russia distributing diamonds outside the De Beers-controlled channel, De Beers again turned to branding to save the day. They repositioned themselves in a market they no longer control and are now more profitable with a 40% market share than when they had an 80% market share in the 1990s. Let me bring you into the picture.

De Beers engages in exploration for diamonds, diamond mining, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacture. Mining takes place in Botswana and Namibia (through its joint-venture partnerships with the respective governments), as well as South Africa and Canada, in every category of industrial diamond mining: open-pit, underground, large-scale alluvial, coastal and deep-sea. The Diamond Trading Company, the rough-diamond sales and distribution arm of the De Beers Group, sorted, valued and sold about 80% of the world’s rough diamonds by value until the early 1990s 結婚戒指.

These diamonds were then sold to the Diamond Trading Company Sightholders whose representatives travelled to London several times a year for the sale or Sight as it was called. Today Sightholders (now numbering only 79) are required to comply with the De Beers’ best practice principles, which set out various objective standards of conduct in three main areas: business, social and environmental responsibilities. (I designed brandmarks for two of the Sightholders at the turn of the century and no mention was made of these noble standards; Mr $ and his rare appearances were the only standard I was reminded about.)

Get the picture? De Beers is big – very, very big! It is well known for its monopolistic practices throughout the previous century, when the company used its dominant position to manipulate the international diamond market by persuading independent producers to join its single-channel monopoly and then flooding the market with diamonds similar to those of producers who refused to join.

The company purchased and stockpiled the diamonds produced by other manufacturers in order to control prices through supply. Ernest Oppenheimer stated: “Commonsense tells us that the only way to increase the value of diamonds is to make them scarce, that is to reduce production.” Now all that was left for the monopoly to become fully fledged was to increase consumer demand.

A diamond is a girl’s best friend

Consider this: a diamond – the rarest and hardest natural mineral known – is worth no more that half its retail value. There is no hard-and-fast rule for the pricing of polished diamonds, but professionals in the polished-diamond industry use a worldwide market price list, the Rapaport, based on the four Cs, which are carat, cut, colour and clarity, as a general guideline for evaluating polished diamond prices. And a jeweller usually adds a 100% mark-up to the Rapaport quoted price. Apart from industrial applications, diamonds have no other value except when polished for their perceived beauty, which we all know is in the eye of the beholder. This brings us to another aspect: the power of emotion.

In 1999, I experienced this first-hand while prospecting for diamonds (just like the diamond diggers did at the turn of the century) along the Orange River, a stone’s throw away from where the first diamond was found in South Africa. There are no words to describe the feeling when you find your first diamond: a flash of brilliant white light coming from among grey-black gravel on the sorting table after days of backbreaking labour, processing tons of gravel. Your heart starts racing and you are overcome by absolute joy and feelings of elation! God chose you to find this diamond and you feel so blessed and special. Although it was only 0,13 of one point of one carat and called “ice-white”, it might as well have been a 100-carat flawless blue-white.

Diamond Engagement Ring and a Love That Lasts Forever

devotion

Marriage is the best sign of romance and devotion between two people who promise to cherish and attention for each other for the rest of the lives. It begins when the man or the woman pops up the best question that usually has a demonstration of a ring. The emblematic token before marriage is a promise ring, a more very simple involvement ring along with your conventional diamond engagement ring. It’s actually a public announcement that a person has agreed to become married to the following soon and construct a family group with them.

It is hard to look out for an engagement ring specially in the event you do not understand what things to start or what features should really be considered.You can certainly do out with your surprise and then opt to shop with your fiancee but where is the thrill in that? Therefore, if you are going through together with the surprise, familiarize yourself with the styles and designs of an engagement ring. And then there’s the cut and clarity of this diamond, its own carat weight, color and the design of this ring itself. A popular between couples is your Trinity ring, a diamond involvement with three-diamond stones said to stand for that the couple’s previous, future and present diamond.

As opposed to girls, men usually possess a marriage band that was his engagement band. For those women, the engagement ring and the wedding band differs and separate, but in a few instances wielded with all the wedding so that the two rings will probably shape just as one ring. Therefore, becoming married will probably require paying for, at leastthree rings. You might wish to look at seeking jewelry wedding rings which arrive in a matching set for your own mens wedding ring, the females gemstone and also the ladies wedding ring.

During weddings, the couple makes a vow to become using each other before passing to that they a part – a want to last forever. Union rings represent strong connections including a potency of the diamond, the roughest and most hardest mineral called man.In that the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, diamond has been rated perfect 10, the maximum grade for mineral potency. It is resistant to scratches, also making it absolutely ideal for marriage rings worn a daily basis.

Prior to purchasing a diamond engagement ring, set a budget range and do ample study. Diamond, because it’s a high-priced, precious commodity, can raise the price of an gemstone. Straightforward rings can be bought in a few hundred dollars, however, the average price tag of a diamond ring is between $3,500 and $4,000. Provided that you stick to your finances, you can subsequently don’t hesitate to choose on the list of many styles and design to purchase your girlfriend.Because within the end, however large or small the diamond is, its the ring reflects matters to get a real adoring few.

In the end, don’t forget the focus of union for those who just like a couple, and perhaps not the fabric logo of it. You don’t need to obtain an exact costly ring which may just burden you financially.Also, think about acquiring jewelry wedding rings in a place because these usually come in cheaper. Above all, enjoy shopping!This should be an exciting moment for the consumer as much as it will likely be to your receiver of this ultimate question and the participation ring.