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Help with Engagement Ring

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Tbrad87

Rough_Rock
Joined
Feb 28, 2019
Messages
5
Hi Everyone, I recently came across this website as I have began to search for an engagement ring for my girlfriend. I have been reading up as much as possible to try to get a better understanding, but my knowledge is still very minimal, so i was hoping to turn to this community for some help. I am looking to get a blue oval Sapphire center stone, roughly 2.5 to 3.25 carats. The issue I am having, is that I have been looking for some time now at many of the larger gem specialized retailers, and some of the reviews i have read of them on here point to the fact that they often time inflate their prices pretty substantially. Because of my limited knowledge, I am having a hard time determining what is a good deal and what is not. Ideally I was looking to spend around 7-9k on the center stone. I think what would help me best is if anyone has any recommendations for reputable sellers where I could get the most value for my money. As a baseline, I am thinking something like the following picture as far as the ring and setting goes.

https://www.gemsny.com/sapphire-rin...0792756&Metal_Type=35&shape=oval&irc=0&prong=

Any help would be greatly appreciated
 
Couple questions first:

1. Does your budget include the setting?
2. Do you mind whether the sapphire is heated?
3. Are you opposed to getting the stone separately from the setting?
4. Do you have example blue sapphire pictures so we know which colour to point you towards?
 
This one is nice, from Gemfix
https://gemfix.com/gems/sapphire-blue-11-1328

sapphire-blue-11-1328-2-250x250.jpg


Another:
sapphire-blue-11-1325-2-250x250.jpg


https://gemfix.com/gems/sapphire-blue-11-1325

Both of these are heat only and come with GIA reports.
I'm sure there are others who will jump in with more links. There is a stickied list of approved vendors, have you looked there? It would help to know if you have a preference for heat or no heat, because a unheated stone carries a premium. I pulled these links based on the color of the stone in your post.
 
Thanks for the information and the pictures, those 2 stones look beautiful. I will take a look at the approved vendor list. To be honest, I understand the difference between the heat treated and those that are not and I'm not sure if I really have a preference. I'm really just looking for a beautiful center stone whether that means heated or not. I really like the color of those two stones. I also like the ones that a are a bit darker (pictures below)

the 7-9k price point would be for the stone itself, without the setting. Although I am not opposed to getting the stone separate from the setting, I would need to look into the process of having a jeweler set the stone as the websites I have looked did both the stone and the setting.

upload_2019-2-28_14-5-14.png

upload_2019-2-28_14-6-6.png
 
The ones you posted aren't only just dark but not well saturated (gray).
The ones posted by @suzanne2 have better intensity of colour.
 
I struggled for many years trying to understand the difference between a 'dark' stone and a 'saturated' stone. It took seeing many sapphires in person to understand. The 'dark' ones will black out, turn black, unless it's in direct sunshine. The saturated ones will have the deep blue color in most lighting conditions, and in direct sunshine will knock your socks off.
Looking at stones on the web is also a steep learning curve, but you have come to the right place. Most of the people here are very experienced a judging how a sapphire will look just by looking at pictures and videos.
Anyhoo, the two you picked have a bunch of grey. Not saying they are ugly, just that they are not top of the line for 9k.
Have patience, more to come.
Edit: check out post #7 on this thread, a great insight on sapphires
https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/thoughts-on-burma-sapphire.246840/
 
Last edited:
Wow, thanks everyone.

Suzanne, I think that is part of the problem I am having. Because of my lack of experience, I don't have the eye for these things and to add to that, I am colorblind! But yes, I think the dark vs saturated is def. throwing me off. This may be part of my knowledge gap, but to me, the stones you posted from Gemfix, look more appealing to MY eye than the ones at Leibish, yet Leibish seem to carry a higher price per carat. What would cause that, or is that just part of the difficulty in looking at gems on the internet? And to follow on that, could the lighting in the pictures impact how saturated a stone looks?

Chroman - I really like the sapphire in that last link you provided. Would this be considered a very saturated stone? As far as a price point goes, for that size sapphire without being heated, would you consider that to be a good price?
 
Price reflects quality somewhat but you also have to take into account the vendor's profit margin (marketing, salary, overhead, older vs newer stock, how much the vendor bought the stone for originally, etc).
 
Someone on here described the difference between saturation and tone using thetidea of ink being poured into water. Take two cups of water, one having navy ink added drop by drop and the other a bright pepsi blue ink. You can have a weakly saturated navy that is already DARK, and a highly saturated (dump the whole bottle of ink in there) pepsi blue that is still VIVID. I'm sure others will correct me as to how to explain it better, but that helped me a lot when trying to understand why two stones that faced up the same color looked so different in every other respect.
 
Tbrad87 said:
Chroman - I really like the sapphire in that last link you provided. Would this be considered a very saturated stone? As far as a price point goes, for that size sapphire without being heated, would you consider that to be a good price?
Click to expand...
From the image available, I really like it too :)

I’d say its a very saturated stone. The question is how dark it will be IRL. And thats hard to gauge from one online glamor shot.

As for the price, its about $3k/ct. Like chrono said, prices vary with all sorts of things. If it was heated, that would probably on the upper end of the price range if you surveyed a bunch of “top color” sapphires. Since its unheated, and if its as nice as that ohoto (they never are!) , it seems like a nice price.

Fwiw the same stone af africagems is 12k:
https://www.africagems.com/blue-sapphire-g2000-1115.html
Which means its coming from gem2000’s database. Not sure if you have a local jeweler who deals with them; that might be one way to see it in person, but who knows what their retail markup would be..
 
also wanted to get your thoughts on this one which is around 10k and 3 cts

upload_2019-3-4_16-3-3.png
 
Tbrad87 said:
also wanted to get your thoughts on this one which is around 10k and 3 cts

upload_2019-3-4_16-3-3.png
Click to expand...
I much prefer this one, very intense blue but keep in mind that these deeper toned sapphires when set can “black out” inside with “night time lighting”.
 
I, too, saw obvious color zoning in the first one. The asymmetric bottom would bug me, as well. For that price--it would be a "no" for me. The second one has a window, which may or may not close up in a setting. For me, I'd pass because I think the stone would be very dark once set and I dislike dark sapphires. Seems really overpriced for the color and quality.
 
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