Engagement Ring - FACTS, not fiction

Hi,

My fiancé and I recently bought our engagement & wedding rings in New York after spending a lot of time researching online and getting advice from family & friends. We also got a huge amount of helpful tips from both boards.ie and askaboutmoney.com forum posts for which we are very grateful, so wanted to share our experience of buying in the diamond district with others and help those who might soon be doing the same.

I understand that some readers may object to the buying of an engagement ring outside of Ireland and we would not like to deter buyers from choosing Irish wherever possible. In our case, our work and travel situations allowed us the option of buying stateside and I hope this post will simply be a guide to those in similar situations.

Before making the trip, spend time reading up about buying rings abroad. The websites that we found helpful were:

http://www.bluenile.com/diamonds/diamond-education

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2002/feb/13/shopping.familyandrelationships1

http://www.diamondhelpers.com/fivesteps/buy-a-diamond-all.shtml

http://ezinearticles.com/?Buying-Diamonds-in-the-Diamond-District---A-Diamond-Buying-Survival-Guide&id=2009174

http://www.thediamondbuyingguide.com/

http://www.diamond-buying-made-easier.com/diamond-district-buying.html

Get a good idea of the shape, cut, colour and clarity you should be expecting from your budget from either diamondideals.com or bluenile.com and print them out before you go. Consider buying your wedding rings while you are there too, there will also be a huge range to choose from and prices are very competitive. It is also a particularly good idea to do this for the bride to be’s rings, as they will be worn together after the wedding day.

When in New York, give yourself at least two (half/full) days to shop for the ring. The first day can start with some of the bigger names, like Tiffany’s & DeBeers. Here you can get a feel for the lingo and no pressure sales process. You may well also find the very ring you are looking for right there! After these, you can venture into the diamond district, which is nearby at around 5th avenue and 47th street. The diamond district is made up of retail shops/centres at street level and wholesale merchants in upper floors. The retail centres are made up of groups of jewellery dealers operating in shared shop spaces along the street. The dealers have small booths/cabinets side by side and some have small offices to the back of the stall. This is a different shopping experience to the 5th avenue stores so get familiar with the sales process by approaching a dealer or two you will probably not be buying from. Once you have spent some time looking at all your options, it is a good idea to take a break in the evening and look over your prefernces. You can then go back the following day with a clear head and make the more considered choice.

We chose a platinum solitaire ring with a round brilliant shape diamond. It seems the most popular shape of engagement diamond and the type which dealers had the widest choice. From your printouts and comparing dealers, you can gauge if the prices you are being quoted are competitive and you can decide on a diamond with the cut/colour/clarity to suit you.

There are a number of choices of certification with each diamond usually coming with either a GIA, AGS or EGL cert. The scale of comparison for these certificates are NOT the same, so we decided in advance to only accept a GIA (understood to be the highest) certificate with ours. Be careful here as for example, a near colourless colour level on one certificate type, may be rated only faint on a GIA cert.

This is a handy site to give further information about certification of diamonds:
http://www.diamondvues.com/2004/12/diamond_grading.html

Probably the most important aspect of all is to be comfortable with the dealer you are buying from. We found a number of recommendations on the Irish forums and were recommended some by family/friends also. I will list the details and info of some of those we met with:

Ideal Diamond Source – 76 W 47th St. (Gall 26) – Ph: 212-221-0222. This was one of the dealers we had visited on our first day and we found the prices very good & both staff who assisted us on the day were very helpful and accommodating.

Salvatore & Co. – 55 W 47th St. (Booth 39) – Ph: 212-398-1200. We read a number of recommendations on Irish websites about visiting Salvatores & asking for the “Aer-Lingus” discount. It seems that so many ask for this here that if you are Irish, they ask if you are with Aer-Lingus before you start to discuss jewellery! We were quite disappointed with the quality and prices of the diamonds we were shown at Salvatores and were not generally impressed with the service there.

Haniken Jewelers – 66 W 47th St (#24) – Ph: 212-302-6605. Hanikens was another one of the dealers recommended on a number of Irish websites and we found the service was friendly and the prices were quite competitive.

Klim Jewelry – 66 W 47th St. (Booth 39) Ph: 212-869-3950– We found the staff at Klim to be far and away the friendliest and most professional amongst any of the dealers we visited. We had been recommended by a family member to visit them and were not disappointed. The quality and price of the diamonds and rings that we were shown very far ahead of anything we had seen up to that point and we chose to buy our engagement and wedding rings there. We were able to get a significantly larger carat GIA cert diamond with a better cut and colour for a similar price than we had been offered anywhere else. The rings were resized perfectly overnight and from our experience, I can’t recommend Klim highly enough.

To ensure peace of mind about the purchase before we left New York, we had an independent valuation carried out. We went to Macy’s (151 W. 34th Street), which has its own jewellery appraisal service on the 9th floor and the gemologists are GIA graduates. It is a bit expensive (expect to pay about 1% of the final valuation fee), but we felt the reassurance of having a known retailer value it was worth it for us. If you do this, you can also ask the appraiser to see the laser inscription on the diamond & match it to your cert. We had expected the value of the ring to be considerably higher when valued in Ireland, but were amazed when the Macy’s valuation was more than twice what we had paid.

All in all, it was an enjoyable experience to buy our rings in the diamond district, but one I would only recommend to those who do some research before they go. The selection and value far exceeded what we had looked at in Ireland, even taking all additional expenses into account.

Finally, a few other tips from the web that might help:

- A diamond is one fifth of a gram. All dealers should show you the weight on a scale when you are examining them & it should be the same weight that is on the cert.
- Platinum is marked Platinum, PT or PLAT, only if it is at least 95% pure platinum. This will also be tested during appraisal.
- On all jewellery purchases, ensure that all representations made, including type, name, grade, colour, etc, etc. are included on the sales slip as well as all details of payments.
- Keep an eye: on the diamond when having it appraised, cleaned, etc. This is good advice in many places, not just New York, as the net has plenty of stories of stones being switched!

Good luck to those heading over & most importantly – have a great time!!