I’ve purchased a stone from a company called Amora Gems. The company is on the west coast. It’s a lab grown stone made out of carbon and silicon. There are several companies making what is called moissanite but they have gotten the green tones out of it and they compare in color to a natural white diamond. They are also cutting them like a fine diamond with an ideal cut. For a fraction of the price.
If you put it into a real engagement semi mount setting no one will be able to tell the difference. I get more complements on this stone then I get on my real diamond.
https://betterthandiamond.com/amora-gem-search.php
“Diamonds are Forever” they say.
I like my slogan “Diamonds, Rare as Dirt”
My wife and I were lucky. I was working for a company owned by Jews with 95% of my fellow staff the same and we were sent to a specific shop in the NY Diamond District run by Orthodox dealers to buy her engagement ring. We had a local jeweler in Ohio remount it a few years ago and he raved about the cut but could not believe what we paid. He strongly suggested we triple the insurance coverage, which we’d based till then on what we’d paid. “It’s not what you know but who you know” and a fancy name like Tiffany or Cartier is just that. A name.
Retail jewelry markup up is insane. A typical diamond ring costing $2000 at the mall has about $400-500 face value for the stone and metal.
What Tiffany’s is selling is the cachet of having bought a diamond at Tiffany’s. The stone itself is incidental.
When I shopped for an engagement ring circa 1971, I went to a jewelry store in Summit NJ, which was kind of THE place, as far as I knew. I said I wanted to buy an engagement ring, and they said, “how much are you willing to spend?” or the like. I said, I don’t know, I have more of an idea of what I want to buy, but the guy didn’t seem to get this concept, and we went back and forth a few times. Finally another guy came by and said, “Why don’t you show him some rings?” ... Excellent suggestion! So they did and I picked something out which I liked the looks of, and it was something like $500 dollars, I think. It doesn’t matter. It was a lot to me, but not beyond what I had in mind.
As a scientist, it was and is nothing but a token, but as a physicist, it was and is a diamond!
We never buy retail. We always buy from estate sales or jewelry shows.
Absolutely. The value of these common stones are completely artificial. Try selling one after you buy it. My wife and I made a conscious decision not to buy diamonds, even for her wedding ring -- though we can certainly afford it. There are new cubic zirconium blends out there that for anyone outside of a jeweler are practically indistinguishable from the real thing. We bought a ring from a place called Asha that really turns heads. A few of her friends are very jealous of her "rocks"!
...but often they are a guy's.
I worked for a jeweler in Vale Colorado for a summer. He made some beautiful rings. I chased and cleaned up the rings after the were cast. When I got married, I made our rings. He traded me drywall work at his place for the casting cost.
I carved a bull elk and mountains in our rings. They are one of a kind. No stones. Didn’t want any because of the work I do.