Abstract
New Earrings for Ann.
Justification
I've been building an airplane for the last 2 years and my wife, Ann, has been very supportive. So I'd like to do something special for her. Vacations are her first choice, (see new stuff, I don't hide in the computer room or hanger) but we did the England/France thing last year for our 10th. Plus fixed assets have a greater "lasting value" than experiences.
Ann doesn't wear her "flashy" .75c engagement ring daily because it gets stuck on things. She does wear some tiny earrings I bought some 15 years ago. Her short hair always shows them off.
One of our rules is its ok to buy top of the line if one uses it every day. So in hopes of daily use, "asset" status, I'm going to take the risk and buy her "better" earrings.
Requirements
From previous telescope experience, Outside Diameter or size is the main driver of performance. Capturing more light gives one more light to reflect! The next most important aspect is optical performance. How well the telescope is made, Apochromatic Extra-Low Dispersion glass, how well is the lens ground and so on..
We know a .75c ring is "too flashy" to wear every day. So my earring requirement is: Max reflected light under .75c
Execution
Walked into two "high end" dealer stores. Told the sales person my requirement and they showed me the earring "tree" with two choices at .5c branch. Nothing jumped out at me. Asked if we could build a set from higher performing stones and was told at both places that no one builds earrings, its a waste of money. At the end of the day I had 4 choices around $2k but didn't feel good about any of them. Time to "waste some money".
A few google searches for "diamond performance" found a few articles on cut. more research on cut found the h&a phenanmon. so I spamed 6 dealers that seemed to be writing about this h&a thing that I had narrowed down from a cgi-script to: mintableperc=54 maxtableperc=57.5 mindepthperc=58 maxdepthperc=63.5
The next day I was greeted with responses that pointed me to their web sites for info and diamond searches. But the response from Linda@diamondideals.com included 4 SETS of h&a stones!!! Wow, what choices! looking at her site, it has NOTHING but h&a stones that were extremely hard to find identified anywhere else and my googling reveled were key to unlocking visual performance. (hadn't found pricescope yet)
So I was 90% sure I was going to pick Linda's second from the top or 10% sure about Linda's middle set, so I politely thanked the other dealers for responding to my query and told them what I indented to buy.
The response from goodoldgold was one of Linda's stones was heading to his shop? sure enough the next day the 64_f_vs2 was on his webpage. Sun's netscape4.7 couldn't view gog's "not in house" page but looking the page's source I saw tons of h&a stones... many of which looked the same as Linda's! waa, small world, but I couldn't afford the F, so I was still going with Linda's 65_g_vs2.. But who owned what? Now I'm reading that not all h&a even qualify for ags0! Another cgi-script defines h&a as mintableperc=53 maxtableperc=58 mindepthperc=58.7 maxdepthperc=62.3 so now one of Linda's stones doesn't qualify even tough it has h&a written on the side! boy, this is confusing...
Even with a HCA greater than 2, the h&a on the side should mean perfect symmetry so it should be fine... (the SI1 vs VS2 deal) If I didn't get this stone I hafta go .1mm OD smaller, and that is a huge amount of light. I ordered Linda's 65_g_vs2.
Results
Linda had them mounted and I had them 48hrs later. The stones sparkle more than I remember the others at the store, but I don't have enough experience or frame of reference to say how much more. That's not the point anyway. The mission of a diamond is to get others to comment about it, so the owner feels special. These stones are very expensive and need to be presented in a unique way as to softened the huge financial burden they will have on both our lives. Plus it aids the diamond's mission if the stones have a story to tell. Ann recently started working at a new company and has been enjoying it. The new company's xmas party on the 15th for the 20 "office" workers which Ann and I were invited. The 15th also happens to be Ann's birthday. The perfect time for a small speech to embarrass my self and treat Ann special in front of her pears.
Retrospect
"We" didn't have to debt finance the cost, but the $4.2k cost wiped out our savings.. It will be several months before Ann feels ok "money in the bank" wise. Then she will be more conformable as the diamonds won't look quite so "pretentious". But that's the point, to feel alittle pain for one's love. While normal .50_I_SI1 would have been half the cost, and would have likely made Ann just as happy, I feel better paying extra for something "special". (DeBeers has done their job) The presentation of the earrings at the party make them un-returnable, just like the presentation of the .75c engagement ring make it un-upgradable.
I hafta admit all this research was fun, and I look forward to buying a cheap huge chemical vapor deposition synthetic diamond to sit next to the one oz gold coin in the computer room in a few years. Even if it makes my "investment" this week worthless, my love for Ann will always override any financial loss.
6 Dealers Ray@tradeshop.com diamonds@niceice.com
goodoldgold@earthlink.net info@whiteflash.com
info@diamondideals.com sales@superbcert.com