How to Buy a Sincere Engagement Ring March 10, 2006
Posted by Martin in : Thailand , trackbackI regret that I shot myself in the foot by undertaking a gemology course during the time I’d be making my once-only purchase of an engagement ring. The downside to learning about gemstones is that it instills a pointless pompousness when it comes to making purchases. A few months ago I’d have likely bought an engagement ring from the first shop offering them. To the untrained eye all diamond solitaire rings look the same.
To the trained eye, yes there are some features to take into account yet there is a huge difference in price between a good quality stone and one which would pass for good quality for 99% of the population. If I’d have bought a cheap but large diamond, or even a diamond simulant then nobody Tik would show her ring to would ever know and we’d have another $3,000 – $4,000 sitting happily in our bank account.
So why bother with such a huge expense? I like to think I hold some traditional cave-man romance inside me and sure I’m getting something for Tik to show her my respect, to give her something of value and to make her feel like a million dollars every second she moves her finger about. I guess in accepting the ring from me she should be accepting my marriage proposal and telling me how diamond and money make no difference to our love and that she’d be delighted to be my wife with even a coca-cola ring pull. I guess us guys get the short end of the stick from the first instance of married life.
A few weeks ago I had some stupidly expensive idea in my mind as to how much I expected to spend on a stone. Over the space of a few weeks, looking woefully at my bank balance I took a compromise and got a smaller stone than I’d first planned. This was a very prctical choice as Tik would likely have never been able to put her hands in her pocket with a stone too big. There is a huge difference in price between a 1 carat stome and something fractionally smaller. As the diamond is not being bought wit the intention of reselling it (I hope) there’s no logic at all to paying so much extra. A good mounting in a ring will make a stone appear larger than it really is and nobody worth knowing would snub the stone for being less than a carat anyway.
Rather than get a pre-mounted stone I took a lot of time finding the stone first, getting it graded and taking it to be mounted seperately. It was not an especially practical way of doing things but it was certainly sincere. After much bouncing around a diamond grading teacher at AIGS found me a stone matching my requirements.
I bought a 0.91 carat E-color VVS2 stone.
Now it was time to get Tik over to Bangkok to propose. It couln’t really be much of a suprise to her as she was the one who transferred the money to the gem dealer on my behalf but we were both excited to meet that Friday night. The Saturday we were due to visit a jeweler to get our rings designed and fitted.
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