QUOTE(Blakey @ Aug 19 2018, 12:25 AM)
That’s nice to hear! You’ve mentioned solitaire club before, and I’ve taken a look at a 321k shop selling them. Is 321k shop a higher level store than Wah Chan along with its diamond or otherwise?
Oh and I missed out one thing. ASET and IdealScope is actually important as well. But... I have uses to filter our based on proportions and optical precision first nowadays. In most places, we won't get all those performance images, so it is good to maximize what we have at our disposal.
As far as brick-and-mortar is concerned, the only thing we can do is look at proportions and the arrows. If can see the hearts even better but usually the diamonds are mounted. Understandbly, most people either prefer to view the diamonds in real life or they just don't feel too comfortable transferring a huge amount of money overseas for a loose diamond even the online stores provide all the necessary performance images, therefore this creates a give and take situation whereby we will need to maximize what tools we have at our hands.
Ok... back to topic.
I recommended Solitaire Club because they are focusing on proportions first. Proportions is the first level to filter out bad diamonds. I can't say their proportions are superbly excellent but it should be able to filter out a lot of not-so-good diamonds. Despite filtering out, Solitaire Club is like Lazare at Degem, there still can be good ones and not-so-good ones. If you got the chance, go to Degem and look at Lazare, you will notice not all are equal. It is either because of the cut precision is not that good or the pairing of proportions are not that good. For instance, a 35.5 degree crown angle paired with a 41.2 degree pavilion angle 99.9% will be leaking light. This can be seen by ASET which a lot of stores do not provide. Of course, I am just giving an example, I have no proof that Lazare is leaking light in anyway. Also, star length and lower girdle facet is also not provided for both Lazare and Solitaire Club. Now, those are actually pretty important because I tend to look for star length from 50% or above and prefer lower girdle facet of 75% to 77%. For my own WhiteFlash diamond, despite all the performance images looks good, the star length of 48% makes the diamond look brighter than having more coloured sparkles. It can still perform, but I will look for diamond with more contrast these days. Haha, I think I should blog this
As for 321K, this is the firsf time I heard it. After Googling, they actually belong to Wah Chan. Higher level or not? To me is just branding. Let the diamond quality speaks for itself.
wherever you feel comfortable with!