Smart Buying

Clicks and Stones

Buying a diamond for that special someone just got easier. All you have to do is remember the five c's -- carat, clarity, color, cut and now cut grade -- and the letter e, as in e-tailer.

By Sean O'Neill

From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, February 2006

You'll find cut grade on reports from the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), via its Gem Trade Laboratory. The GIA's cut grades use a five-point scale from poor to excellent. Cut grade actually debuted on reports from the GIA's smaller rival, the American Gem Society. AGS Laboratories scores diamonds for cut grade on a scale from zero to ten, with ten being the worst. Reports from the AGS and the GIA are "the gold standard of U.S. laboratories," says Martin Rapaport, who publishes the trade's best-known wholesale-price lists. So if you're in the market for a big rock, be sure it's been graded by one of the two labs.

So far, the GIA is giving its cut grades only to select round diamonds -- the most popular cut for engagement rings -- and not to stones in other cuts, such as pear and marquise. The AGS awards cut grades to select round and square-cut diamonds. Both labs say they may soon expand the grading system to other cuts.

Best e-tailers

When selecting an e-tailer, you want one with access to a wide selection of diamonds, as well as responsive customer service, generous return policies and low prices. We used those criteria to size up the leading sites: Amazon.com, BlueNile.com, Diamonds.com, Ice.com, JamesAllen.com, Overstock.com and Whiteflash.com.

Our overall bling-buying pick is Blue Nile. It can tap a pool of 60,000 diamonds and scores of settings, and the store lets you return an item 30 days from the day it ships. Most calls are answered within ten seconds by an employee in Seattle. And its prices are among the lowest. For example, it was recently charging $6,592 for a 1-carat round stone of good but not flawless quality, which beat other sites' prices for similar stones.

For custom work, Whiteflash.com is the lord of the online rings. Unlike many e-tailers, Whiteflash customizes nearly half its jewelry. Kevin Dolorico, a Web operations analyst in New York City, exchanged designs by e-mail with Whiteflash when he was shopping for an engagement ring last spring. Dolorico wanted a ring that combined the head from one standard setting with the shank of another. Whiteflash nestled a 1.34-carat diamond that was graded good but not flawless in Dolorico's ideal setting. His fiancée, Janelle De Rivera, was dazzled, and he was pleased with the roughly $6,000 price. When he asked a gemologist to appraise the ring's value, he was told that an equivalent piece from a local jeweler would cost about $9,000.

Whiteflash's return policy for custom work is that you can't bring it back unless there's an error (exceptions apply to partly customized work). For loose stones and standard settings, Whiteflash offers a full refund ten days from receipt for any reason -- including if you propose and she turns you down.

Whiteflash has less inventory (about 1,000 stones) and typically charges higher prices than Blue Nile and many other e-tailers. But Whiteflash trumps brick-and-mortar jewelers on price, and it offers a trade-up program that Blue Nile and most other online rivals don't match: Swap your rock for a higher-priced one at any time, paying the difference between your new diamond and your trade-in.

For jewelry buyers who want an inexpensive rock and a personal touch, help may be on the way. EDB's Diamond Showroom of Cincinnati plans to open brick-and-mortar satellite stores nationwide. Each store will have only a few gems behind its counter but 3,900 stones displayed on monitors via its new Web site (www.edbsonline.com). The first 1,200-square-foot store will open in Sarasota, Fla., this winter.

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