I was going to write a review sometime later this week. but i saw the last posts this morning so i feel i should now..
I insisted to go together with my bf on his diamond search, anyway i was the one who did all the research :>
I've gone through tons and tons of reading materials from Pricescope to Goodoldgold and many other less reputable sites.. sometimes, it can get very technical but i roughly understand most of it. I've also been watching alot of GoG and JP videos on youtube. They are the only 2 companies (1 from US and 1 from Singapore) that do those video educations. If you go to the US forums, they also got talk about JP. Anyway, those videos do help alot!
Anyway, i'm in one of the closed bridal FB groups, and the girls swear on JP, that's the first time I heard of them.. Before, i was the one planning all our wedding arrangements, so i decided i want to choose my diamond and design myself, and later he can propose. Since i'm gonna wear the ring for the rest of my life, i also want to be sure that it's something I really like.
so the places we started off were the brick and mortars:
B&M
Shops like Leehwa, Sookee, Lovis? Basically your B&M stores that sell from the lousiest cuts to their premium brand cuts like destinee or brilliant rose, multifaceted diamonds etc. Firstly, all their sales people probably know less than everyone on the forums. Secondly, their prices are heavily marked up because of their high overheads. Thirdly, this isn't Chanel.. You won't see any brand or logo on your ring. So basically, all the shops we went to near JEC, marina bay, ion jewelry street were just to walk walk see see.
Private jewellers
Fairy's inc, Michael trio, Canary, Vivo and a few other less reputable ones.
There was one of them that pissed me off damnnnnnnnnnnn bad.... i won't go into that.. just damn unprofessional, nothing to do with diamonds.
Anyway, most of them do the basic education, some don't. One of them even downtalked JP ALOT, i seriously think people are not happy with them.
My bf's budget was around 6k.. so the diamonds they recommended, varied alot. I got some quotations and did the HCA calculations myself. I borrowed an ASET from one of the bro's here, all the jewelers were kind enough to let me assess them. but the problem is that most of the diamonds had very poor light performances. Even after the emails back and forth and diamonds with HCA lower than 1.5, when i went 2nd or 3rd time for viewing, they either were worse with light leakages or very crooked arrows... even online jewelers look much better. This was the part that disappointed me the most... because once i pull the scope away, i can even see the areas that are leakage looks greyish dull and the arrows you can try to block away the surrounding light and you can see the arrows are crooked :< it was after all these wasted trips, that i realized HCA really is just to filter nia... anyway alot of back and forth. I took some pictures for bro's references if they need here:
Anyway alot of back and forth, i did not know JP gave a full length education, otherwise i would have gone there first. but i wanted to go as my last stop.
JP
I booked an appointment and my bf specifically requested for Casey because he sometimes watch the youtube videos with me.
When we were there, we waited about 5 minutes and Casey came to greet us. It's quite uncanny because his voice is very distinct on youtube and IRL.
Anyway, he told us it was going to be quite a long session so we cancelled our evening plans.
Here is the difference i don't see people write about JP and the other jewelers... LEARN ABOUT THE SCOPES!
People here always ask if this is okay or that is okay... but do you guys even know how to tell in other shops?
If you all are talking about educating yourselves.. then you all should have faced the same problem as me. Though i never see anyone talking about this..
THIS: I was shown more than 18 diamonds in total at the private jewelers... i was shown 4 diamonds in JP... ALL the 18 diamonds looked so bad on the scopes, ALL the 4 diamonds looked great from JP!
There are some of the diamonds that I took so you know what i mean. I can't upload all of them becos of the 9 image limit.. ignore the titles, they're just my own labels.
And this one is from JP.
If you go to pricescope.com, everything is emphasized on scopes! Light performance and symmetry is the MOST important thing to a diamond's beauty. and it's not so difficult at all to see.
white parts?
looks blackish transparent
red parts? nice and white
green parts? greyish.
they also tell you which parts will give out fire potentially as well as where it wont. (obviously white wont)
and symmetry is also important because that means the facets align for better light performance!
so back to this... it was a big relief when i looked through the scopes and Casey was very patient with me. When I think about it, it seems all the other places i was shown IDEAL cuts only. but they called them Super Ideals and
Signature Ideal cuts. Which made me realize, they can anyhow just term their cuts.
Anyway, i think it was.. 2hours long session? and another 1 hour with designs, all in all I ended up picking the octagon LOL. after so much talk about rounds right?
but it was really nice with the 4 prongs sample.So i left my bf to choose a $5350 and $6400. Actually I'll be happy whichever he picks la.. smaller also may look nicer to wear everyday. The specifications I have it back at home, i'll post it later :>
That's my review for now. Design wise i left a few to for my bf to choose... but when i think about it maybe i shouldn't go for the side diamonds one...
oh! and pricing wise, JP is about maybe 5% more roughly. depending on which type you buy, like solasfera or super ideal. but super ideal wise maybe it's 5% more, some can even be cheaper, some more, it varies. but the quality is NOT ONLY 5% more.
This is the part that you guys should go and learn.... you cannot just look at certificate and compare price.. there can be so much difference in quality.
oh i forgot, JP also has a sarin scanner, similar to a helium scanner. It can scan your diamond and can give you ALL the small angles and proportions of your diamond, like how many % is the table off centre, what are the upper girdle facet angles. I read this from GoG but it was a little bit technical.
Casey still explained most of it to me after he scanned the diamond. He says they use it for checking their incoming supply but show clients if they request for it.
It's funny most of the reviews here don't have a similar experience as me, if you did research you would definitely have come across the quality differences.
here are some websites to start learning for the new people on your search:
www.pricescope.com
www.prosumerdiamonds.com
www.goodoldgold.com
that's already alot to read.. or on youtube channel you can watch Jannpaul and Good old gold.
but when i read all the past pages, i feel like that most people here are confused between the term super ideal and ideal. It doesn't help that companies are trying to sell ideal cuts at super ideal cut prices. This confuses people more..
