Choosing an Engagement Ring – Martin Katz

[highlight_text] When you have knowledge about what you are purchasing, you can make a better-informed decision on the right ring for your future fiancée. [/highlight_text]

Choosing an engagement ring for your future bride-to-be is one of the most special and pivotal moments in a man’s life. Not only are you vowing to spend your life with this person, you are giving her a sentimental piece of jewelry that symbolizes this eternal vow.

Selecting the perfect ring can be daunting, but if you gain knowledge beforehand the experience can be made a lot easier. Simply put, before choosing an engagement ring you should familiarize yourself with the Four C’s, the most important grading and categorizing system of diamonds.

That said, finding a jeweler that you respect for his judgment and knowledge of stones as well as artistic eye is very important. Compare the stones based only on the specifications of color, clarity, weight and shape. In other words, be careful comparing stones based solely on their GIA paper stats, as they will never reveal a stone’s personality, brilliance, crispness of the diamond crystal or other characteristics that make one diamond so much more desirable than another similar one and thus command a stronger price.

When you have knowledge about what you are purchasing, you can make a better-informed decision on the right ring for your future fiancée. The most important thing to remember, however, is that buying the ring should be fun and exciting. Call us anytime for your personal consultation.

CUT: Cut is the factor that fuels a diamond’s fire, sparkle and brilliance. Though extremely difficult to analyze or quantify, the cut of any diamond has three attributes: brilliance (the total light reflected from a diamond), fire (the dispersion of light into the colors of the spectrum), and scintillation (the flashes of light, or sparkle, when a diamond is moved). We also speak of the make of the stone within this category. Like any commodity in life, some pieces are better than others even if they carry the exact same label, description and size.

COLOR: Diamond color is all about what you can’t see. Diamonds are valued by how closely they approach colorlessness – the less color, the higher their value. Diamond color is one of the most important criteria when purchasing a diamond, as it is what everyone can immediately see with the naked eye, including your bride to be.

CARAT: Diamonds and other gemstones are weighed in metric carats. Just as a dollar is divided into 100 pennies, a carat is divided into 100 points. For example, a 50-point diamond weighs 0.50 carats. But two diamonds of equal weight can have very different values depending on the other members of the Four C’s: clarity, color and cut.

Martin Katz | Martin Katz, Ltd. | 9540 Brighton Way Beverly Hills, CA 310-276-7200 | www.martinkatz.com