Expanding Amora Super Ideal Eternity H&A production - 5mm/.50ct Eternities - 12mm / 6+ct next month!: Our best selling product by far continues to be the Amora Super Ideal Eternity H&A, and thus I'm extremely happy to announce that we have laser cut the first of many (270+) 5mm or .50ct Eternities!
This was a size we've never been able to do before in the Amora, but I'm excited about it as it means we can greatly expand a)Eternity studs, and thus offer 1.00ctw pairs and b)pairs for three stone Amora rings!
In addition, we've got a number of 10mm - 13mm Eternitys completing now. These are the big jumbos that get into $1M+ type of diamond price equivalents (though you can't get Super Ideal H&A cut in diamond in these sizes...no one is willing to lose the rough to acheive max beauty due to the cost).
These will all be rolling out over the next few weeks. More info at our
Amora Super Ideal Eternity H&A page here.
Universal Pricing coming for the Amora Eternity Stud Earrings and smaller - midsize Eternity's: We recently took a poll on the forums here and offered to start selling the Eternity's as "uncerted" and under universal pricing. The results were 2:1 in favor, and so we will shortly be offering both the usual "full diamond grading report" Eternity H&A, but also a limited amount of Universal priced Eternitys.
What does Universal pricing mean? - these will be identical Amora Super Ideal Eternity's (nano-polished, faceted girdle, Sarin HD checked angles, etc) - but, we won't send them through the full grading process. Instead, they will be priced simply as Colorless (expected average of E/VVS) and priced at flat $575/ct pricing.
They'll be offered in bucket categories of .5ct, .75ct, .90ct, 1.00ct, and 1.25ct etc.
In other words, a min size, a colorless Amora Super Ideal Eternity but without the overhead/details of the full grading report and expense. Thus, for example, the Eternity Overnight Studs would simply be a 1.00ctw pair for a fixed price for each pair (ala $699 if we are able to do our intro special on these (hint, hint).)
We'll still have the detailed pairs and detailed Amoras, but it's a way to simplify the product for those who just want sparkles in their ear, and lowering the price without changing the Amora quality one iota.
This feature will be rolled out over the next 2-3 weeks and will also include some .75ct each ear, and 1.00ct each ear Overnight Eternity studs!
Details of the Amora nano-polish process: Earlier this year we submitted some Forever One "H&A" Moissanite to the NAGL diamond grading lab and asked them to take some photos of their facet edges compared to the Amora Eternity facet edges. That produced this visual for you to review:
The lab indicated the Charles and Colvard Moissanite has rounded edges, similar to a Mohs 7 garnet and looks like a press molded stone. The polish also only rated as Good.
The point of this wasn't just to rib Moissanite, but really to show off the nano-polish process we developed to achieve true "diamond sharp" facet edges.
You can see how the facets and polish of the Amora Super Ideal Eternity compare with the D color, GIA master diamond.
Facet edge sharpness is vital to ensuring maximum fire and crisp brilliance. The rounding of the facets will roll light that should be going out to your eye back into the stone, and thus reduce the total fire and brilliance.
Anyway, very pleased to show the details of the expensive R&A that we've undertaken to ensure that the Amora Super Ideal Eternity is truly "the Ultimate Gem".
Custom Cut Amoras! Our focus going forward is going to be primarily on the Super Ideal Eternity, but in order to expedite matching fancy cut lovers with their ideal Amora Gem, we are now testing a limited offering of doing custom cut Amoras!
This basically means you can order an Amora cut to your mm size specs, place a $100 deposit so we know your interest is high enough to put money down, and give us up to 8 weeks - we'll select the rough, and cut you your own Amora Gem!
The idea of course is for us to not have to chase what we "think" customers want to buy, and in reverse, make it easier for customers to simply order what they want and not have to wait and wait for us to eventually hit a restock that matches what they want!
We've already done several of these earlier this month and it's going well, so we'll continue it another 6 weeks or so and then decide after that if we want to continue to offer it. Thus, if you are interested, now is the time while we have the window open for these:
Amora Gem Custom cutting
BTD News:
Takara lab grown white diamonds = 100% sold out! After seeing slow sales this past two years on our Takara white lab grown diamonds, interestingly sales have rapidly picked up this first quarter and we are for the first time, completely sold out!
We're thus planning to restock shortly and will have white Excellent cut rounds from .50ct - 1.50ct. Of possible interest, we're also planning to offer the same 4 prong platinum martini studs we use for our Amora Overnight Eternity's but with Takara lab grown white diamonds.
First up will be a few 1.00ctw pairs running roughly $1600 a pair (near colorless, and not H&A like the Eternitys
Takara Lab Diamonds - Rounds). We are tentatively going to offer these under a similar 'universal' pricing concept as the 1.00ctw Eternity studs.
Thus, we're sort of becoming a stud earring super center (lol) but there is some advantage to this. We are steadily scaling the volume, which helps lower our cost for the raw mountings, our setters are able to do the work in higher number of pairs which is more efficient than doing one pair here, one pair there, and that helps again lower our cost. We pass on the cost savings which makes our stud earrings more cost efficient vs. a jeweler that does a pair a month and that of course, ultimately repeats the cycle as more orders come in, further increasing our scale, repeat.
The earring page is not up yet, but you can visit the Takara round page for more info on our
round lab diamonds here.
DiamondBistro.com - upgraded and more features coming! So I had pretty much given up on
http://DiamondBistro.com , our Ebay like site for buying and selling but 100% free (ad supported) ever growing into a bigger site, but also didn't turn off the website as people still continued to use it. However, much like going into your yard one day and finding that the slumped over plant you thought was on it's last legs was now thriving, upright and loaded with beautiful flowers, I was quite surprised to look at how much traffic to DiamondBistro.com had grown a few weeks ago when finally digging into our website traffic stats.
The Bistro now has well over 2,000 rings listed for sale, and 400+ visitors per hour flowing through!
Anyway, with that, we've decided to go ahead and make another push to see if we can continue to scale up DiamondBistro.com and as part of that, just upgraded the base software which hadn't been touched for nearly 3 years.
Most of the features have to now be added to the user interface, but we've got some exciting new additions like simply logging in via your Facebook account so new users can simply visit and participate immediately instead of filling out a long registration form and similar in the works. Mobile viewing site layout will be added in the next few weeks to make browsing via phone easy, and more including a much improved 'recently sold' column, etc.
Please take a look and as noted, you are welcome to buy/sell for 100% free and save a bundle vs Ebay listing fees:
http
iamondBistro.com
Misc:
Beautiful star photo: As always, with Amora Gem originating from around large red giant stars, I'm happy to conclude this latest blog with a stunning photo of
Rho Ophiuchi nebula.
The brightest star in this image is Antares (Alpha Scorpii or α Sco), the fifteenth brightest star in the sky and the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius.
Credit: Leonardo Ciuffolotti, Matteo Collina, Riccardo De Benedictis, Giuseppe Donatiello, Rolando Ligustri
Diamond as an investment? Learn from this couples *$9 Million* mistake!: Diamonds as an "investment"...be careful. This couple paid $15 Million, found it was worth $6 Million. (Amora Gem + $14.99 Million into a good stock index, could have avoided this whole ordeal
Buying diamonds? Avoid this $9 million mistake that Drew Brees made
That's it for this first 2018 blog! I didn't have time to cover a number of other items pending (including custom cut lab Colombian Emeralds and Alexandrite, more grading results of Charles and Colvard Moissanite, more sun videos for other cuts like the AVC and AVR, etc. so let's plan on meeting again sooner than 3 months from now - tentatively in June!
In the interim - thanks for reading, thanks for your continued support and hope you have a great Friday and month ahead!
Best regards,
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