Q&A: Looking for 1 Ct. Princess Cut Diamond for $4500 Budget

Hi, i was wondering if you would be kind enough to help me find a good 1ct princess cut diamond for under $4500. The setting we are looking for is a 3stone setting, so i dont know if that will make a difference in the clarity and color of the center stone
Thanks

I apologize for getting back to you a week later, I have been really busy. I have read all about you and Ira on your website and I think what you guys do is amazing!! I found your site by randomly searching “picking the perfect princess diamond” sites on google, and your website came out as the first choice so i clicked on it to check it out. I must say i have learned a lot of info about diamonds since then which i thought did not matter at all like the “table and depth” or just choosing a diamond with VVS2 or really High color just because jewelers said they were the best stones in the past. Also, I read the whole comparison between Bluenile and JamesAllen on your site and as much as i loveee the fact that bluenile has such a HUGE inventory of diamonds, I do agree that what you can see and verify is better than the unknown (even though i have close friends who have bought diamonds off bluenile and they got great stones which were very clean, and a few others that weren’t as lucky). I actually came to that conclusion when i viewed a 5000+ diamond on JamesAllen that was a VS1 color E (so basically it would have been an instant pick on bluenile lol), and then when i looked at the pics i saw a big inclusion right in the center of the diamond and was very visible to the naked eye.

I checked the diamond you sent me and i think its beautiful!! I remember seeing that stone along with some other ones in the same price range when I checked the website on my own before contacting you, and thought it was clean to the naked eye, and i like the added assurance of the GIA Laser Inscription! I did call JamesAllen to ask about the stone at the time, and the diamond specialist there said the stone looked great but that he didn’t like how the table and depth were close in measurements, but I honestly didn’t get what he meant since i thought the stone looked good.
I do have one last favor though and I hope you can bare with me. My fiance has decided on a cathedral solitaire setting instead of a 3stone setting, so now i have a little more money for the diamond.. my new budget is anything up to $5000. I was wondering if you would recommend any other stone based on the $500 budget increase or would you still recommend the stone you sent me? Also, i bought the setting from a local jeweler, do you recommend I just order a “loose stone” from JamesAllen and have it set by a local jeweler, or should i send in the setting and have JamesAllen do it for me? I ask since i called them up and they mentioned it would cost $100 to set the diamond, and there may be an additional $100 – $200 if they need to change the “setting head”. Don’t know why they would need to do so though since the setting i got is for a princess cut up to 1.2ct

Here are pictures of the setting, please let me know what you think of it.

Thank you so much for all your help and i hope to hear from you soon.

PS. JamesAllen REALLYYY need to do something about their settings, they have a very limited selection or rings!!

No i meant a diamond with better color or clarity or one you thought looked more eye clean. I definitely know that 500 bucks will not get me a bigger one lol.

My setting is an 18K Gold one, and is 3.7gm in weight. it cost me $211 dollars

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Any chance we could find the same beautiful diamond you recommended in a G color VS2 instead of H? if not i will go ahead and purchase the diamond today. Sorry for all the messages, i just want to get my fiance the best stone ever! Thanks for understanding!

Oh and the reason my setting only cost me $211 is because i purchased it in Egypt. They only have 18K gold there (14K is considered taboo in the middle east lol), and labor is cheap, even tho this ring came from one of the biggest Jewelers there, kind of like Tiffany over here .

Thanks again