OK dopers, I’m looking for some advice.
I’ve been looking for a wedding ring for my SO and after being shocked at the prices for real diamonds on the Toronto Diamond Exchange I started looking at Synthetic Diamonds after reading the Wired article (which I found out about from the SDMB).
I found a site (russian brilliants) that sells high quality synthetic diamonds for a very nice price (from $3K CAN per caret down to about $500) and I’m very interested picking one up.
Now, the question really is, how good are these diamonds? I know the Russians practically invented synthetic diamond technology so I’m sure the quality is great but is it good enough to fool a jeweler? Are they, for all intents and purposes, perfect diamonds?
My GF has no preference but loves anything shiney (she has dozens of $10 glass trinkets) and so I want to get the shinest twinkly diamond I can find.
I know there’s a slight stigma on “fake” diamonds but I’m more worried about the quality of the diamond to the eye. I will tell her it’s fake but I’d love to get it appraised at a jeweler (without telling them it’s fake) and seeing how much it might be “worth” (and no, I’m not talking about fraudulantly selling the diamond, just want to get an idea of it’s “value” if I had bought a real one).
I’m willing to shell out $3K CAN on this so it’s either I get a 0.75 c. “real” diamond or a 2 c. synthetic diamond for the same price.
What do you folks think?