Quote:
Originally Posted by Commander Quan
Is this for an engagement ring? One of the fun (stressful) parts about going through the process off picking out the diamond for my fiancee was actually looking at different stones.
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Josh, congratulations on your upcoming engagement. I wish you and your bride much happiness together.
If I may digress for a minute, I had a really neat experience when I bought my wife's engagement ring. All during my growing-up years on Long Island my neighbor across the street, Mr. Chevalier, was a jewelery maker for a very famous NYC jeweler. By the time I got engaged, he was an older man, and was retired, although he kept a small workshop in his home. (He was an immigrant from France, and had served stateside in WWII, and during his off hours made glass eyes for soldiers who lost an eye during combat.)
Anyhow, he said that he would make the engagement ring for me, and how much did I want to spend. I gave him the figure, and that my wife wanted a quality diamond rather than a large diamond. He told me to come with him to NYC one morning. We took the train into Manhattan, and went to a coffee shop where we met an Hassidic Jew who was a diamond dealer and an acquaintance of Mr. Chevalier. The diamond dealer had a small drawstring bag of diamonds in his pocket, and over coffee Mr. Chevalier looked at diamonds and haggled over prices. Finally told me
this is the one we want to buy for my engagement ring. They tried showing me how one diamond differed in quality from another, but frankly I never really caught on.
A week or so later my ring was complete, and he had put two small diamonds on the ring as well, as a gift to us for our engagement. My wife still wears this ring 23 years later.