The diamond retail jewelers hate us for doing this. The diamond cartel wishes they could stop us.
Customers hoping/expecting to replace an inexpensive but flawless and colorless 5A CubicZirconia.com CZ center stone with diamond at some point in the future commonly ask us if it is possible for us to make our jewelry with a only the largest stone being cubic zirconia while natural diamond accent stones (also known as 'side stones' or 'melee stones) are used in the remainder of the piece.
Yes, this is possible and we don't ask to make any profit on the diamonds.
While we understand that replacing a large CZ center stone in the ring you purchase from us with an equivalently colorless and flawless natural diamond you get in the future from some other company is going to be a very significant cash outlay (in most cases many multiples of what you purchase the ring itself for from us), that's simply not a service we want to provide ourselves (selling natural diamonds). If that is your plan, we can still help. You should know, though, that we absolutely recommend against having a piece of jewelry made with multiple prong-set small accent stones you plan to replace in the future. What can be done with a single center stone (swap CZ for diamond) is a simple matter, but doing so for dozens or hundreds of melee accent stones can jeopardize the structural integrity of the jewelry we made for you (and void the Lifetime Warranty we provided at purchase!).
That means if you plan to "re-create" the ring we make you with all diamonds in the future, we recommend you have us make it with diamond side stones from the beginning as they can be had for MUCH LESS per stone than the thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars retail jewelers charge for larger center stone-size natural diamond stones. If this is what you want, we are able to source side stone "accent" diamonds for your ring or other piece of jewelry to be made by us.
We will even arrange for you as a consumer to use our wholesale-purchase jeweler credentials to review information on diamond options available from a company we trust that we believe sells ethically mined diamonds. We can further arrange for this company to sell you these stones at the cost they would provide us (an accredited jeweler) if we were to purchase the same. The company sells $175 million dollars per year and is very legitimate. Now, the exact additional price you will pay -- as a courtesy to you, putting the order through our wholesale purchaser account with this company-- per stone for the accent melee diamonds to take the place of cubic zirconia in the piece of jewelry you are buying from us will vary based on a few factors that we will not know today and therefore cannot provide to you an exact price for the extra amount beyond our price for the piece set with our cubic zirconia.
Here are the factors...
Stone Size: typically smaller stones are less expensive than larger stones. For example, if your jewelry will accommodate a 1.0mm stone, your price will likely be lower per diamond than if it were to be a 2.5mm. In our custom jewelry you'll have the opportunity to dictate the stone sizes you want if you're trying to keep to a budget -- this would need to be communicated before the CAD process begins. For our catalog jewelry on the website, we know what size and how many stones need to go into the piece, so just ask us for a quote on making those stones diamonds instead of CZ.
Note: Our generosity and assistance only goes so far with smaller accent stones. The risks to do the same with larger diamond stones are not something we’re willing to accept and is not compatible with our beliefs in the power and beauty of non-diamond stones in precious metal fine jewelry.
Stone Quality: typically lower-quality diamonds will be less expensive than higher-quality diamonds. For example, if you're comparing two stones of the same size, a diamond with better color, cut, and clarity will have a higher price than a diamond with more inclusions ("internal flaws") or more body color. Also you must consider that you'll want the diamonds to match each other in terms of the 4 C's so a ring with many stones could have a higher price per stone than a ring with fewer.
I know this seems like a wide range, but you can expect to spend somewhere between $2 and $60 per stone depending on the exact size, color, cut, clarity and carat weight you choose in the final design. This may sound like boasting, but the truth is that unless you buy the very best, colorless and flawless, ideal-cut, mined diamond accent stones at the higher end of the price-per-stone range, our 5A Cubic Zirconia will appear visually more perfect to the naked eye with respect to the 4 C's. We provide this service as a courtesy only because people asked for it for years and because the advertising allure of diamonds is so strong that some customers would simply rather have an inferior 'real' diamond mined from the earth than a perfect 'simulant' like CZ that was made by men in a laboratory.
If this is something you'd like to learn more about, let us know the quality you're thinking about for natural diamond accent stones for us to use in your jewelry piece instead of our cubic zirconia.
Once we understand what you’re looking for, we’ll send you some options to purchase these natural melee accent diamonds at our cost. Keep in mind, please, that those prices you will see provided aren't available for you to purchase directly from a jewelry supplier without licensing as a jewelry company. Call the company and they'll tell you the same. But there you have it, in all honesty those are the prices any jeweler can buy diamonds at and if they want mark it up the standard "triple-key" (3x cost) and sell them they can and do sell for those profit margins all day long.
We are simply not interested in making a profit from diamonds, and if we provide you this help there will be no additional markup in the price of your jewelry piece. This also means all melee/accent diamond stone sales are final and non-returnable.
You will pay us what we quoted you for a custom piece (or the price online for buying a pre-manufactured piece on our website) and you will pay the wholesale cost our supplier charges jewelers for diamonds (as a courtesy to you, putting the order through our wholesale purchaser account with the supplier).
We also will not accept any liability for the diamond accent stones, offer no refunds, and can provide no warranty. You'll receive none of that from an outside supplier either; when you buy gemstones at wholesale prices, there is no safety net for changing your mind. We will empower you to buy diamonds at the price jewelry companies can buy diamonds, and that is the extent of the transactional relationship.
To our knowledge, there is no other jeweler in the world who would allow you to buy natural diamonds at cost. Why would they? It's too easy to have people pay 3x the wholesale cost for a retail markup. We do this because we believe wholly in the alternative diamond market. Thanks for giving us a chance to earn your business.
