September 30 - Village Colorless Preservation Society

I returned to the jeweler.
They had acquired some diamonds for me to sample.
Oddly there were no goons or henchmen in villain masks present.

The jeweler arranged them on black velvet.
There they were.
Shining at me like pound puppies.
One fat cushion cut.
A long marquise cut that looked like a football on a diet.
Some winking princesses.
Of the eight assembled diamonds, I picked three for callbacks.
Some lovely oval cuts.

We held them with tweezers.
We studied them with a monocle.
We compared them on the Gemological Institute of America diamond clarity grading scale.
From FL (Flawless) to I (Included).
We compared them on a color chart.
From D (Colorless) to M (Faint Yellow).
It took me a minute to figure out that colorless was good.
Unless you wanted a champagne diamond.
I learned a lot.
Though I kept calling refers to points as "counts".
Because it listed its carats as "cts".

I narrowed it down to two oval cut diamonds.
Under the monocle, the jeweler tried to point out their individual microscopic flaws.
I couldn't spot them but pretended I kind of did.

There was some math and science to consider.
VVS2 vs. VVS 1.
G vs. H.
42 vs. 48.
And then the layman's angle to finish.
Is it a good size?
Does it sparkle?
Will she like it?

Ultimately, I picked the best diamond.
I went over budget.
By over twice as much.
But hey.
They offered layaway.
So I had plenty of time to pay it off.

The last time I had heard the term "layaway" was at a Service Merchandise in 1987.
I equated it with "credit".
The two terms are not interchangeable.

But I didn't know any of this yet.
So...

Verdict: Win

No comments:

Post a Comment