Hey! More Jewelry!

Ok, ready for some more? This time, we're going to switch it up a little bit and look at all kinds of jewelry. A little bit of everything, if you will. We'll start off with some very unique and different jewelry. On Etsy.com, they have a jewelry section, and it's filled with some very cool jewelry that are sold by individuals. We think a lot of these are handmade, too. Anyway, here are a few pieces from Etsy:

This is a pretty cool necklace. We're not sure if we like the chain-links, though. From a distance, they kind of look like real chains, like the heavy-duty ones they use for construction or whatever they use them for. We like the turquoise colored gemstones, though.

Our grade: B

Here's a nice peridot ring. The color of the gemstone is a nice green that we like a lot, and it's made form recycled silver, which is pretty cool. And, it's only $35. A great deal!

Our grade: B+

Here's another ring. We like rings. This is a really nice ring that we think would go great with a dress or something that has some red in it. At $147, it's a pretty good deal. All in all, we like it.

Our grade: A

Here's a nice Celtic knot sterling silver ring that caught our eyes. It's eye-catching (like we said!) and it's a great value - $29.99. Definitely a good buy.

Our grade: A

How about a bracelet? We don't do too many of those but this one is pretty awesome, we think. The color combination is very nice, and it has a nice design. Thumbs up from us.

Our grade: A-

How about an anklet? We don't think we've ever included one of those. Well, there's a first for everything! Anyway, we like the blue stones and we think it would look great on our ankles. At $25, it's a pretty good value. Not much negative to say about it....

Our grade: A

Well, that's all for now. Come back for more soon!

Black Diamond Rings

Ok back to rings... How about some black diamond rings? They have be getting popular lately. Here are some black diamond rings that we really like:

Hmm, "mysterious and elegant" they say. Well, it's a three-stone ring with three black diamonds and then some regular diamonds around those. It's pretty good looking, with a different style to it than you're used to seeing.

Our grade: B

We don't really like this one. It looks kind of funny - a seven stone ring. Isn't seven stones too much for a ring? Can't we draw a line somewhere where we say that five stones is the most number of diamonds you can have on a ring? Oh well, maybe it's just us.

Our grade: C-

This is a great looking ring... a big black center diamond surrounded by white diamonds going in a circle around it. It looks great!

Our grade: A-

This is a cool looking ring. We really like the black and white contrast theme that this ring has going on. Definitely a different look.

Our grade: A

This is a nice three-stone ring with black diamonds. Each of the three black diamonds is surrounded by white diamonds - and it looks great!

Our grade: A

This last ring is so different and unique looking that we had to include two pictures of it! This ring is so interesting, we've never seen anything like it. The squiggly S-shape to the ring on top is pretty cool. This ring, we would HAVE to see in person to really judge. However, we like it, just for how different it is.

Our grade: A

Time for some necklaces!!

Ok necklace time.We haven't reviewed any necklaces yet so now is the perfect time. Right?? We know your with it so lets go! Today we're going to look at necklaces from Blue Nile. Ready? Here we go!

Here's a really cool necklace. It's two hearts joined together in an infinite loop with nine diamonds in the center. At $530 it's pretty reasonable too. We like it!

Our grade: A

This is a three-stone diamond pendant necklace, totaling 1 carat. The price, at $2,475, isn't too bad either. It's simple but effective (thanks to the 3 diamonds side by side!). Personally, we think this would be better suited to be a ring because it's so simple. Things like the first necklace we just talked about above are nicer as a necklace to us, even though it's less expensive.

Our grade: B

This one is a pretty cool diamond cross pendant. Not much to say about it really, this is a very common design to have on a necklace (come on, who hasn't seen someone wearing a cross necklace before??). However, the diamonds add an exclusive touch.

Our grade: A-

This necklace has one big heart and a smaller heart inside of it, touching at the top and bottom. Romantic. Anyway, the hearts are studded with diamonds and hang from a cable chain. Nice, we like it.

Our grade: B+

Here's a cool necklace with a flower pendant. It's got seven diamonds, from what we can tell, with one in the center and the other six going around it to form a flower design. With .75 carats total of diamonds, it's pretty reasonably priced at $1,250 (maybe slightly overpriced).

Our grade: B

Are you ready for the next one? We're going to finish this up with a bang!

Ready???

Ok then....

Hmm you say, doesn't look that impressive from the picture. Well, that's 15 carats worth of diamonds right there! How would you like to have 15 carats hanging from your neck? We thought so. Anyway, it's not cheap (duh!) - it costs $33,500.

Our grade: B+

Wait, we've got one more...

Ok, so that last one was 15 carats... Well this one is twice that. 30 carats! It's only a little more expensive though ($39,500). It's spread over 251 diamonds, which works out to an average carat weight for each diamond of about .1 carats.

Our grade: A-

Excited? Sorry, we are too. Well, we gotta go. Bye!

Diamond Bracelet Fun

Back for some diamond bracelet fun! This time we're going to look at Tiffany. 

This is a really beautiful bracelet with 6.42 carats of diamonds in an alternating design. Very beautiful, very expensive. Well, that's Tiffany. This would be an easy A but the price offsets that.

Our grade: B+

 

This one looks kind of like a charm bracelet, but it's made up of circles of diamonds going around the bracelet. 2.57 carats in total and more affordable than the last one. Still, $13,500 isn't cheap so that weighs into the final grade.

Our grade: B

This one's only $925! And the diamond is only .19 carat though. Well it's simple and still nice looking.

Our grade: B+

 This one is kind of like the first one but less expensive. Beautiful and sophisticated, although still a little pricey.

Our grade: A-

This one matches the season - a snowflake charm on this bracelet. At first glance it doesn't look like there are very many diamonds but there are a couple small ones on the charm. You can also get just the charm by itself. Actually, on second thought, why even include the diamonds? They're only .04 carats! I guess if you include the diamonds you can charge more. Taking this into consideration, the grade is lowered.

Our grade: C+

Hmmm... that's enough for now.  So, who wants to buy us one of these? We'll be waiting...

How about earrings this time??

We're baaaack! Ready to look at some more awesome (or not so awesome) jewelry. While out last post was all about diamond rings, we're going to look at some diamond earrings.To start off with, here are some diamond earrings from Macy's (link).



These star earrings are pretty cool.  Stars are cool and with these on, you'll feel like a star. I mean, I think you'll feel like a star, why wouldn't you? Would that just be silly? Oh well. They're pretty cool anyway, and at $250, they're not super expensive and they're not cheap either.

Our grade: B+

These are nice. The flower design is nice, and it's somewhat affordable too at $700. Nothing much else to say about this either, because they're just nice. So without saying nice one more time (oops) we'll get to the grade:

Our grade: A-

1/2 carat diamond stud earring, certified colorless. Hmm. Well, we're guessing that the certified colorless part means that it the diamonds have a color grade of D, which is completely colorless and the highest color grade. It's also usually not worth the extra price though, because D grade diamonds come at a premium. At $1,600 it's a little overpriced. You're paying for the D-grade diamonds, which aren't really worth the extra money. You can easily get by with a E-G or even H diamond for less money.

Our grade: C-

OK, what is going on here?? As you can see, this is a pair of diamond earrings, 2 carats in total, which would 1 carat for each earring. The price is $4,700, which would seem a little low for earrings like this. Why is the price low? Because they use awful diamonds! It says that the diamonds are I2-I3 clarity, which is the WORST clarity grade possible. This means that the diamonds have easily visible inclusions. Looking at the reviews, it confirms this. That makes us think, who would actually these, when it clearly states the clarity grade, which also explains the price. Guess they were looking for a bargain (and Macy's is the wrong place to look for a bargain!!).

Our grade: F

If you're looking for some big diamond earrings, these are a much better bet than the last ones. They have a much better quality diamond although a little smaller but a lot more expensive. The clarity is VS2 and color is G-H. Why don't they include the cut grade? That's kind of dumb (maybe the cut isn't great, which would suck). They cost a mere $16,700, which is still overpriced for two .75 carat diamonds which might not even have a good cut grade.

Our grade: C

These earrings have a cool twist design and it's made with 14k yellow gold and .5 carats worth of diamonds. It looks great and the price isn't too bad. Ready for our grade?

Our grade: B

These diamond knot earrings look pretty cool. They have 1 carats worth of diamonds in total and they would look awesome on our ears. They cost $1,800, which is a little bit overpriced (notice the overpriced theme here?? this is Macys!) but not too bad.

Our grade: B-

Ok well that's it (though we could go on....). We'll save more for later. Out!

Welcome To The Franklin Sister's Jewelry Grading Blog

Hey everyone, this is the blog of Jessica and Martha Franklin. (Martha says its "Totally Awesome Blog"). Anyway, what we are professional jewelry graders (no really!). We go around to jewelry stores and look at diamond rings and bracelets and necklaces, give them a grade based on how much we like them, and then we get paid. Ok, so we don't get paid and we're not real professional jewelry graders, but we love jewelry! In fact, we love jewelry so much that we made a blog about it where we are going to grade and talk about jewelry right here on our blog.

Our favorite kind of jewelry is diamond rings (like most girls). Ok, so we also love bracelets and necklaces, but rings are where it's at! One other note - guys looking at engagement rings, pay attention to our blog! You'll find good stuff here!

Well anyway, we're going to start off this first post with a bang by evaluating some jewelry right now! We said that we like diamond rings the most, so here are a couple diamond rings to start off with.

Here are a few rings from Zales.com:

This is a pretty cool diamond ring and we like it because of the knot design. It's set in 14K white gold and has a 1/6 carat diamond.

Our grade: B

This is like the first ring on steroids. Ok thats a funny analogy to make with jewelry, but it's true! The first one has one diamond in the center, and this one has diamonds going everywhere! More diamonds = better grade

Our grade: A

A three stone princess cut diamond ring, totaling 1 carat. Pretty cool! You know what though, now that we think about it, this one might be a little overpriced at $3,299, because each diamond is only about .33 carat each. A .33 carat diamond (especially one that's G-H color and VS1-VS2 clarity) is probably less than $600 each. $600 times 3 equals $1,800, so that leaves $1,500 for the setting. It's a pretty simple setting so we don't think it's worth $1,500 for that setting. Details, details people!

Our grade: C

Now, here are some rings from Jared:

They have the special "Leo" diamond that they have been advertising lately. We wonder if it's really all that great.

Here's one of the Leo diamond rings. It is a pretty beautiful ring, 12 sidestones in sets of 3, totaling 1.5 carats. It's not cheap though, $3,699.99 for the setting (and that's not including the center diamond!).

Our grade: B+

Here's another of the Leo rings. It's a little less expensive at $2,999.99, but it still has 4 sidestones (1 carat's worth). You can also set it with pretty much any diamond shape, so that's a plus. It's also a beautiful ring, so we like it.

Our grade: A-

Well that's it for now. We will be back with more soon so check back! While we're out, you know where we'll be (in the nearest jewelry store!!).