Engagement rings and diamonds in Antwerp

Thanks a million Dawn...I've already spoken to Harold and reckon he's the way to go. You did get a really good deal...hopefully I will too.

Cheers

Hi Excited,

Harold does little drawings on his jotter of the design you have created and there are loads of bands to choose from. I definitely remember the bands in yellow and white gold were free but maybe that was because 'we' were spending a good bit. In the end I chose platinum so I won't have to get the ring dipped each year, which you would with the white gold - the platinum did cost more.

I know it's easy to think that it's all about saving money by going to Antwerp but what I'd say it's more that your budget goes further in Antwerp, as you get a much higher quality and bigger diamond(s) for your budget.

The colour, I got, was E, the clarity was VS2. I would definitely go for better colour over clarity - you can't see the tiny flaws with the naked eye. If the colour is good it means it's more sparkly. The cut is important too as Dawnsurprise said below - I went with 'round' to maximise the sparkle effect!

Don't be afraid to haggle by asking for a cash price - if you are lucky he might knock an extra 100e off this.

If you don't have time to collect the ring, Harold can fed-ex it to you, but normally he'll have the ring ready for collection the next day.

One last tip....read all you can about the 4 C's -it's not difficult to understand and it puts u in a much better position when you are discussing the merits of size v's quality v's colour.

Harold is excellent at explaining the pro's and con's of each diamond too. His English is perfect - there were no language barriers.

Re. Logistics

We stayed at the Astrid Park Plaza hotel in the Diamond District for 2 nights Monday to Wednesday - 200e exc breakfast. The train station is across the road so it is a great location. The hotel is a nice modern, no personality 4 star, which was fine for us. Harold's shop is a 10 min stroll from this hotel.

Hi, I've been considering proposing to my burd for some time now but was a bit concerned about price. After reading this thread I'm considering surprising her with a trip to Antwerp. My budget is (max) 1000 euro, excluding th trip itself (we're planning a weekend away anyway). I've no clue about these things, so I'm wondering will I be able to get anything passable for that sort of budget. If not, I can save up for another few months but I suspect she's getting an itchy finger. I know she usually prefers smaller diamonds anyway, but is a thousand still too low? Thanks in advance.

PS If I do decide to go, I promise to look up the 4Cs.

808303 said:

Hi, I've been considering proposing to my burd for some time now but was a bit concerned about price. After reading this thread I'm considering surprising her with a trip to Antwerp. My budget is (max) 1000 euro, excluding th trip itself (we're planning a weekend away anyway). I've no clue about these things, so I'm wondering will I be able to get anything passable for that sort of budget. If not, I can save up for another few months but I suspect she's getting an itchy finger. I know she usually prefers smaller diamonds anyway, but is a thousand still too low? Thanks in advance.

PS If I do decide to go, I promise to look up the 4Cs.

Click to expand...

Have a look at this website and you can get quotes for different sizes and clarities...
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Obviously your travel expenses are going to be higher relative to the price of the ring so the savings may not make the trip worthwhile.
You'll have to figure that one out yourself but from the research I've done I think it's 20% cheaper in Antwerp. 20% of €1000 is €200. It will cost you more than €200 to get to and stay in Antwerp so purely on the maths it is not worthwhile. However, there's more to getting hitched than maths!
Best of luck

Hi Everyone

Just want to say a HUGE thank you to you all for all your tips and advice,

We spent all day last mon in various jewellers and in the end I have decided on solitaire, princess cut, white gold with diamond shoulders.

Have to say after going round the jewellers we now understand the " 4 C's" a whole lot better than from reading them on the web.

Philipe Harold has been so so helpful.

I emailed him a picture of the ring I liked from the jewellers website !

And he has come back to me with a quote, we are both very happy with !!

F color, Vs1 and 1.15 carat for EUR 4900

In the jewllers in dublin, the ring was only H in color, .90 carat and Vs1 and was costing EUR 6350.

We were never going to antwerp to save money just to get more value for money !
and I think we are definitely going to get it !

Something to bear in mind for anyone planning a trip to Antwerp, Philip harold is closed as are all the main jeweller for their annual holidays from last Mon, ( aug 13th till Mon aug 27th ) so if thinking of travelling in aug mite be worth while checking they will be open !

It looks as though we may need to return early from antwerp on the fri morning for an appointment, i can get flights from Charleroi with ryanair at 0930 in the morning, does anyone know will we be able to get a bus / train from antwerp to have us in Charleroi airport for 0730 AM and also how long the journey takes ?

Hi Excited,

I think we're near enough to a congratulations to you and your other half!

According to the timetable the first train from Antwerp Central Station is at 5.51am brings you to Charleoi Sud Train Station in an hour and half. Then you can jump the airport bus from the airport bus stop outside the train station and you'll be at the airport in another 15mins.

(We were on the next train for the flight at 9.30am and it was seriously plain sailing - no sweat other than getting up early. We bought our tickets at the train station the day before and walked on to the train the next morning. Hopefully you won't be cutting it too fine.)

Here's the link

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Best of luck!!

Hi Decembersal

Thanks a mill for all the advice and also the congrats ! we are so excited now !!

Harold has said he will have the ring for thurs evening !! Thank god.

I have tried looking online to look at train timetables but it's very complicated !! I cannot figure it out for the life of me !!

When you mentioned you hoped i wasnt cutting it too fine ! Was that in reference to the ring being ready or making the 0930 flight ??

Im starting to get seriously stressed now !!

Hi Excited,
Sorry didn't mean to scare you- I just thought you might have been cutting it fine.

I checked the timetable again, there seems to be an earlier train from Anterp Central Statin at 5.16am which arrives in Charleroi Sud at 06.52am.
That gives you plenty of time to get the airport bus for the 15min journry to Charleroi airport.
Antwerpen-Centraal
Charleroi-Sud 24/08/07
dep
arr05:16
06:52 1:43 0[broken link removed][broken link removed]

The best thing to do is to go Central Station on Thursday and ask at the information desk what time the earliest train to Charleroi Sud departs at and buy your tickets then.

Best of luck!! Hope the ring is everything you want it to be

You'll be rolling over to weddingsonline next.

Decembersal

Thanks for looking up those times for me, really appreciate it

This time next week we will officially be engaged with ring ! ( please god !! )

We are heading over this weds and just cant wait.

Have you set your wedding date yet ?

We have booked rome for next aug so any threads u know of with info on that will be very useful too !

Take Care
Eacited

hi, i checked out harolds prices and found him only ok compared too the high street jewellers.he quoted a 1.01 H vs1 for 5200 euro.his cert is a hrd which is not recommended. appparently they are not worth the paper they are written on. i was not going to go and spend all that money ona important diamond from some shop overseas with no come back.ended up buying in dublin at a better price€4800 and wife very happy.plus she gets to have it cleaned locally free every year and discuss her next project,oh dear.but saves me paying for flights and hotel etc

Quote: his cert is a hrd which is not recommended. apparently they are not worth the paper they are written on.


What is your source for this exactly? When I googled HRD certs I got a comprehensive description of a very highly regarded certification standard.
For example http://www.diamondmanufacturer.com/tutorial/certificate.htm

As for the pricing, when I got herself’s ring valued for insurance purposes, it was values at nearly 3 times the purchase price of the ring from Harold.

mrgtbad said:

hi, i checked out harolds prices and found him only ok compared too the high street jewellers.he quoted a 1.01 H vs1 for 5200 euro.his cert is a hrd which is not recommended. appparently they are not worth the paper they are written on. i was not going to go and spend all that money ona important diamond from some shop overseas with no come back.ended up buying in dublin at a better price€4800 and wife very happy.plus she gets to have it cleaned locally free every year and discuss her next project,oh dear.but saves me paying for flights and hotel etc

Click to expand...

The information in this post would seem to contradict the multiple independent sources within the thread and the statement about HRD not factual.

Put simply, if you buy a ring in Ireland this is the scenario...a wholesaler buys it or its constituents in Antwerp for €3,000. He sells it into the jeweller for €6,000 who then sells it on the shopfloor for €12,000. Some of the jewellers who cut out the middleman will work on a straight double up so the ring they buy in for €3,000 will be sold on for €6,000 but there is clearly value to be had outside Ireland (as with most things)

sorry to rain on the parade. but HRD certs are not great at all..GIA are excellent.source was several dublin2 jewellery shops.and much research. for me to have travelled overseas to buy a diamond, i woud have to buy flights and accomodation for a night.this is a cost.then i would feel under pressure to buy a diamond, and i dont want to be rushed. and business being business i know i will be shown the poor quaility H SI. Two H si rings can be very different. one can have the Si at the edge and the other in the centre of a stone.the problem is your trusting some guy in another country who you have never met.Then if there is a problem with the ring/stone, you are stuck. more flights over to try solve problem , and i'd bet my life that the guy could be difficult.so no come back. but in dublin i get on a bus and walk in to the shop and get dealt with buy people who are locals. also a diamond ring needs to be professionally cleaned say once a year.most of the jewellers offer that service free of charge .but if i bought in belgium i'd have to fly over and incurr more costs. so i dont see this clear value. i see €400 for his and her flights, €200 for a nights hotel. handing a man in a different country a€5200 ,feeling slightly rushed, with real problems if there is a problem. getting sold the runt of the diamond litter (and never really knowing it-there are scandals about companys forging certs too) . no come back. no after sales service. as for your valuation, i dont know who did it.but the ring harold offered, i priced identical for 5900 in a city centre shop. thats not 3 times higher.no where sold a 1ct h si for 15000!! any how i dont want to be a spoil sport.its just i felt for us the big rip off is to go overseas.

With all due respect, your "sources" are the Dublin 2 jewellery shops which people are travelling overseas to avoid. They are hardly a source of impartial advice. I can only relay my own experience. I am saving 20% by buying the ring in Antwerp. I have also been told that by paying cash I will save more. This is after extensive research and is based on the same rings with the same specs.

hi Andy.
your not saving.with respect...
if you buy a 6000 ring in dublin, your saying a 20% saving means it costs 5000.so you save a 1000euro.but you have to flight 400euro hotel 200euro.and you loose out on free yearly cleaning, and the diamonds loose and something wrong- another flight over cost and hotel!
but read what i wrote.you have no come back.as i mentioned two H si diamond rings can be completly different.what makes you think that what some one in antwerp says is more creditable.this is like the irish travelling to budapest to but property.they get sold at a special irish price.you travelling to antwerp will be sold the DUD diamond. and when you go and complain andy, or when you try take legal action your solicitor will tell you not to bother.
plus you have NO after sales service.
after the house , and car, the next big purchase is diamond jewellery.and you have know idea what your staring at.a very small sparkly thing.
this, i would have thought,is when you would need advise from someone who you can trust.someone who if they sold you a dud you could drive into town and make a scene in there shop and get you solicitor on there case.

and i wouldnt be a fool to give a large ball of money to a overseas shopkeeper.

Hi there...I would disagree and believe that I am saving. Antwerp is the diamond capital of Europe it's not like you're heading to some remote outpost. The jewellers discussed within this thread are part of a "guild" for want a better word and are reliable given the glowing tributes you read.
I have some friends in the business and my mum has good knowledge about jewellery too. Plus I've done a fair bit of research myself. When you analyse it we are talking about a commodity. It isn't like a car, there isn't "depreciation". If you go into one of the better known high end jewellers and pay €10,000 for a diamond ring the real value of the commodity is far less. A second hand ring, or one purchased in Antwerp or South Africa will still cost more than the value of the diamond and the gold but the difference will be nowhere near as large. This is Ireland after all...because of "high costs" - insurance, wages etc everything costs a fortune. Something like cleaning is not relevant, that is not a big deal.
As for the morals of the jeweller, in my dealings with Phillippe Harold I said I wanted the diamond set in four "prongs"...his advice was that this was unreliable and that 6 was the way to go. I'm impressed by that.
The salient point is that for the same ring, same diamond, same spec, same cert, including flights, hotel etc I will save thousands.

Mrtgbad, can you name the actual source of the info that HRD certs are no good despite every site on diamonds I have checked saying they are well respected. If D2 shops told you this, please name the shop in question and point me to a few sites that go against the overwhelming positive feedback. You must have spotted something very convincing that everyone else has missed, giving the massive amount of thumbs up the HRD certs get online.

My valuation was done here in Dublin (Mods, can I name the shop?) and they just took the ring and the cert, then did their job. For all they knew I had just come from a Grafton street jeweller.

The Antwerp trip isn't for everyone, but from my personal experience it was great fun. Better half got a beautiful ring and we made a weekend out of it. We definitely got value for the whole experience but trying to calculate the saving you make in Antwerp would be different for each person as its based on what you could spend as well as what you would spend, on the ring. And paying in cash gets you a big discount right off the bat.


You seem to be quite sure that Philippe Harold will not afford any comeback in case of a problem, not to mention selling DUD diamonds (I take it you have evidence to support this as well) I'll pop him a mail with a link to this and see what he says. Maybe he'll remember you

I have relatives in the jewellery business. Say that the price mark-up in most jewellers in Ireland in at least 100% and sometimes 200% of wholesale/import cost. The major multiples are the biggest culprits.

hi andy i agree with a lot of what u say.but its riskey buying second hand ring from say auction.you can not grade a diamong in a mount. or the cert may not be for that very stone. or a chip can be hidden under a claw etc so i wouldnt recommend it.but i dont go to antwerp on hoiliday so i do have to build it in to cost and in any case , if you shop around you can get similar prices here.but they have large costs there too in antwerp. ie rents rates insurance, security, safes etc etc harolds advise about 4 claws is not impressive.most large and important diamonds in ireland and europe are set in 4 claws.perfectly safe.he perhaps just had a lot of 6 claw mounts to off load.


hi mouldy.
as i said i had never heard of harold.but when i emailed him he quoted over 5k for a 1ct hsi.you can get in dublin a 1 ct hsi for over 5.in a very high class jwellers maybe you pay more.but no one and i stress this no one sells a 1ct hsi for 15000.so he does not sell jewellery for one third cheaper.
hrd certs in the trade are not as respected as gia.this comes from trade sources and also diamond suppliers.you can have a diamond sent to 2 different companies and each will give a different colour grade.this is fact.some companies are ridget, others are not.it is only a opinion of what they think it is.often diamonds are sent to another company to see if they can get a different grade. i have no idea how harold would treat you if you had a problem. but youd have to take time off, fly over and hope he was in. i have dealt with respectable companies in different lines of business overseas and i have found them to be difficult.they dont answer phones etc with a dublin company you walk in and they sort you out cause you can sue or ruin there reputation. is all this stuff not abvious? but mouldy if your happy with your diamond thats great.you have done well

hi
all the previous comments have been extremely helpful for ring purchasers like myself! iv had a look around dublin earlier, not sure whether these are competitive prices i thought some of the prices weren't too bad but perhaps some of you reading this who have been to Antwerp might give me an idea.

F colour, VS1, 1ct,round 3 stone cluster, platinum band, €4700
F colour, VVS2 .9ct,round 3 stone cluster, platinum band reduced from €5960 to €4470.
E colour, VVS2, .76ct solitare round, platinum band €5k

all certified HRD/IGI/GIA

buying the ring myself but have a fair idea what to get,I have yet to try diamant.ie, visiting them tomorrow but they said all their stuff is made to order from Antwerp so mightnt have much on display

thanks for any feedback!!