Leibish & Co Review – The Fancy Colored Diamond Specialist

In recent years, the jewelry market has seen increasing applications of fancy color diamonds in fine jewelry and engagement rings.

One of the reasons behind the rising popularity of colored diamonds is that they offer consumers a stylish and attractive way to make jewelry pieces stand out.

So, if you are in the market for fancy colored diamond jewelry, where do you even start looking?

Who can you trust to reliably commission a piece of high quality jewelry?

From my first-hand experience of buying a diamond ring from them, I can tell you that Leibish & Co is one of the best retailers specializing in fancy color diamonds. Period.

In this review, you will read about my personal experience and discover why they are so highly rated when you see the finished piece of jewelry…

Overview of Leibish & Company Ltd

Founded in 1979, Leibish & Co. is a family run business which has grown to become a leading supplier in colored diamonds (for both businesses and consumers). They are currently headquartered in Israel and have global offices in cities like New York and Hong Kong.

In the industry, Leibish is a highly respected company that participates in various tradeshows and the annual Argyle Pink Diamonds Tender (which is by invite only to selected companies).

At the time of writing this review, Leibish holds more than 1,200 loose color diamonds of different hues, clarities, shapes and sizes. Regardless of your budget, this massive inventory ensures you will find that special stone for that special someone.

Besides knowledgeable consultants that can be contacted via phone calls or live chat, Leibish takes pride in providing timely support to any questions a shopper has.

Based on my personal experience of shopping for an engagement ring at Leibish, I can tell you that their customer service standards are right there at the top.

Leibish & Co. also features a comprehensive library of articles for consumer education that’s a joy to read. From learning to invest in colored diamonds to discovering interesting facts about diamonds, they cover basically everything under the sun.

A Review of Leibish’s Policies

Leibish & Co. offers free worldwide shipping for purchased products on their website. Rest assured your package will be safe and secure because the shipping is fully insured for your protection.

Next, you know you are dealing with a reliable vendor when a business stands behind the quality of their products. Leibish provides a generous 30-day money back guarantee with no questions asked.

That’s how confident they are in their products and they want you to be 100% satisfied with your purchase. On top of that, all purchased items are entitled to a two-year warranty and servicing policy.

As a free value added service, Leibish also provides a professional appraisal report (performed by a trained GIA appraiser) on jewelry purchases.

Leibish & Co has compiled a comprehensive FAQ section where you can quickly find answers to commonly asked questions and get full details of their policies.

So, What Really Makes Leibish a Great Company to Do Business With?

One word: Specialty.

When it comes to buying fancy color diamonds, you definitely want to work with a vendor who has the correct expertise and knowledge.

I will explain this with indepth details later in the review.

First of all, Leibish’s website makes it really easy for users to navigate and search for specific items. By tweaking the search filters, you can narrow down the inventory listing based on your specifications.

Click this link and try out the search functions yourself…

With that, let’s take a closer look at a sample diamond listing. I’ll break down the various parts of the listing information so that you can understand what you are looking at.

View the complete details of the listing here…

Review of a Fancy Vivid Yellow Diamond Listing at Leibish.com

In each listing, you can often find magnified images of the loose diamond captured at various angles and settings. As a shopper, you definitely need to pay attention to these photographs. This is because they provide you with important information like eyecleanliness and the color distribution of the diamond.

Different views of the loose fancy vivid yellow diamond.

Now, let me tell you that photographing colored diamonds isn’t that straightforward. With fancy color diamonds, color is of utmost importance since it directly affects the stone’s appeal and value.

Because of this, good business integrity and photography skills are required to portray the diamonds accurately. And that’s something Leibish does really well.

After making my own purchase from Leibish & Co, I can vouch for the authenticity and accuracy of their imagery. What you see on Leibish’s website is the actual color saturation of the diamond you will receive.

Besides zoomed in photographs, there is also a 360° video button you can use to interact with the loose diamond. This convenient tool allows you to analyze and examine the stone from various angles like a professional.

Intuitive 360° videos at Leibish.com make the shopping experience fun!

Compared to shopping at physical stores, Leibish.com enables a consumer to analyze hundreds of diamonds at the comfort of their homes and away from pressurizing sales people. Besides limited diamond options, there’s no way you get to examine them with indepth details and ease in brick and mortar stores.

Lastly, you can access the grading report by clicking on the “View Report” button. As a savvy shopper, you should only be buying colored diamonds that are reliably graded by GIA and NOT by any other lab.

This will ensure the diamond is 100% natural and that its color has not been obtained via artificial treatments. You need to understand this – Aside from GIA, there’s no other lab that performs up-to-date research or invests in new testing equipment on a scale as they do.

Leibish has one of the largest collections of GIA loose colored diamonds.

Our diamond ring shopping experience with Leibish has been nothing short of being amazing. Whether you are looking for a pink, yellow or orange colored diamond, Leibish.com should be your first stop to check out.

The Secret Sauce Behind Stunning Pieces of Jewelry

Choosing a nice stone is just part of the equation. The other half of the equation lies in the setting to complete the piece of jewelry. This is where experience matters.

Remember when I mentioned earlier in the review that expertise and know-hows are important factors to a piece of well made jewelry? When making a setting to house a colored diamond, you need the correct skills and workmanship to maximize the beauty of the mounted stone.

You see, colored diamonds are cut differently (light physics) to maximize the intensity of their hues and saturation. In order to showcase a fancy color diamond to its full potential, setting them with the right amount of metal and alloy composition matters.

For example, if you are setting a canary (yellow) diamond, you will need the right amount of gold surrounding the stone so that it creates a balanced look and complements its yellow hue.

Notice the use of a cup (or bath) of yellow gold material surrounding the center stones?

To carry this out, jewelry designers at Leibish have to perform a 3-D profiling scan on the diamond before embarking on a custom design cup for each stone. When done correctly, this improves the face up color intensity of the diamond.

For pink diamond rings, a similar process is used as well. Depending on the hue of the diamond, material composition can be altered to achieve the desired tone in rose gold metal (i.e. tweaking the amounts of copper).

Good working knowledge of jewelry materials will enable the designer to augment the color and appearance of the finished ring in a positive manner.

Check out this video of a fancy pink Argyle diamond mounted in a heart shaped halo ring to see an example utilizing the techniques above.

Here’s another example that illustrates the amount of expertise that goes into making a stunning engagement ring. In this case, the rose gold metal takes on a more brownish hue to complement the color of the center stone.

Carefully crafted rose color gold cups to hold the center stone.

Over the years, Leibish & Co Ltd has documented thousands of beautiful colored diamond jewelry they’ve made. You can browse through the finished jewelry pieces here for inspiration and ideas.

Personal Experience of Shopping for an Anniversary Gift at Leibish

For people who are shopping for diamond rings and colored diamond jewelry, I’m sure you are curious about the quality of the jewelry piece you will receive from Leibish.

Well, you are in for a treat as I’m going to perform a full fledged analysis on Leibish’s craftsmanship. This review will be done on a fancy intense yellow halo diamond ring I recently purchased for my wife.

0.66 carat fancy intense yellow cushion shaped diamond in Queen’s halo setting.

Here are the full details of the ring that I bought. Basically, I browsed through the website over the course of a few days to pick out the following diamond and setting.

The listed price of the fancy intense yellow diamond was $3,724.

An exquisite design that’s fit for royalty.

I’ve actually wrote a separate article that shows me unboxing the FedEx parcel that was received. If you are interested about the appearance of Leibish’s packaging and how the contents look like, make sure you check out this blog post.

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Here’s a quick summary of events that transpired during my shopping experience:

16th June 2016: Started browsing on Leibish.com.
20th June 2016: Finalized selection and ring details (size).
23rd June 2016: Full payment made. Submitted proof of identity documents to Leibish.
4th July 2016: Update – ring is currently in the assembly stage.
13th July 2016: Update – ring is currently in the setting stage.
14th July 2016: Ring completed and shipped out. FedEx tracking number received.
16th July 2016: FedEx package arrives!

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Leibish typically take 22 business days to complete a ring fabrication and 2-5 business days for shipping. In my case, it took about 21 days to complete the ring and 2 days for shipping.

*Depending on your choice of ring setting and Leibish’s current workload, your duration may vary.

Throughout the shopping process, I was regularly updated on different production stages of the ring via email. This extra touch of service kept me in the loop about what’s going on and is very much appreciated.

Leibish offers hundreds of stunning ring designs that will take your breath away. Plus, it’s really easy to design your own ring and create a special piece of jewelry. Check them out for yourself here!

Evaluation of Leibish’s Engagement Ring Craftsmanship

If you are observant, you will find that Leibish’s settings are slightly pricey compared to other vendors. However, once you see the meticulous workmanship and attention to details in the setting, you will realize it is worth every cent paid.

18k white gold Queen halo diamond ring crafted with perfection and balance.

When I scrutinize the craftsmanship of a jewelry piece, I generally look at aspects like prong placements, ring finishing, overall balance, shank symmetry, quality of melees used and etc…

In the following image, you can see that the colored prongs are well positioned and equal in size. On top of that, the prongs blend well with the diamond’s hue and contribute to the ring’s face up appearance.

The halo surrounding the center stone is very appealing to look at.

From the side profile view, you can see that the prongs secure the diamond snugly and provide adequate mechanical strength to withstand accidental impacts. In the following image, you can see that significant effort has been placed to get details in the under gallery and bridge correct.

Feel free to compare the images of the ring I bought against those listed by Leibish here. Basically, what you see is what you are going to get. In fact, the ring looks really awesome in real life and I couldn’t be more pleased.

The craftsmen at Leibish also make the extra effort to polish hidden areas. In the next picture, I want to point out how each individual melee is mounted with 4 prongs instead of using shared prongs.

The use of 4 individual prongs will help prevent melees from coming loose.

Many jewelers simply want to save on labor cost and take the easy way out when they mount melees. Leibish clearly isn’t one of them and they make jewelry that will last you a lifetime.

Moving on, I found that the shanks of the ring are clean flowing and very consistent. Another telltale sign of good bench jewelry work is the use of matching melees. In the photograph below, you can see that the melees’ physical dimensions have been carefully selected to create a regular appearance.

The workmanship of a french pave setting can make or break the beauty of the completed ring. When it’s done well, the result will be a ring that will be bursting with life and sparkle. Vice versa, when the workmanship is sloppy, it immediately shows up with irregular profiles and an increased risk of melees coming loose.

After careful examination, I’m glad to say that the French pave setting done on the ring I bought is fantastic. In the side profile close up below, you can see the streamlined curvature of the shanks and the cleanly made French pave.

Click here for a zoomed-in view of the french pave on the shanks.

Do check out other beautiful and original ring setting designs at Leibish.com here. At the time of writing this review, there are more than 250 breathtaking designs that you can personalize and choose from.

Conclusion – 2 Thumbs Up For Leibish Diamonds!

On the whole, I’m very impressed by the overall shopping experience at Leibish & Co.

From responsive customer service to great craftsmanship in the finished ring, the entire process was smooth sailing and enjoyable. If you are contemplating a jewelry project with them, rest assured you will be in safe hands.

Here’s a video of the remarkable anniversary ring and it is a testament to the kind of quality you can expect from them as well.

Lastly, Leibish has one of the largest selections of fancy colored diamonds in the world.

Whether you are a multi-millionaire looking for an investment-grade diamond to buy or someone shopping for an engagement ring with a modest budget (like me), you will be able to find something special that suits your needs.

Check them out for yourself today!

And if you need help with a selection or have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below or email me directly.