Leibish & Co. is a high-end diamond retailer shop. In this review, we’ll cover everything you need to know about them including:
- Who is Leibish & Co.?
- What makes Leibish & Co. unique?
- Main features
- Things most people like about them
- Their limitations
- Whether the diamonds in their collection are worth the price or not
Let’s dive right in, shall we?
Leibish & Co. Review
Who Is Leibish & Co.?
As earlier mentioned, Leibish & Co. is a high-end online diamond retailer shop that specializes in producing colored gemstones and fancy colored diamonds.
Currently, most people are always looking for perfect engagement rings and viable colorless diamond alternatives. Leibish & Co. have a wide range of colored diamonds and other different gemstones giving you a variety to choose from.
Leibish & Co. have the largest inventory when it comes to online retailers that sell fancy colored diamonds even though there are few of them in the jewelry industry. This business was founded by Leibish Polnauer in 1979 and they’ve been the major suppliers to retailers across the globe through their website.
Leibish usually operates online in different countries. You can view their diamond collection at any of their main office.
What Makes them Unique?
This has to be the most frequently asked question about Leibish & Co. There are two things that make Leibish stand out from the rest:
- They’re relatively cheaper than other specialty retailers.
- They’re the high end online diamond retailers selling high-quality gemstones and fancy colored diamonds.
Let’s get into the details, shall we?
What Are Gemstones and Untreated Natural Diamonds?
It goes without saying that there are plenty of online jewelers. However, only a small fraction of online diamond retailers carry fancy colors and most of them sell colorless diamonds. I did a little digging on Blue Nile’s and James Allen’s colored diamonds.
Blue Nile carries traditional diamond colors such as yellow, pink and blue. James Allen, on the other hand, offers a wide range of colors albeit with few shades under each one of them. They both have lots of lab created and natural fancy yellow diamonds in their inventory.
Leibish & Co. only carries natural colored diamonds. They’re equally untreated. Not only are color treatments common but they also the price of diamonds cheaper. Natural diamonds can still be color treated. However, there are no color treated diamonds at Leibish.
Leibish is famous for their Argyle pink and canary yellow diamonds. Save for the colored diamonds, their gemstone collection is also extensive. The company carries uncommon loose colored gemstones like topaz, tanzanite, aquamarine rings and spinel.
All the diamonds and gemstones at Leibish & Co. are usually sourced conflict-free and responsibly.
Shopping Experience at Leibish & Co.
Here’s what to expect when you go shopping for gemstones at Leibish & Co. This is how the entire process goes. However, there are items that take longer than other although the entire shopping process can be pretty easy.
Choosing Loose Gemstones
As earlier mentioned, Leibish & Co. tend to focus on diamond colors and there’s a wide variety to choose from. The company has 14 different categories of diamond colors. However, some diamonds overlap to other categories depending on the hue. For instance, the Argyle collection crosses with pink and red diamond colors.
Currently, Leibish & Co. carries more than 3,000 fancy colored diamonds and 1400 of them or thereabout are at least a carat. You should always go for colored diamonds although they also have colorless options. Getting a colorless diamond from Leibish beats the purpose of shopping there in the first place.
They also have different options for those who don’t like very bright fancy colored diamonds. You can scour through their black diamonds, milky white diamonds and gray diamonds – that you shouldn’t confuse with salt and pepper diamond. Black diamonds are best suited for those who are looking for something dramatic.
You can narrow down your selection on the filter bar and choose your preferred gemstone based on hues, intensities and 4Cs. In our case, we’ll go with the canary yellow diamond. In most circles, canary is usually a term used to describe yellow diamonds. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the term is official as per the GIA standards.
Those who are conversant with yellow diamond jewelry pieces can only work with high intensity diamonds like canary yellow. All the diamonds at Leibish have an advanced 360 degrees video although it’s not controllable. Quite a bummer!
Most people like to see how the diamond hits the light to ensure that the clarity is good enough. Fortunately, diamonds have great clarity color including the I1. What’s more, Leibish always issues certificates for their gemstones.
Leibish gemstones can be certified by GIA, EGL, HRD, IGI and AGS. Plus, customers are allowed to request an appraisal for the diamond in question alongside the certificate for free. GIA graduate gemologist does the appraisal to help you insure your fine jewelry or engagement ring.
Leibish can also send the diamond to GIA grading at an extra cost of $150 upon request. GIA is one of the best institutions in the world. They have a reliable customer service as well that you can get in touch with via email, phone and live chat.
International callers can reach them too through their phone number. You can only use the lie chat feature within the set business hours while the return time on emails is 24hrs. All their international offices have contact info’s.
Choosing the Setting
We went for a 1.1 carat radiant cut fancy yellow diamond with a VVS2 clarity grade and GIA certificate. Yellow diamond rings look better with fancy diamond shapes. Round shapes, on the other hand, tend to detract from the actual color of the diamond color.
RECOMMENDED: What Are VVS Diamonds?
After choosing the color of the diamond, you can either add it to pendant or ring settings. You can buy colored diamonds on their own especially if you want a setting somewhere else. They have more than 100 setting options and most of them accommodate radiant cut diamonds.
They have very unique ring settings but it all narrows down to personal preference and taste. In our case, we went for the carriage halo diamond ring and the cost of the ring setting was about $3,000.
At this point, you can comfortably hit the checkout page because you already have a breakdown of the total cost. It’s clearly displayed to avoid any confusions. Besides, you can get a mockup piece at no extra cost.
Purchase Process
You’ll need to fill out your contact info once you put add the diamond ring into the cart. You can create an account as well. They give you three payment options including using PayPal, debit/credit card and financing payments to Split per month.
They ship all orders for free. It takes a couple of weeks to set the diamond ring and ship after buying a ring setting. However, it takes 3 to 5 business days after receiving payment to ship a gemstone. If you can’t wait that long, you’ll appreciate their 48 hour shipping collection. Plus, they offer overnight shipping for those in the US.
Return Process
Leibish has a 30-day return policy on their engagement rings. There’s a form below the returns section of the footer on their website if you want to get started on the return process.
What Most People Don’t Like About Leibish & Co.
After covering what makes Leibish & Co. stand out from the rest of online diamond retailers let’s now look at some of its limitations.
Best Selection
Leibish & Co. has one of the best selections in the world. Plus, they have the largest collection of gemstones and colored diamonds that you’ll ever see online. Blue Nile and James Allen have a wide variety of fancy colored diamonds but they can’t compare.
You can easily tell that they’re high-grade gemstones at first sight which justifies the high prices. Just like Leibish, Blue Nile and James Allen also don’t carry semi-precious stones.
Free Appraisals
You can request an appraisal when you buy a gemstone at Leibish & Co upon request for free. Most people tend to confuse an appraisal for a GIA certificate. Grading reports and diamond certificates usually help examine the quality of the diamond as per the 4Cs standards.
A diamond appraiser can use the certificate to get the value of your engagement ring. Plus, the appraisal is quite handy especially when it comes to jewelry insurance. Unlike Leibish, their counterparts only give their clients grading reports. Fortunately, some jewelry insurance companies have partnered with online diamond retailers.
Leibish & Co. makes protecting your ring a lot easier when you get it from them.
Loyalty Program
Leibish & Co. has a loyalty program for their customers. For every $100 that you spend on any gemstone, you get to earn 5 points. You’ll get 100 points when you sign up for the loyalty program.
Save for signing up to the program and buying something, there are other different ways to earn points including site reviews and 150 extra points on your anniversary and birthday. They are still working on diversify the entire loyalty program.
You can redeem the points for a significant percentage of the retail price. However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows since you have to be a regular shopper at the company to enjoy these benefits. Who knows? You might find yourself buying regularly at Leibish after going through this detailed review because anything is possible.
Leibish & Co. Limitations
All online diamond stores come with their fair share of limitations and Leibish & Co. is no exception. Here are a few things that the company should improve on to better serve their clients:
Ring Settings
Their collection of untreated fancy colored diamonds is worth the price owing to their rarity. Leibish & Co. offer very expensive ring settings as compared too other online diamond retailers. The offered ring settings are anything but simple!
Most of their ring settings are different icy designs with sparkle and accent diamonds. The 18K gold and more than $1000 is one of their cheapest solitaire ring settings. Solitaire ring settings come in different variations including the marquise bezel set engagement ring as shown below:
However, the ring settings a bit mediocre. This is because they don’t appeal to the general population but specific people. Thankfully, you can choose to go for a colored gemstone or diamond. Their ring setting is nothing to write home about so you’ll have to manage your expectations because they don’t run the show.
Leibish & Co. Pricing
Fancy colored diamonds are quite rare owing to the conditions that need to happen deeper in the earth for them to be produced. Gemstones of rare colors, such as pink diamonds and blue diamonds, are usually expensive compared to colorless diamonds. That’s why most people go for lab created diamonds.
The cost of colored lab created diamonds is almost the same as that of their eye-clean colorless counterparts. A heart cut blue diamond costs $9,000 at Leibish & Co. and has a 360-degrees video. You can also find the same diamond at one of their competitor stores, Brian Gavin Diamonds at $11, 375 except without the video.
However, the GIA reports are similar.
The diamond comparisons vary from one company to the other. However, the price difference between the diamond from Leibish & Co. and Brian Gavin Diamonds is about $3,000. Outrageous, isn’t it? At this time, it narrows to personal preference, where would you rather buy from?
Final Thoughts – Leibish & Co. Review
If you’re looking for fancy colored diamonds, Leibish & Co. is the way to go! This is because their inventory of assorted gemstones and fancy colored diamonds is incomparable.
Here’s a recap of some of the reasons you need to buy your gemstones from Leibish & Co.:
- Free appraisals
- 360-degrees video
- Great reputation
- They offer GIA certificates for their colored gemstones
- Their fancy colored diamonds have not been subjected to any kind of treatment
- Their colored diamonds and gemstones come in a range of colors
- They sell semi-precious loose gemstones
Leibish & Co. has an edge over other online diamond retailers especially when it comes to colored diamonds and high-quality gemstones. You should try them!