Buying an engagement ring online safely

Look for a registered company name, a physical address you can find on a map, and staff who are named. A shop with a street you can walk down has something to lose. Trade association membership, a long-standing domain and consistent details across the site are all supporting evidence.

We are a Dutch family business trading since 1973, with our own workshop and physical stores in the Netherlands, and our gemologist and goldsmiths are the people who handle every piece before it ships.

Photographs are chosen. A live video call is not. Ask the seller to take the ring to daylight and show you the hallmark, the back of the setting, the culet of the center stone, and any wear on the claws or the shank. If a seller will not do that, that is your answer.

Every piece here can be shown on a private video viewing before you buy anything, and you can ask the jeweler on the call whatever you like, including what they would change about the ring.

A trustworthy antique listing tells you what is known and admits what is not. Circa dating should be given as a range with a reason behind it, condition should be described including the flaws, and hallmarks should be photographed rather than merely transcribed.

Be wary of absolute claims about things that genuinely cannot be verified for an antique: an exact year of manufacture, the original owner, or a mine of origin for a century-old stone. On our pages, a field we have not verified is left blank or marked as not specified rather than filled in.

The important details are the window, who pays return shipping, whether the refund covers the full purchase price, and whether resizing voids anything. A policy that reads well but requires you to pay international return freight on a five-figure ring is not much of a policy.

Ours is 30 days from delivery, with free insured return shipping within the US and a full refund of the purchase price.

This is where transatlantic purchases go wrong. If a seller ships from Europe without paying duties, the courier can present you with an import bill before they hand the parcel over, and that bill can be substantial on a ring.

Ask explicitly whether the price is delivered duty paid. Every price on this site is: shipping to the US is free and fully insured, and import duties and taxes are already inside the number you see.

For a significant ring you should expect a written record of what you bought. Ours ships with a detailed valuation & authenticity report prepared by our gemologist, with photographs, full specifications and a dated value, at no charge on pieces above $5,000. Your insurer will usually want exactly that.

For modern certified stones, a laboratory report is normal. For antique stones set in a period mount, removing the stone to certify it is often not sensible, and a good seller will explain why rather than promise a certificate they cannot produce.

Use a payment method with buyer protection. Card payments, PayPal and Apple Pay all leave a route back if something goes wrong; a direct bank transfer to an account name that does not match the business does not.

Our checkout runs through Mollie, a regulated European payment provider, and we never see or store your card details.