L. Priori Jewelry — Local services in Philadelphia

7/5 - Ask for Abby. Yet I’m sure everyone available is competent. Here is why:

In short - Pure magnificence. Got my girl her dream ring custom designed exactly how she imagined it. They offered straight up, obvious solutions with a surplus of options that exceeded my expectations. An enjoyable, great process, and I didn’t feel like I was being ‘sold to’ EVER. I wish everywhere I shopped was like this.

Couldn’t be happier.

By the way, what we ended up purchasing cost 75% less than that with ZERO compromises or sacrifices. Not 10% less, not 25-30%. 75. LESS. Imagine yourself spending 75% less than what you expected to pay after doing initial market research. Incredible. Now I can still afford to eat.

Long explanation: I know nothing about diamonds let alone rings. A quick google search and a few hours of digging, I armed myself with some basic knowledge of how not to get taken advantage of during an engagement ring purchase and decided to take my girlfriend engagement ring window shopping just to see dial in what she likes and thought it would make for a fun date.

After needing a shower from navigating through the filth of jewelers row and other spots in Philadelphia; knowing the little knowledge I’ve acquired from the internet. LP had a cancellation and we were able to slide into an impromptu opening with Abby and check out a few things. She is so thorough, her attention to detail is exceptional. She presented options and we rescheduled to meet in a few weeks to check out a few more specific options of loose stones, and talked about ring setting design. They offer custom ring design and give you a rendering to confirm and then you get a wax 3D print to test fit the stone In after choosing and paying for the stone. We’re picky and wanted to wait for the EXACT stone she wanted. Her dream stone. So it took us a few more tries and Abby had stones imported from all around the world just for us to SEE IF WE LIKED THEM OR NOT. I understand how business works, I own a few, but I wasn't expecting these luxuries whatsoever. I guess you could say it’s expected when spending $$$ on an object but my experience with L Priori contrasts immensely with the other jewelry stores we’ve been to in the Philadelphia area.

After finally dialing in the proper size stone, sifting through sizes, colors, clarities, and shapes, we wanted an oval, but a fat oval. The fattest oval. Obese. Diabetic. Difficult to find - Abby found it in what felt like a few weeks I believe. We confirmed it, Made payment, and moved onto ring design. Wax review took another week or so, it was shipped direct to my house, and my girl got to try it on. We had a small tweak to make and came in to see the stone set inside of it. Loved it. Ended up finalizing the draft and sent the ring into production. Timeline expectations were give to us transparently and yet again expectations were exceeded. You can go through this process as fast or slow as you choose. If you’re picky like us, it may take an extra visit or two. But every step was a fun experience and not stressful in the least bit. I wish I saw a review like this before wasting my time elsewhere. Every aspect of this process has been flawless in my eyes, the staff is friendly, great location and amazing ambience to the store. There are private rooms to discuss design and I was offered refreshments as well. Don’t look anywhere else, there’s no need. As of the time of this review, pricing was aggressively competitive with online loose stone pricing and you’re able to visually see and touch your stone in person before locking it in. That is worth it’s weight 100%. Glad to be a part of the L priori Family! I’m sure I’ll be back. Hopefully not for another...

I came to L Priori initially hoping to exchange a stone on a ring I'd purchased (sort of by mistake, had an unfortunate experience with an instagram-famous artist) and worked with Liz who was very kind. She found a beautiful replacement stone but in the end we decided to create a custom ring instead of exchanging the original stone with the new stone. The original ring cost $3400 and the custom new ring by L Priori was to be $4200 which included the new $1852 (without taxes) pink sapphire. The new ring is gorgeous and I'm writing the review about a year after having the ring created and it is still just as gorgeous. However, I'm not able to give 5 stars for several reasons listed here:

1. When it was determined that we'd be creating a new ring, I asked whether the original ring could be used to discount the price on the new ring since the original was worth $3400 (it had a 14k stamp, I had all of the paperwork that came with it and the website of the original listing was still live). Liz told me that all they'd be able to offer for the original ring was like $80 for the melted down gold and that it is standard jeweler practice to not "buy back" gems other than diamonds. While I understand that this might be the case and I unfortunately was still pretty inexperienced in the jewelry game at this point (ie, didn't understand that since the paperwork was from the artist's own certification and wasn't GIA/IGI certification, it might be considered of less value), I still had the receipts to prove I'd bought the original ring for that price and the original listing was still live and has actually, honest to god, only doubled in price. This was definitely a bummer and still doesn't make a ton of sense to me to this day, but I ended up selling the original ring on Poshmark for $2k instead so I'm glad I didn't take them up on their offer of $80.
2. Since this purchase with L Priori, I've talked to a range of jewelers from NJ, NYC, Newport, etc. and have learned that a custom lab-grown sapphire would've probably run me a couple hundred dollars instead of the $1852 I was quoted here. I see that L Priori offers lab-grown diamonds and maybe this point wouldn't really matter as much if they don't offer other lab-created gems or if I could be assured what I ended up buying was a natural Ceylon sapphire or something, but see point 3 below
3. Liz was not able to tell me where exactly the new pink stone came from besides it was acquired from another local Philly jeweler, nor was she able to tell me how they verified it was a true sapphire as I was given no certification paperwork on the stone in the end. This also bleeds into point one a bit because I'm still not sure how my purple sapphire was unable to be traded in at all for this process, but then the new pink sapphire somehow cost $1k. Overall, I love the ring, but I don't think I'd do it this way again. Maybe I should've been more firm with my questions at the time, but a lot of what I realized above was very after the fact. I mainly wish I felt like the ring was worth what I ended up paying in the end and that it didn't feel more like an expensive lesson instead. At this point I'm just hoping this review helps others looking to expand their jewelry collection to know ahead of time what questions to ask and how to proceed with price...

Updated 12/2/2020: Please do not waste your time with this "business". I am extremely disappointed after my experience and with their response when I expressed my dissatisfaction.

I had an initial, hour long meeting with Sojeoung Kim yesterday. In advance, I provided her with our budget, required metal due to a severe skin allergy, a digital copy of the GIA cert, that we wanted diamonds as our accent stones, and multiple pictures of what we were looking for with the custom ring. I was as transparent as possible to save time.

Unfortunately, L Priori was not honest. At the end of our hour long meeting, Sojeoung provided a quote that was around 3x higher than our budget. If the requested setting could not be completed within or near our budget by L. Priori that is perfectly fine. However, it should have been communicated prior to setting up a meeting so I did not waste my time.

In response to my unpleasant experience and wasting my time, Li Priori claimed Sojeoung gave me other stone options. She did not. They brought up that Sojeoung offered other metals. She did. However I have a severe skin allergy and selected the metal I did at the advice of my dermatologist. Regardless of L Priori's excuses, I was clear about our expectations and budget prior to even meeting. The required metal alone was almost $1,000 above budget. They claim it would have been difficult to provide a quote ahead of time. That isn't true. Plenty of vendors I am in communication with have been able to.

L. Priori is unprofessional and did not have the decency to take accountability for their error. Their conduct is unacceptable and I will not refer anyone...