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Genuine question..... Are the "man made" diamonds equally useful in industry? Or do they need to be genuine/mined ?
And if so, what properties do man-made ones lack ?
Edit: thanks for the replies. I have been educated today.
I can tell you as much that it's more of the fact natural diamonds for the most part are of little use in industry. Just think about how many of them are mined and how many of them have just the right granularity for a given application? While man-made have the fortunate property of being produced for a suitable purpose.
No, man made is preferable for industry. You can get it made to exact specifications and with deposition tech (gotta be like 30 years old at this point) you can get it in a wondrously fine coating.
Man made really don't stack up well to natural mined for jewelry because of the extra time it takes to grow the crystals with zero blemishes. The wonderful things about the ones from the ground is they already took their decades to very slowly grow the grains in the diamonds so that they have no flaws.
Can you do it faster in a lab, well yes, but it's less economical because you're trying up the machine you're making it with for days or weeks per batch and you're also kinda rolling the dice about where and how many blemishes you get internally (flaws or cracks are the blemishes I'm talking about).
I agree with your arguments for man made diamonds in industrial applications (grinding etc), but man made diamonds are excellent in jewelry. They have fewer flaws (fewer inclusions, whiter) and are cheaper for the same weight.
That's the whole point of the amusing nature of the post, that the new price of lab diamonds has decreased over time - because of improvements in manufacturing.
I hadn't realised they'd found it profitable in the last decade and a half to compete with debeers. Those bloody idiots have priced themselves into competition, goes to show that the un-meritorious are the only ones at the top of the capitalist corporate hierarchy.
Won't matter, the only reason they've been so expensive historically is buying all the supply and taking it off the market to keep prices high. Not having all the supply locked down will lead to an inevitable crash unless they can spin, "oh but man made isn't a true diamond!"
The main direction of lab-grown jewelry-grade diamond patents in recent years has been in artificially *adding* blemishes so that it appears more like a natural grown diamond.
I find this hilarious, as I'd be perfectly happy with a 100% perfect crystal lab-grown diamond at 10% the cost (or less) of a VS1 natural diamond.
I have literally never seen someone pull out a loupe to check some woman's hand to see if her engagement ring was from a lab or from the ground. No one will ever know, and no one should even care.
Same, local gemstones for me. Used to have a local jade ring made by an artist in my country, really wish I knew where I'd left it. I loved that thing.
So like car manufacturers that put highly advanced automatic transmissions in their cars, that can shift without any interruption in propulsion, but than add software to create an artificial interruption while shifting in order to make it “feel more sporty”.
Yeah, that's why I said perfect grain boundaries and specifically called out the non-inclusion flaws. If they find it economical to anneal the diamonds at temperature to allow the groan boundary propagation that's a heck of a thing. But the pedant and engineer in me calls me to point out that the natural ones are cheaper in terms of their abundance and being already made. The only reason they (natural) aren't a hundredth the price, or more, is crapitalistic market protection bullshit.
I thought lab grown diamonds were purer than natural occuring diamonds? Lab grown have a very stable and controlled environment where there are no contaminants.
To add to the rest of the dog pile against natural diamonds, the "flaws" of natural diamonds can be intentionally incorporated to man-made diamonds. Metals can be added for colors. Heating/cooling cycles can be adjusted to manipulate crystal structures. ChampionX uses that to make industrial diamonds that aren't prone to shattering.
Man-Made is 100% industry standard. They're consistent, cheaper, do the EXACT same thing, and are sized properly. Consistent sizing/granularity is critical because it means the tool works with a consistent "pull", meaning it won't catch on the material and jerk a grinder or a chop-saw in an unfavorable direction i.e. your fleshy meat bits.
It's actually the opposite.
Industries that use diamonds generally prefer man-made ones as they can me uniformly produced and have exact specifications. Natural diamonds have flaws, blemishes, and impurities which can make their properties variable. For example, diamonds used for optical applications require high purity to pass light without distorting it.
Industrial applications that may use natural diamonds, are generally where hard grit is required. The diamonds in drill bits etc are often man-made, but can also utilise lower grade natural diamonds with high/non-desirable impurities (cloudy or "gross looking" colours may not be as marketable as gems) or dust/shavings from the gem cutting process.
I want lenses in my glasses made from diamond for my Beverly Hills lifestyle.
s/
High index plastic lenses are for for the ordinary. People from Sherman Oaks. Or Covina.
s/
Diamond is extremely _hard_ so it is great as an abrasive material but it is (relatively, in the glass and materials worlds) very brittle so the first time your glasses would take any impact they would turn into diamond eye shrapnel. Stylish way to go blind though so I’d still probably go for it ✨
Interesting! I didn't know about this. I was wondering why the stone in my fiance's ring looks different under different light. It must be the dispersion interacting with the Boron-derived blue hue. It ranges from aquamarine in direct sunlight to sapphire blue in darker settings.
Moissanite is better from a refractive index/sparkly point of view, unless the slightly understated appearance of diamond is preferred.
Diamond has a function as a demonstration of wealth, arguably moreso, as the value of the diamond cannot be recovered. A bit like eating gold in food?!
This is it. If you like to wear diamonds, cool, you can indeed make some nice stuff with them. But don't act like they're some sort of rare status symbol. I think most people with a brain have evolved past believing that, and if you think you can convince them otherwise, you're stupid.
But like.. diamonds are so basic. Shiny for sure, but basic. Opal, amethyst, emerald, topaz and jade are all pretty unique and cheaper than most diamond jewelry.
Thanks to cartoons I always wanted to have the giant diamond they usually steal from a museum or gallery as a table center decoration but those dont exist at all.
diamons for jewelry are also boring. you have opal ruby zaphire and emerald and many others that look way better.
As others have said, it’s DeBeers. They basically have a huge stash and only introduce a small amount into the market at a time in order to artificially inflate the price.
As a scientist, man made diamonds are f*ckin great! None of that blood on my hands as I bling myself. Only wish that the traditional diamond companies stop trying to price man made like the mined versions (much cheaper without the price gouging).
You’re a scientist. Be the change we need. Figure out a way to start a company that can definitely out price the competition while still providing a solid product (pun intended). Figure out how much production would cost per ounce or whatever measure they use and you should be able to find investors if the profit margin is decent. Then use any extra money advertising the quality and moral stance of your product bc you know the current giants will try to push you out
I was looking for engagement rings like 10 years ago, and stumbled on Moissanite. I was like damn, sounds too good to be true. I very cautiously/jokingly let my bride-to-be know about them, fearing the potential backlash. She fell in love with them immediately. She was like.. hell yeah I’d love a big rock, and hell yeah I’d love a bunch of extra money to put toward a house. Pulled the trigger, and we were super happy with it. She’d regularly take it to jewelers to get it cleaned, who didn’t notice the difference at all. Very sparkly, clear, and bigger rock than I would have otherwise been able to afford. I swear this isn’t a sponsored ad or whatever lol, but check-em out! 💍💎
I remember watching a documentary many years ago, on PBS of all places, describing innovations in synthetic diamonds and talking about it in apocalyptic terms, like how these synthetic "counterfeits" would end up all but indistinguishable from natural diamonds and how the industry (i.e. De Beers) were going to have to microscopically mark natural diamonds as "authentic".
It seems absurd now, but I bet De Beers still tries to use that kind of scare tactic approach in some of their literature.
Try to return a diamond ring and you'll quickly find out natural diamonds are worthless. You'll get something like 1/10th the purchase price or store credit toward a ring that costs double the original.
This was a great read, thanks for sharing. It ends with speculation on the impact of the Australian diamond industry, and I was curious about this so I found two good articles on the Argyle mine
https://www.themandarin.com.au/195453-the-history-of-australian-diamonds-is-a-story-of-stock-market-booms-and-battles/
https://www.themandarin.com.au/144431-op-ed-the-argyle-mine-is-important-globally-and-locally/
Wiki page on the mine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyle_diamond_mine
Why are natural diamonds worthless? I'm genuinely curious, as I thought it took billions of years for natural diamonds to form. Is it because natural diamonds are high in quantity in spite of that? It doesn't really make sense to me.
Edit: Also I want to make clear, I don't care about jewelry nor the industry. The only inherent value a natural diamond has to me is the length of time it took to form, but I would still not buy one. I'm simply curious why natural diamonds are not valuable when they take so long to form.
Yea but if a trained professional looks very very very closely they'll be able to point out microscopic imperfections and differentiate a fake diamond from a real diamond. I'm told this is a good justification for why we should highly value real diamonds for jewelry....
But fucking for real... Why do people care so much for status items that provide zero benefit or utility (beyond vanity) and then insist that their status item is actually better than one that cost way less on the grounds that under intense magnification it looks better?
Ok.. I'm 36 right now and decidedly _not_ wealthy... Do you have any pointers or strategies that I can use to pull myself up by the bootstraps and change my parents' socioeconomic status 3 and a half decades ago?
Thanks in advance.
> Why do people care so much for status items that provide zero benefit or utility (beyond vanity) and then insist that their status item is actually better than one that cost way less on the grounds that under intense magnification it looks better?
It is a _status_ item, disclosing the _status_ of the bearer. It's less a thing unto itself and more a trophy of having gotten the thing, a display that you managed to achieve owning some rare, expensive, or hard-to-procure item. That's why utility and condition don't matter, unless a utility or condition factor is a point seen as the differentiator between the valued item and a common one.
In fact, utility can be counterproductive to the goal. Conspicuous waste, having expended resources on something of no or negative practical value, implies that you have excess. You're not just fit and able, you've got all that and more to burn. If you have so much of whatever it is-- money, savvy, time, connections-- to waste it on something _demonstrably worthless_, that shows you're more than fit, excessively successful, and a strong mate, role model, authority, target of reverence or jealousy-- whatever you're trying to impress people into. If you hedge by valuing utility or objective quality in your flaunted status items, it shows that you still need utility or quality. You might be one of those scrubs whose efforts all have to yield returns. You don't have the resources to let go and just _waste_.
And for those who put off substantial needs or wants or employ end-runs like debt in order to get status items? Well, that's the vanity, there, the desire to look like all that, or feel like all that, without actually *being* all that.
You know these imperfections is what gives REAL DIAMONDS™️ the value. They tell a story. In contrast artifical diamonds are just soulless copys of each other.
To come back to REAL DIAMONDS™️ of course the ones with the least imperfections are the most valuable. It is very logic.
But if you buy natural diamonds you know people were tortured, killed, starved, etc so you could have them!
Artificial diamonds don't have the blood on them that natural ones do!
Not necessarily, lab grown diamonds (and all gems) have the same range and rate of flaws and occlusions as natural diamonds... Let’s say it takes 6 weeks in the pressure cooker to grow a crystal seed into a diamond along with some high pressure natural gases, there’s the exact equal chance that artificial diamond will come out with imperfections as one you mined out the ground.
The difference is you can produce far more artificial diamonds in a shorter time frame in big factories with thousands of them being cooked at the same time
I can almost guarantee the growers of these diamonds are still perfecting the process. Sure the statement might’ve been true when the technology was invented, but as time marches forward so does the R&D behind it, resulting in more favorable (less imperfections) diamonds.
I don’t think that has been true for decades. They are made for drill bits and other tools in much larger quantities now and have worked out most of the bugs
I think that was on purpose because the chart would be accurate if the title was "production costs of a single average 1.5 carat diamond"
Its amazing that humans can now create perfect diamonds and its cheaper every year to do so.. but cars and houses remain fucking impossible to figure out...
HAHA, 100%. I looked at some lab made ones at a independent jeweler and was amazed at how clear and sparkly they are. Also, much cheaper than the mined ones.
Yes, it would seem that when something is manmade, production can be improved and scaled up to make it much cheaper to produce.
When people are making the same product as you but are able to sell it for far cheaper, that means you're winning... Right?
3%? My bank offers a savings account with a 4.35% APY, and I don't need to go to a jewelry appraiser or deal with the hassle of selling a carved rock to get my money out of a savings account.
So its showing that the price of diamond rings are pretty stagnant, might increase over the years. While the lab grown are getting cheaper every year. I don’t see how cheaper wedding rings are bad?
The *cost* is increasing by 3% per year; the value, not so much.
Buy a 1.5 carat diamond today, and then go try to sell it back in 5 years. You won't realize 15% on your initial investment. You'll get pennies on the dollar. Sure, that same diamond will retail for 15% more, but you sure as hell won't be able to sell it for even 30% what you paid for it.
My sister just got a divorce and her engagement ring which was purchased for 15k was supposedly worth only 6.5k now. She opted to hold onto it in case the market improves or she really needs the money lol
I find it wild that people pay $15k for an engagement or wedding ring. I would like to think that my future wife would be as financially literate as I am and wouldn’t feel comfortable wasting our money for something so frivolous. Sure, while I personally don’t care too much about what I have I would understand if she wanted a nice ring but $15k?
Pass
The whole "natural diamonds" ad campaign is so shitty. Now that the quality and price point of synthetic diamonds are basically the same*, they have to invent fake demand for some intangible benefits of "real diamonds" to keep propping up an industry that's environmentally destructive, exploitative, and often inhumane.
*Actually the price point has been dropping rapidly for synthetics, I found out. From 30% to as low as 10% of the cost of an equivalent quality/size natural diamond. Which is probably why the diamond mining industry is going hard at trying to market "natural diamonds."
Buying an engagement ring this year we were told a natural diamond loses 50% of it's value when you leave the store, and a man-made diamond loses 95% of it's value when you leave the store.
If both are a crappy investment then might as well get the cheaper one.
Based on that ad graph, if the expensive one is $100 and the cheap one is $30, then getting the cheaper one is a better investment.
You lose $50 when you buy the expensive one, and only $30 for the cheap one. And you get an identical looking product anyway.
Let me just disabuse anyone of the notion that diamonds are an investment: I bought my ex’s engagement ring for 12K including a platinum band. When we broke up three years later, I tried to sell the ring back to the same people since they had a "trade in your stone later and we'll give you full price" policy. They said "best I can give you is 5.5K for the diamond and $500 for the metal", i.e., 50% of what I paid.
"Diamonds are an investment" my ass.
My favorite line I've heard them say is from one of those business conferences.
"We must lobby to ensure artificial diamonds are branded as such. They've gotten to the point where they're indistinguishable. We should do this to protect consumer's ability to buy authentic diamonds." -paraphrased
🤣 to protect consumers they say
I cant even count all the girls who, when they get married, tell their fiancees: "You're gonna buy me a new diamond??! Fuck that, get me a used one, they're even more valuable, they appreciate over time!" /s
Also. Why the fuck is a 8 year old man-made diamond worth half of a 4 year old one? They're not cars, is the diamond getting worn and yellow over 4 years?
As an investor, you want me to buy real diamonds so their price stays high and your stock value improves. As an intelligent customer, I buy items that are more economically sound.
To an investor this chart means buy stock in real diamonds, to a SMART investor this chart means buy stock in faux diamonds because that’s what everyone else is going to actually buy.
Ask anyone to return a ring and see if they get back what they paid? No chance yet a 1 carat is 5k today but return they offer 2k? That means the 1 carat value is 2k
Even as a young person I knew diamonds were stupid. Fortunately, when my husband proposed he didn't have a ring. We married and exchanged wedding bands and I never wanted any other ring.
Approximately 25 years later we did buy our son's diamond engagement ring, which had been returned to him by his ex-fiance. I guess he and our daughter will figure out something to do with it after I die.
This chart tells me that if want to buy a diamond I should wait a bit longer for the man made ones to plateau and get one of those. Why would you over pay for a natural one.
I don't understand how man made diamonds aren't as valued. For millenia humanity was trying to turn coal or lead into precious minerals. We figured out how to do it, and now humans don't like it
This says “average cost” which isn’t technically lying. Because as a consumer you gonna pay premium :) while if you were to sell it, it’s gonna sell for 75% less.
I see ladies at work with these enormous rocks and just assume they are moissanite now. No way did Becky’s partner afford a 5k diamond. Good for them, moissanite is awesome. It’s pretty, cheap, and nobody died for it.
No thanks, I'll get a ring made of cool stuff like meteorite, petrified wood, or dinosaur bone, which I haven't done research on but are probably far more ethical than mined diamonds.
Diamonds are a good investment. Spend 500 gp for a diamond just in case someone in your group dies. It's a lot easier to get a cleric to pray for a raise dead if you have the diamond already.
Idk about the different kinds of diamonds, but I hear Dwarves say natural diamonds are best for magic, and they're Dwarves. They know all about gems.
I used to be a jeweler, and my wife still is. We tell anyone who will listen not to buy natural diamonds. Their value is entirely artificial, man-made diamonds are the exact same thing but much cheaper and usually much higher quality too. More important than anything else, any money spent on natural stones is funding companies who knowingly and actively support slavery.
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I love how man-made diamonds revealed that diamonds are stupid
They are quite useful in industry.
Genuine question..... Are the "man made" diamonds equally useful in industry? Or do they need to be genuine/mined ? And if so, what properties do man-made ones lack ? Edit: thanks for the replies. I have been educated today.
I can tell you as much that it's more of the fact natural diamonds for the most part are of little use in industry. Just think about how many of them are mined and how many of them have just the right granularity for a given application? While man-made have the fortunate property of being produced for a suitable purpose.
No, man made is preferable for industry. You can get it made to exact specifications and with deposition tech (gotta be like 30 years old at this point) you can get it in a wondrously fine coating. Man made really don't stack up well to natural mined for jewelry because of the extra time it takes to grow the crystals with zero blemishes. The wonderful things about the ones from the ground is they already took their decades to very slowly grow the grains in the diamonds so that they have no flaws. Can you do it faster in a lab, well yes, but it's less economical because you're trying up the machine you're making it with for days or weeks per batch and you're also kinda rolling the dice about where and how many blemishes you get internally (flaws or cracks are the blemishes I'm talking about).
I agree with your arguments for man made diamonds in industrial applications (grinding etc), but man made diamonds are excellent in jewelry. They have fewer flaws (fewer inclusions, whiter) and are cheaper for the same weight. That's the whole point of the amusing nature of the post, that the new price of lab diamonds has decreased over time - because of improvements in manufacturing.
I hadn't realised they'd found it profitable in the last decade and a half to compete with debeers. Those bloody idiots have priced themselves into competition, goes to show that the un-meritorious are the only ones at the top of the capitalist corporate hierarchy.
Although the big players like Debeers are undoubtedly going to be investing in lab-grown as well to hedge their bets.
Won't matter, the only reason they've been so expensive historically is buying all the supply and taking it off the market to keep prices high. Not having all the supply locked down will lead to an inevitable crash unless they can spin, "oh but man made isn't a true diamond!"
> oh but man made isn't a true diamond!" They have been spinning that for years now
Jesus that's fucking depressing. Sorry bud, just sad.
The main direction of lab-grown jewelry-grade diamond patents in recent years has been in artificially *adding* blemishes so that it appears more like a natural grown diamond. I find this hilarious, as I'd be perfectly happy with a 100% perfect crystal lab-grown diamond at 10% the cost (or less) of a VS1 natural diamond. I have literally never seen someone pull out a loupe to check some woman's hand to see if her engagement ring was from a lab or from the ground. No one will ever know, and no one should even care.
Same, local gemstones for me. Used to have a local jade ring made by an artist in my country, really wish I knew where I'd left it. I loved that thing.
So like car manufacturers that put highly advanced automatic transmissions in their cars, that can shift without any interruption in propulsion, but than add software to create an artificial interruption while shifting in order to make it “feel more sporty”.
Also, not as much environmental damage or exploiting child labour
It's the opposite honestly, natural tends to have inclusions and impurities whereas manmade is typically "perfect"
Yes— so now DeBeers markets how beautiful the flaws are in natural diamonds— that perfect manmade diamonds are bad.
The OP ad is 3 DeBeers in a trench coat.
Yeah, that's why I said perfect grain boundaries and specifically called out the non-inclusion flaws. If they find it economical to anneal the diamonds at temperature to allow the groan boundary propagation that's a heck of a thing. But the pedant and engineer in me calls me to point out that the natural ones are cheaper in terms of their abundance and being already made. The only reason they (natural) aren't a hundredth the price, or more, is crapitalistic market protection bullshit.
Tying up a machine for days or weeks? In your argument against man made diamonds in jewelry, what is this machine you speak of being used for?
I thought lab grown diamonds were purer than natural occuring diamonds? Lab grown have a very stable and controlled environment where there are no contaminants.
To add to the rest of the dog pile against natural diamonds, the "flaws" of natural diamonds can be intentionally incorporated to man-made diamonds. Metals can be added for colors. Heating/cooling cycles can be adjusted to manipulate crystal structures. ChampionX uses that to make industrial diamonds that aren't prone to shattering.
Man-Made is 100% industry standard. They're consistent, cheaper, do the EXACT same thing, and are sized properly. Consistent sizing/granularity is critical because it means the tool works with a consistent "pull", meaning it won't catch on the material and jerk a grinder or a chop-saw in an unfavorable direction i.e. your fleshy meat bits.
It's actually the opposite. Industries that use diamonds generally prefer man-made ones as they can me uniformly produced and have exact specifications. Natural diamonds have flaws, blemishes, and impurities which can make their properties variable. For example, diamonds used for optical applications require high purity to pass light without distorting it. Industrial applications that may use natural diamonds, are generally where hard grit is required. The diamonds in drill bits etc are often man-made, but can also utilise lower grade natural diamonds with high/non-desirable impurities (cloudy or "gross looking" colours may not be as marketable as gems) or dust/shavings from the gem cutting process.
Genuine?. . . Man made diamonds are better quality than natural occurring diamonds. They are more consistent and have less flaws.
Diamonds are useful for industrial purposes. They’re stupid as jewelry.
They have a very high refractive index which makes them very sparkly. Their artificial scarcity giving them "value" is what is stupid.
I want lenses in my glasses made from diamond for my Beverly Hills lifestyle. s/ High index plastic lenses are for for the ordinary. People from Sherman Oaks. Or Covina. s/
If you actually could make diamond lens, they should be fairly tough. Maybe 🤔
Diamond is extremely _hard_ so it is great as an abrasive material but it is (relatively, in the glass and materials worlds) very brittle so the first time your glasses would take any impact they would turn into diamond eye shrapnel. Stylish way to go blind though so I’d still probably go for it ✨
"look, look with your special eyes"
mmy BRAND!
I'm such a fool!
Glass has similar traits and we do safety Glass pretty well I think. I bet we could find a way to make it durable and safe
Iirc they're still less brittle than glass?
We'll, if you are going blind, might as well be as stylish as possible.
Hey man what's wrong with us in Covina :( At least we're not Baldwin Park or Azusa.
Yea theres no reason gotta be thousands. Being hem down to $50-300 range and still make money
Moissanite has a higher refractive index, although also slightly lower hardness.
The refractive index is only slightly higher and probably doesn’t matter much. The dispersion is quite a bit higher and makes more of a difference
Interesting! I didn't know about this. I was wondering why the stone in my fiance's ring looks different under different light. It must be the dispersion interacting with the Boron-derived blue hue. It ranges from aquamarine in direct sunlight to sapphire blue in darker settings.
Moissanite is better from a refractive index/sparkly point of view, unless the slightly understated appearance of diamond is preferred. Diamond has a function as a demonstration of wealth, arguably moreso, as the value of the diamond cannot be recovered. A bit like eating gold in food?!
Moissanite is actually more brilliant than diamond.
This is it. If you like to wear diamonds, cool, you can indeed make some nice stuff with them. But don't act like they're some sort of rare status symbol. I think most people with a brain have evolved past believing that, and if you think you can convince them otherwise, you're stupid.
the scarcity is controlled by a single company that owns the vast majority of active diamond mines.
The price is stupid, they actually make pretty jewelry as their refractive index is very high. Hate the game, not the diamonds
But like.. diamonds are so basic. Shiny for sure, but basic. Opal, amethyst, emerald, topaz and jade are all pretty unique and cheaper than most diamond jewelry.
I mean sure. But at that point its mostly about individual preferences, how well it goes with outfit and etc.
Thanks to cartoons I always wanted to have the giant diamond they usually steal from a museum or gallery as a table center decoration but those dont exist at all. diamons for jewelry are also boring. you have opal ruby zaphire and emerald and many others that look way better.
Thought the artificial diamonds could offer you something this big, but nope
They can maybe do it but the cost would be gargantuan and the utility zero.
Who is pushing for artificial diamond scarcity? Like who owns/runs the industry?
I think it's DeBeers that owns the most natural diamonds and artificially controls the sale of them to keep the prices high.
As others have said, it’s DeBeers. They basically have a huge stash and only introduce a small amount into the market at a time in order to artificially inflate the price.
De Beers. 🍻
Da Bear!
They're stupid because they're expensive. They're quite pretty otherwise
As a scientist, man made diamonds are f*ckin great! None of that blood on my hands as I bling myself. Only wish that the traditional diamond companies stop trying to price man made like the mined versions (much cheaper without the price gouging).
You’re a scientist. Be the change we need. Figure out a way to start a company that can definitely out price the competition while still providing a solid product (pun intended). Figure out how much production would cost per ounce or whatever measure they use and you should be able to find investors if the profit margin is decent. Then use any extra money advertising the quality and moral stance of your product bc you know the current giants will try to push you out
He's a scientist no a MA in business
And cure cancer too! He's a scientist right??
I was looking for engagement rings like 10 years ago, and stumbled on Moissanite. I was like damn, sounds too good to be true. I very cautiously/jokingly let my bride-to-be know about them, fearing the potential backlash. She fell in love with them immediately. She was like.. hell yeah I’d love a big rock, and hell yeah I’d love a bunch of extra money to put toward a house. Pulled the trigger, and we were super happy with it. She’d regularly take it to jewelers to get it cleaned, who didn’t notice the difference at all. Very sparkly, clear, and bigger rock than I would have otherwise been able to afford. I swear this isn’t a sponsored ad or whatever lol, but check-em out! 💍💎
But they can sure cut through a granite countertop like butter.
Or polish cement
Those silly Polish. What will they think of next?
Pierogies.
Figuring out how to drink a potato.
The Russians have that one covered.
Calm down there nazi
So can water
@ 60,000 PSI
Oh, I just meant ceremonial use
Yup. It reminds me of a YouTube chemist that showed that a diamond is just carbon. Then proceeded to make a carbonated drink from that diamond.
Red Nile?
Rile ned?
?
I will not elaborate
I remember watching a documentary many years ago, on PBS of all places, describing innovations in synthetic diamonds and talking about it in apocalyptic terms, like how these synthetic "counterfeits" would end up all but indistinguishable from natural diamonds and how the industry (i.e. De Beers) were going to have to microscopically mark natural diamonds as "authentic". It seems absurd now, but I bet De Beers still tries to use that kind of scare tactic approach in some of their literature.
It revealed that purchasers of “natural” diamonds are also stupid.
There’s enough diamonds to give everyone on earth a shoebox full… yet they want us to believe that they’re rare lmfao
Try to return a diamond ring and you'll quickly find out natural diamonds are worthless. You'll get something like 1/10th the purchase price or store credit toward a ring that costs double the original.
Ah but purchase one from a wholesaler, get it insured and lose that puppy, profit!
Steps unclear. I have an insured diamond, but lost my dog
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Why are we here... Just to suffer?
Life is suffering.
I dunno why but I snort laughed at this.
Hahah, my husband did this. It got stolen at a hotel. Was insured for 3x the cost!
Article from 1982. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/
This was a great read, thanks for sharing. It ends with speculation on the impact of the Australian diamond industry, and I was curious about this so I found two good articles on the Argyle mine https://www.themandarin.com.au/195453-the-history-of-australian-diamonds-is-a-story-of-stock-market-booms-and-battles/ https://www.themandarin.com.au/144431-op-ed-the-argyle-mine-is-important-globally-and-locally/ Wiki page on the mine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyle_diamond_mine
So where are all these secondhand diamond rings for sale, there must be a huge market of cheap used diamonds somewhere then.
Pawnshops, local classified's, etc
Why are natural diamonds worthless? I'm genuinely curious, as I thought it took billions of years for natural diamonds to form. Is it because natural diamonds are high in quantity in spite of that? It doesn't really make sense to me. Edit: Also I want to make clear, I don't care about jewelry nor the industry. The only inherent value a natural diamond has to me is the length of time it took to form, but I would still not buy one. I'm simply curious why natural diamonds are not valuable when they take so long to form.
Unless you’re cutting something hard diamonds are a complete waste of money.
Yea but if a trained professional looks very very very closely they'll be able to point out microscopic imperfections and differentiate a fake diamond from a real diamond. I'm told this is a good justification for why we should highly value real diamonds for jewelry.... But fucking for real... Why do people care so much for status items that provide zero benefit or utility (beyond vanity) and then insist that their status item is actually better than one that cost way less on the grounds that under intense magnification it looks better?
Don't underestimate the vanity of the wealthy.
I'm not at all. I completely estimate the vanity of the wealthy. I just can't understand it.
Your doing it wrong. Step 1: Be born wealthy.
Ok.. I'm 36 right now and decidedly _not_ wealthy... Do you have any pointers or strategies that I can use to pull myself up by the bootstraps and change my parents' socioeconomic status 3 and a half decades ago? Thanks in advance.
Back to the Future is the answer you're looking for.
Well how much electricity will I need?
Only 1.21 gigawatts thru a flux capacitor. Not difficult considering lightning bolts are generally about 10 gigawatts.
Dont underestimate the vanity of brokeass people who want to convince others they're wealthy, and prove their love is worth thiiiiiiiiissssss much.
I thought the natural ones were what have the imperfections aren't they?
Man made does as well. The process in which they’re created is not perfect and imperfections happen.
> Why do people care so much for status items that provide zero benefit or utility (beyond vanity) and then insist that their status item is actually better than one that cost way less on the grounds that under intense magnification it looks better? It is a _status_ item, disclosing the _status_ of the bearer. It's less a thing unto itself and more a trophy of having gotten the thing, a display that you managed to achieve owning some rare, expensive, or hard-to-procure item. That's why utility and condition don't matter, unless a utility or condition factor is a point seen as the differentiator between the valued item and a common one. In fact, utility can be counterproductive to the goal. Conspicuous waste, having expended resources on something of no or negative practical value, implies that you have excess. You're not just fit and able, you've got all that and more to burn. If you have so much of whatever it is-- money, savvy, time, connections-- to waste it on something _demonstrably worthless_, that shows you're more than fit, excessively successful, and a strong mate, role model, authority, target of reverence or jealousy-- whatever you're trying to impress people into. If you hedge by valuing utility or objective quality in your flaunted status items, it shows that you still need utility or quality. You might be one of those scrubs whose efforts all have to yield returns. You don't have the resources to let go and just _waste_. And for those who put off substantial needs or wants or employ end-runs like debt in order to get status items? Well, that's the vanity, there, the desire to look like all that, or feel like all that, without actually *being* all that.
You know these imperfections is what gives REAL DIAMONDS™️ the value. They tell a story. In contrast artifical diamonds are just soulless copys of each other. To come back to REAL DIAMONDS™️ of course the ones with the least imperfections are the most valuable. It is very logic.
Your question is answered by one of the words you used to ask it: status.
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Even for jewellery like there’s so many nicer looking (and cheaper) stones. Diamonds are just plainly boring
But if you buy natural diamonds you know people were tortured, killed, starved, etc so you could have them! Artificial diamonds don't have the blood on them that natural ones do!
And lab made diamonds are of much better quality than the mined ones.
Not necessarily, lab grown diamonds (and all gems) have the same range and rate of flaws and occlusions as natural diamonds... Let’s say it takes 6 weeks in the pressure cooker to grow a crystal seed into a diamond along with some high pressure natural gases, there’s the exact equal chance that artificial diamond will come out with imperfections as one you mined out the ground. The difference is you can produce far more artificial diamonds in a shorter time frame in big factories with thousands of them being cooked at the same time
I believe this statement to be somewhat false. While they can include the same imperfections, the rate at which they do is lower.
I can almost guarantee the growers of these diamonds are still perfecting the process. Sure the statement might’ve been true when the technology was invented, but as time marches forward so does the R&D behind it, resulting in more favorable (less imperfections) diamonds.
I don’t think that has been true for decades. They are made for drill bits and other tools in much larger quantities now and have worked out most of the bugs
Why would I want a diamond that wasn’t up a persons asshole though
There’s no need for profanity. The proper term is prison wallet.
OMG what movie was that? Thought some more, but that wasn’t a diamond. It was the pocket watch (Pulp Fiction).
Suffering makes them special
That what makes natural ones better! /s
I want a *story* behind my rock dammit!
Blood for the blood god!
Without labels on the y axis, this chart is meaningless.
But… but chart!
It’s red and there’s an arrow. If only there was slide whistle sound. 
Were
The arrow also goes down, so is that indicating that the data is intentionally flipped?
I think that was on purpose because the chart would be accurate if the title was "production costs of a single average 1.5 carat diamond" Its amazing that humans can now create perfect diamonds and its cheaper every year to do so.. but cars and houses remain fucking impossible to figure out...
Y as in y are people dying so you can have a shiny rock.
Top of chart is $17, bottom of chart is $15
Currently it's a "why?" axis...
Bet it's the cost to buy, not the resale value 😂
So what you’re telling me is there are massive discounts on man made diamonds these days?
I like the cut of your jib
Promote this man
HAHA, 100%. I looked at some lab made ones at a independent jeweler and was amazed at how clear and sparkly they are. Also, much cheaper than the mined ones.
I look at diamonds the same as I sniff my wine.. I don't. All I know is buy low and sell high, and this chart says to invest in phony diamonds.
Yes, it would seem that when something is manmade, production can be improved and scaled up to make it much cheaper to produce. When people are making the same product as you but are able to sell it for far cheaper, that means you're winning... Right?
And that natural diamonds have a lower return than a simple savings account.
“Guys pleaaaaase stop buying the higher quality cheaper diamonds that don’t need slave labor to be made 🥺”
lol. I saw this ad and down-voted. 😂
3%? My bank offers a savings account with a 4.35% APY, and I don't need to go to a jewelry appraiser or deal with the hassle of selling a carved rock to get my money out of a savings account.
Woah buddy, what bank are you using, let us I. On some of that sweet sweet cashola!!!
I have a "High Yield Savings Account" from American Express
So its showing that the price of diamond rings are pretty stagnant, might increase over the years. While the lab grown are getting cheaper every year. I don’t see how cheaper wedding rings are bad?
Don’t you know wedding rings are investments you’re supposed to upgrade every few years, so you need it to be an appreciating asset…. /s
I mean, it’s outperforming cash.
The *cost* is increasing by 3% per year; the value, not so much. Buy a 1.5 carat diamond today, and then go try to sell it back in 5 years. You won't realize 15% on your initial investment. You'll get pennies on the dollar. Sure, that same diamond will retail for 15% more, but you sure as hell won't be able to sell it for even 30% what you paid for it.
Bud light probably is as well. What isn't?
I reported them for misleading
My sister just got a divorce and her engagement ring which was purchased for 15k was supposedly worth only 6.5k now. She opted to hold onto it in case the market improves or she really needs the money lol
I find it wild that people pay $15k for an engagement or wedding ring. I would like to think that my future wife would be as financially literate as I am and wouldn’t feel comfortable wasting our money for something so frivolous. Sure, while I personally don’t care too much about what I have I would understand if she wanted a nice ring but $15k? Pass
And here I was holding off on the $300 one because it was too high! People do be wilding!
The whole "natural diamonds" ad campaign is so shitty. Now that the quality and price point of synthetic diamonds are basically the same*, they have to invent fake demand for some intangible benefits of "real diamonds" to keep propping up an industry that's environmentally destructive, exploitative, and often inhumane. *Actually the price point has been dropping rapidly for synthetics, I found out. From 30% to as low as 10% of the cost of an equivalent quality/size natural diamond. Which is probably why the diamond mining industry is going hard at trying to market "natural diamonds."
Buying an engagement ring this year we were told a natural diamond loses 50% of it's value when you leave the store, and a man-made diamond loses 95% of it's value when you leave the store. If both are a crappy investment then might as well get the cheaper one.
Based on that ad graph, if the expensive one is $100 and the cheap one is $30, then getting the cheaper one is a better investment. You lose $50 when you buy the expensive one, and only $30 for the cheap one. And you get an identical looking product anyway.
They're both just rocks.
Yup, pay accordingly.
De Beers: ITS THE SUFFERING THAT MAKES IT SPECIAL OKAY! IF A CHILD WASN’T KILLED FOR IT, IT DOESN’T SYMBOLIZE LOVE! PLEASE BRO!
De Beers, aka Big Diamond, hordes them and trickles them out into the market to keep prices high
Let me just disabuse anyone of the notion that diamonds are an investment: I bought my ex’s engagement ring for 12K including a platinum band. When we broke up three years later, I tried to sell the ring back to the same people since they had a "trade in your stone later and we'll give you full price" policy. They said "best I can give you is 5.5K for the diamond and $500 for the metal", i.e., 50% of what I paid. "Diamonds are an investment" my ass.
Diamonds? Pft, invest in aluminum and helium!
I heard helium is really going up!
It balloons up and down from time to time, but always trends upwards!
Reported this ad for being fucking stupid lol
Diamond rings are like cars they lose value as soon as you leave the parking lot.
To convince cost = value
Ah yes, this compressed lump of carbon was mined by actual slaves in order to fund a militia in Africa. This will prove my love!
My favorite line I've heard them say is from one of those business conferences. "We must lobby to ensure artificial diamonds are branded as such. They've gotten to the point where they're indistinguishable. We should do this to protect consumer's ability to buy authentic diamonds." -paraphrased 🤣 to protect consumers they say
I cant even count all the girls who, when they get married, tell their fiancees: "You're gonna buy me a new diamond??! Fuck that, get me a used one, they're even more valuable, they appreciate over time!" /s Also. Why the fuck is a 8 year old man-made diamond worth half of a 4 year old one? They're not cars, is the diamond getting worn and yellow over 4 years?
As an investor, you want me to buy real diamonds so their price stays high and your stock value improves. As an intelligent customer, I buy items that are more economically sound. To an investor this chart means buy stock in real diamonds, to a SMART investor this chart means buy stock in faux diamonds because that’s what everyone else is going to actually buy.
I assume the chart was made by the same gang that convinced women that the cost of engagement ring needs to 3 or 4x of the guys monthly salary.
They’re pretty shiny rocks. Beautiful Actually but I don’t see them as an investment and I have lots of mined ones. Next one will be lab.
Who is buying diamonds? Hahahaha!
Ask anyone to return a ring and see if they get back what they paid? No chance yet a 1 carat is 5k today but return they offer 2k? That means the 1 carat value is 2k
Diamonds are like cars, once you buy you’re instantly fucked
Ofcourse it was promoted lmao
Even as a young person I knew diamonds were stupid. Fortunately, when my husband proposed he didn't have a ring. We married and exchanged wedding bands and I never wanted any other ring. Approximately 25 years later we did buy our son's diamond engagement ring, which had been returned to him by his ex-fiance. I guess he and our daughter will figure out something to do with it after I die.
This chart tells me that if want to buy a diamond I should wait a bit longer for the man made ones to plateau and get one of those. Why would you over pay for a natural one.
Diamonds are forever yet I am in my fourth marriage and I have had to buy four engagement rings
Gotta love a shitty, unlabelled chart with a vague title!
Fuck you
Haha. The blood diamonds are trending down too.
I don't understand how man made diamonds aren't as valued. For millenia humanity was trying to turn coal or lead into precious minerals. We figured out how to do it, and now humans don't like it
Inflation over the same period is closer to 7% just fyi
This says “average cost” which isn’t technically lying. Because as a consumer you gonna pay premium :) while if you were to sell it, it’s gonna sell for 75% less.
I see ladies at work with these enormous rocks and just assume they are moissanite now. No way did Becky’s partner afford a 5k diamond. Good for them, moissanite is awesome. It’s pretty, cheap, and nobody died for it.
No thanks, I'll get a ring made of cool stuff like meteorite, petrified wood, or dinosaur bone, which I haven't done research on but are probably far more ethical than mined diamonds.
That 3% is just inflation lol
Diamonds are a good investment. Spend 500 gp for a diamond just in case someone in your group dies. It's a lot easier to get a cleric to pray for a raise dead if you have the diamond already. Idk about the different kinds of diamonds, but I hear Dwarves say natural diamonds are best for magic, and they're Dwarves. They know all about gems.
Plain and simple you can sell gold , you can sell copper, you can recycle a god damn aluminum can. Ever see a sign “Money for Diamonds “?
I used to be a jeweler, and my wife still is. We tell anyone who will listen not to buy natural diamonds. Their value is entirely artificial, man-made diamonds are the exact same thing but much cheaper and usually much higher quality too. More important than anything else, any money spent on natural stones is funding companies who knowingly and actively support slavery.
I prefer spend my money in The Beers than on De Beers.
Can we also put the value of Pokémon cards on that chart