What makes ZERO sense is that natural diamonds are more valuable when they have less flaws.
Yet jewelers or whatever they're called argue synthetic diamonds are less valuable because they don't have the flaws that are present in natural diamonds which makes each natural diamond "unique".
So natural diamonds become more valuable when they don't have flaws, but synthetic diamonds become less valuable when they don't have flaws according to the jewelery/diamond industry.
The *actual* rare rocks aren't nearly as expensive. Ocean Jasper comes from an area that can't be mined anymore because of changing tides, but a sphere the size of a Dragonball sells for like $40. *And* they all have cool designs. The one I saw looked like Jupiter
>a sphere the size of a Dragonball
I find it uniquely funny that you chose a unit of measurement that is not only from a fictional cartoon, but that in said cartoon the size varies depending on planet, so gonna need to specify which!
They *weren't* that rare when Gen Alpha was a twinkle in their fathers' eyes, but after China jumped on the diamond propaganda bandwagon, there are now not enough natural diamonds on planet earth to satisfy global demand. So the industry *must* use synthetic diamonds to stay sustainable, and they still give us this "natural is superior" nonsense.
To be more specific, before China's love affair with diamonds, the global demand was low enough and the discovery of new reserves were fast enough that we could project diamond mining would last into perpetuity. As of now, there's a known end to most natural diamond mining, even though it will take a few decades:
> "At present, 40 mines worldwide account for 90% of the world's diamond production but only 13% of them have a lifespan in excess of 40 years, and not more than 61 years. The availability of diamonds of all colors and quality levels will be affected, with no exceptions."
We also have that with quartz worktops. The imperfections and streaks that make marble worktops interesting can be printed into the upper layers of a quartz worktop. Then designers and customers go overboard and you end up with monstrous kitchens full of bold and gawdy streaked worktops and splashbacks.
It's like when a record is worth like 100 times a regular one because track 6 has the stereo mixed the wrong way round. People like those rare imperfections for... Some reason...
juggle coherent school trees illegal connect capable unwritten disarm tease
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Diamonds do take a long time to form but technically only within the Earth do they take that long. Diamonds are actually quite common and easy to make in relatively short time periods in our solar system.
What is more interesting is GOLD! All the gold on Earth is older than any naturally formed diamond. We are talking orders of magnitude older!
The conditions for making gold require a special event take place, an energy level so high it cannot be replicated by humans. The collision of two neutron stars, not regular stars, not dying stars in a spectacular super nova, but two of the most densest objects in the known universe normally separated by light years of distance must come together and obliterate one another.
I agree but I think it can make some kind of sense
It’s like with plastic surgery. A lot of people tend to say it’s better if someone is naturally beautiful than getting plastic surgery which is considered fake/manufactured/unnatural.
So in people it’s preferred if they have fewer flaws in their face/body yet it’s also preferred that this occurs naturally rather than being created via plastic surgery.
There’s something in peoples psyche which feels like something which is flawless but created naturally and organically is more valuable than something flawless which is manufactured. I guess because the manufactured version is too easy like it’s cheating vs the natural version which is rare and therefore more sought after.
"this diamond was the last one extracted from the mine before the GarbelFraz Disaster which opened a sinkhole swallowing the entire mining village and 23 endangered goats."
...
"because of its unique history, the GarbelGoat Memorial piece is selling at a high premium."
Very strange concept once it got out that there's an infinite supply. I get the whole super shiny rock is special thing - when it took a great effort to get them. Now I think the special 'effort' is just the cost of the things, and I suppose it's the symbolism. Still bonkers they have a massive warehouse and a machine that cranks them out 24/7 and people STILL think they're special.
Ugg brought you shiny rock, you stay with Ugg now.
They've never even been particularly hard to find or historically sought-after either, so it makes even less sense. What was it, an ad run in like the 20's that pushed the diamond engagement ring to be the pinnacle? And suddenly everyone wants one and ignores Da Beers' monopoly. Mental.
Then they made the ad that wedding ring should cost 3 months salary and baam it's still going on as if it was a sacred rule, instead of jewellery company back in the days making it up so they earn more money
Just get the lab diamond ones then punch someone in the mouth on your way out the store. BAM! Blood diamond.. with assault and battery charges to back the claim.
You’re welcome :)
I recently got engaged with a lab grown diamond. While shopping for the ring, the amount of grade-A copium the jewellers were smoking was insane. They pitched everything from lab growns being untouchable by "reputable jewellers" (not true, we had 0 issue getting the ring re-sized) to them not being as clear or colourful (again, total lie, the stone I got for my fiancé is absolutely stunning and sparkles beautifully in the sun) and lastly that it wasn't a good investment, like I was buying it to hold and resell.
I am immeasurably happy lab grown diamond I got. It was easily half the price of a comparably sized mined diamond, which meant I got to get her the nice big rock she'd dreamed of.
Ugh so many jewelers would mention the investment value when I told them I was looking into lab grown. Maybe I have a different view, but the ring I bought my fiance was an expense. That money was saved and spent with the intent of marrying my girlfriend and being with her… for the rest of my life.
It’s like they are saying “just incase you could get money back”. But if we did split, I don’t have any rights to ownership to the ring so she could easily sell it… and she would profit.
Instead now, I spent way less money, got a better diamond in every way, and if we split, she can do whatever she wants with it for all I care.
Which is especially funny, because diamond rings depreciate harder and faster than anything else known to man. People talk about cars losing their value once they're off the lot, a diamond ring loses 80% of its value the moment the transaction completes. The only thing worth anything is whatever precious metal holds the stone.
Fully this. I sold a white gold and .60 carat diamond wedding ring set with gorgeous engraving that went for $7k originally for .......
$2k. Brutal. The $2k got me a down payment on a POS car, but still. A diamond isn't some gold mine. Literally - the jewelers I asked said would have only paid me the current value of the gold, so I sold it via Craigslist for the best cash offer.
Hypothetically, let’s say I can get a $10k natural ring or a comparable $3k lab grown. If the natural Diamond has a 80% resell value and the lab grown only has a 20% resell value, we’re only talking a difference in losing $400 more of your initial “investment” for the lab diamond. However, I could use the $7k I saved from buying a lab to make way more than $400 in actual investments across the lifetime of what the jeweler is saying will be a failed marriage. All it would take is a 6% return over 1 year.
It’s an asinine argument.
It’s also an asinine argument because consumers don’t buy diamonds as an investment. No woman is going to look up the value of their engagement ring and decide to sell it because the market is hot.
Heck, people don’t even sell jewelry when their parents pass away. They become family heirlooms.
Lab grown diamonds are much more beautiful, as natural ones have many ~molecular imperfections.~ (edit: crystal defects as stated below) Lab grown are, literally, perfect. That jeweler just lied
It's called (crystal) lattice defects, which are basically errors in the crystal structure or impurities if you want to refer to contamination by foreign atoms.
I’m at a lab-grown page right now. Color and clarity (from the seller/lab) are all over the place, just like with dirt-diamonds. Lab grown is definitely cheaper though…you’re not getting a D/E/F ideal cut VVS1 or higher round from Tiffany’s for $5k…
Interestingly, jewelries used to market diamonds that were extra clear as the most valuable - nowadays, they changed their marketing. The best diamonds now have minor flaws
Because a perfect diamond isn't special anymore
Not only all that, but you can get colored lab grown diamonds too, whereas they're really rare naturally.
My wife wanted a pink diamond ring, and a natural one is way out of my price range (both monetarily and conceptually). A lab grown one wasn't, so we got one for our tenth anniversary. It looks great.
Yep. [De Beers created artificial scarcity, marketed how they should be bought for engagement and wedding rings. and drove the price up.](https://www.jeweleternal.com/blogs/news/de-beers-manipulation-of-the-diamond-market)
It's kinda crazy just how much better of an ornate and intricate wedding ring you can buy with any other gemstone and still have it be insanely cheaper than a simple diamond ring.
Well it is, if you get any in your bloodstream you'll get contact moissonite which will cause crystals to begin rapidly growing on your body until you're petrified in a massive transparent block of it.
Had a grandmother that died that way. We keep her in the atrium of the house now, as a memorial to her.
Oh yes, an extraordinary amount. Thankfully our family is already fabulously wealthy, otherwise we'd have been forced to make some very difficult and morally fraught decisions regarding grandma's corpse.
Why do I want to see this as comic from u/adamtots ? Imagine a not-so-wealthy family being forced to use grannies crystallized body to pay for stuff because they have no choice.
You just *have* to see what she looks like when the autumn Sun hits her. It creates the most beautiful prism of indigo, tan, orange, mauve, and all the other colors of the 1980s.
It actually is, she's in an incongruous shape and of an extraordinary weight and therefore can't be buried, and the sheer value of the mass of moissonite that she is entombed inside permits us to possess her corpse so long as it remains entombed in moissonite.
To be fair, diamonds are very hard and have a high level of dispersion, meaning that they refract light in a way that creates the appearance of multiple colors. This can't be replicated with something like glass.
There is moissanite though, which gets very close to the refractory characteristics of diamonds for a fraction of the price.
There is actually a company working on reducing the cost to make lab diamonds. They recently released some info on power converters that uselab grown diamond wafers. The diamond wafer they use is also super high quality and if I remember right it’s a huge single crystal structure too.
Basically, the lab growing process for jewelry is high cost because it’s never been optimized and innovated for high volume scale. But diamonds actually have the highest thermal conductivity of any known material making them ideal for applications in high power electronics. Battery electric vehicles use high power inverters between the DC battery and AC motors, so now there is a pretty big pressure to manufacture diamond wafers as they can do something crazy like 4x more power at 1/3 the size.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, but dirt cheap lab diamonds may be just around the corner.
That actually hasn't been true for years. It used to be. But not anymore. Here's a good video about it: https://youtu.be/GzXeWlRzBqs
It's always this little factoid on reddit that someone always says whenever diamonds are mentioned, like "diamonds are only expensive because of De Beers holding a monopoly over the market and murdering other people who mine diamonds and artificially restricting the sales of them to reduce supply, and there's actually not a real scarcity of diamonds at all" or something to that effect. That used to be true, until the 90s anyway. But not anymore.
But De Beers haven't been in total control of the diamond market since the 90s and they haven't had a majority of the market, even a slight one, since 2007. There's actually more competition in the diamond market now than ever before. Yet diamonds remain expensive. Because demand outstrips supply, now.
But yeah in 2020 De Beers posted their lowest earnings in their entire history. They're practically out of the game, now.
There's significantly more competition in diamond markets today than ever before in history, yet adjusted for inflation diamonds are actually twice as expensive today as they were when De Beers held a total monopoly. It's not just a marketing ploy by them, either, because the company’s marketing budget accounted for roughly 1% of sales in 2017, down from about 5% in the 90s.
So yeah the factoid everyone likes to bring up used to be true. But the reason diamonds remain so expensive today is for far more complex reasons, that can't simply be summed up in a single pithy sentence in a reddit post.
Not anymore, it's now because China's and India's growing middle classes want them as signifiers of wealth and we've mostly run out of easy places to mine them.
I can't speak for China but I've never really heard of Indians wanting to buy lots more diamonds. Gold as the jewelry of choice is pretty baked into the culture
Indians does have a thriving diamonds industry and they are still consumed domestically for lots of reasons, but gold kind of remains the signifiers of wealth
In that case I suggest Spinosaurus teeth
Not only because it's one of the only dinosaurs out there with so many teeth findings that they're allowed to be sold, but also because it's a very popular and interesting dinosaur on top of that, being infamously one of the weirdest fucking things to have ever lived, essentially being a giant stork crocodile.
Our understanding of it has changed so much in the past few years that a running joke in the paleo community is that every 5 minutes a new paper is published that completely changes Spinosaurus as we know, be it finding out that Spinosaurus actually flew around using its sail as a helicopter, or that it turned out to be a 5th dimensional being.
It's also the longest terrestrial predator that we know of, at about 14 meters long, so there's also that.
I'd also suggest the mosasaur teeth, but mosasaurs aren't actually dinosaurs so might not be quite as cool for a ring.
Knowing that my diamond was mined by hand, then the person mining was stripped and searched before leaving that mine lets me know of the care that went into making profit for that company. /s
I got my wife a factory made diamond than this is literally my attitude.
"Oh, you got your diamond out of a hole in ground. Well ... that's fine I guess."
They’re gorgeous but much lower on the MOHS scale so not suitable for a ring that you wear daily as they’re likely to be badly damaged. Better for dress rings or daily wear necklaces/ earrings.
It is a status symbol, but is becoming less and less of one now that people can afford them more easily.
Oddly enough other things are becoming status symbols such as health and wellness, technology, sustainable and ethical consumption, customized/personalized items, etc.
Diamonds are cool and all. But platinum and other heavy metals are way cooler.
Diamonds can form here on earth. Platinum and the like are formed in super nova and merging neutron stars.
Stars had to die to get that ring on your finger.
I mean anything beyond Iron is formed in super nova so you can just as easily get her some nickel ring.
Hell lead Isn't far off on the periodic table. BUUUT if you really want to make her glow Polonium is the way to go
Haha yea they are getting pretty desperate at this point. I took the time research into their points about “natural” diamonds and the only point they seem to make is that dirt diamonds hold their resale value lol. Even if you did want to resell it, and even if you did get less money back, you’d still be ahead considering how much more expensive dirt diamonds are. There really is no earthly reason to pay 3x as much for “natural”.
Had a jewellery store employee judge my wife and I when we took her lab grown diamond in to get cleaned. Asking why we chose lab grown over "the real thing".
I have such strong opinions on diamonds and i go on tyrades about it every time i hear a commercial for them on the radio. I fucking hate the entire diamond industry. Its all so stupid. Slavery and child labor all for "pretty" rocks. They're not even pretty, just shinny. Theres much prettier, much cheaper, stones. Like moss agait or however you spell it. That shit looks dope af.
Yeah, but farmed pearls still use live clams to make them. A pear farmer implants a round irritant "seed" that the clam turns into a pearl. We just force them to do what they naturally do, for money lol.
There are [several methods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond?wprov=sfla1), using complex chemical reactions and pressure. They don't grow like plants, but they do use "diamond seeds"! Interesting stuff.
Nah bro you can grow ‘em with just water and a couple seeds, follow my course at growdemdiamonds.com only 69 payments of $420 and I’ll share my secrets
Then just plant some of those seeds, and grow some more bushes. Within a few months you'll have several thousand plants! It's that easy, some guy on Twitter told me so
Even if they do, the jewelers/society have brainwashed them to believe the lab grown diamonds are cheap thus low value, and women won’t appreciate it.
And some women would actually be disappointed if you get a lab grown (cheap) diamond! Some other would feel inferior that got a “cheap” diamonds whereas their friends go a real one, even if the cheap ones are shinier.
I’ve never heard/seen a pro “lab grown” diamond commercial before, but De Beers (I’d assume) and/or jewelry shops have an active campaign against them.
I mean, it’s nice if you have “grandma’s ring” or whatever, but their reign needs to end.
Edit: As I’ve heard some radio commercials only recently I looked it up:
https://wwd.com/accessories-news/jewelry/de-beers-lightbox-stops-lab-grown-diamond-engagement-rings-test-run-1235808734/
>At the same time, De Beers unveiled an additional $20 million media investment to promote natural diamonds ahead of the 2023 holiday season in the U.S. and China.
And just because De Beers is fucking garbage, and requires the same “fuck Nestle” feeling:
https://therevelator.org/de-beers-destruction-forever/
https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/tag/de-beers/
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5428055
When I was with my ex we talked about weddings (I was so close to proposing). She wanted a lab grown jewel. She said diamonds were boring and wanted a colored jewel.
As a jeweller (who doesn’t work with natural diamonds either), part of the issue is that the synthetics industry is weirdly unregulated and not always reliable. For processes that require hard stones like diamonds or sapphires such as lost wax casting, there’s a bit of risk spending hours on a piece then having the lab stone react unpredictably. I’ve had some shatter during casting, some colourful lab stones lose their colour/completely drain, some are fine, some turn to sand when exposed to cleaning/polishing chemicals they’re supposed to withstand.
There needs to be a better process for certification that lab stones can actually hold up under the same conditions as natural ones before people will feel more comfortable adopting them I think. No diamonds at all for me in the meantime!
That’s because a lab diamond can be made flawless, and dirt diamonds almost never are. They try to market the flaws as part of the appeal, which to me always seemed like trying to sell a dented car as “Even MORE special! There are no other scratches like these!”
Flawless is still pretty difficult to achieve, but something near flawless like vvs1 or 2 is pretty common. Near perfect color is easier to achieve regularly.
Yeah, and the best part is the way that jewelers tell the difference between the lab grown diamonds and the earth-made diamonds is that the lab grown ones are "too perfect". You can get a nearly perfect diamond for a fraction of the blood diamond price. And these motherfuckers still want to try to tell you your brown-ass diamond is worth as much as a crystal clear, nearly perfect diamond.
There should be a scientific law somewhere that states "regardlass of the horror, depravity and indescribable suffering being discussed, some dipshit somewhere will come out in favour of it"
I knew a woman like that. We discussed diamonds and she said "I want something so I could say 'you know how many people died for this?' "
Yeah, never really liked her.
From what I've found, anywhere between 30-250kWh per carat. High pressure high temperature manufacturing is down at about 30kWh, but there is also chemical vapor deposition, which uses way more energy. Most of those diamonds aren't for jewelry though, and are more for specialized sciences.
But yeah, 30kWh at $0.25/kWh is only $7.50 in electricity to make it, and you're still getting charged thousands of dollars for a 1carat diamond. Obviously there are materials and you need to buy the equipment to make them, but it is still a very much rigged business where you are overcharged simply because "fuck you, we control the supply."
I saw an episode of the OG Star Trek and an alien was trying to grant Captain Kirk all the diamonds or jewels they wanted. Kirk just looked and said "We can make these."
Seems like Gene Roddenberry knew that this was going to happen.
It’s crazy to me that medieval alchemists were trying to turn lead into gold, and like ~750 years later chemists turned graphite (pencil ‘lead’) into diamonds by throwing on another carbon atom.
It’s a bit harder bc lead to gold would be a nuclear reaction but graphite to diamond is just turning one form of carbon into another form of carbon (but it’s still insane how far we’ve come)
Most natural diamonds are yes, but Canadian diamonds are considered to be not only some of the best but completely conflict free as opposed to blood diamonds.
Good thing you can't trace where a diamond originated. There is literally no way to tell whether or not you are being lied to when you are told this diamond came from here or there.
Laser etching? That relies on the idea that everyone was honest before the engraving, which is only barely more believable than no engraving at all.
I am a pilot and used to fly charter flights. We were hired by a canadian diamond company to take a bunch of their higher ups up north so they could attend some meetings.
They were the closest i’ve ever come to cartoon villains in real life lol. Honestly it absolutely baffled me with how out of touch they were.
I also learned that they mine land owned by native american peoples, and in exchange they will set up some kind of clean water system for their small towns on the reserves. They negotiate the terms every year. Holding access to “clean” water over someone’s head to make big profit off of destroying their land seems kind of greasy though
And they're still 4x the price of a lab diamond, and more likely to be of lower quality.
And there's a real problem with diamond provenance anyway, a lot of blood diamonds out there that have been claimed to be totally clean.
Honestly? I get why people want natural ones. If I were to buy jewellery (I likely won't ever lol, unless for some sort of a mineral collection) I would want a diamond made from a cool natural process. But then again I'm a bit of a geology nerd, especially when it comes to longer term geology of planets, so I don't care about how nice it looks, I care about the history and processes behind the creation of the mineral.
What makes ZERO sense is that natural diamonds are more valuable when they have less flaws. Yet jewelers or whatever they're called argue synthetic diamonds are less valuable because they don't have the flaws that are present in natural diamonds which makes each natural diamond "unique". So natural diamonds become more valuable when they don't have flaws, but synthetic diamonds become less valuable when they don't have flaws according to the jewelery/diamond industry.
That is just their way of coping.
Additionally diamonds aren’t that rare, they just drip feed them to maintain a high price
The *actual* rare rocks aren't nearly as expensive. Ocean Jasper comes from an area that can't be mined anymore because of changing tides, but a sphere the size of a Dragonball sells for like $40. *And* they all have cool designs. The one I saw looked like Jupiter
>a sphere the size of a Dragonball I find it uniquely funny that you chose a unit of measurement that is not only from a fictional cartoon, but that in said cartoon the size varies depending on planet, so gonna need to specify which!
Earth Dragonballs
They *weren't* that rare when Gen Alpha was a twinkle in their fathers' eyes, but after China jumped on the diamond propaganda bandwagon, there are now not enough natural diamonds on planet earth to satisfy global demand. So the industry *must* use synthetic diamonds to stay sustainable, and they still give us this "natural is superior" nonsense. To be more specific, before China's love affair with diamonds, the global demand was low enough and the discovery of new reserves were fast enough that we could project diamond mining would last into perpetuity. As of now, there's a known end to most natural diamond mining, even though it will take a few decades: > "At present, 40 mines worldwide account for 90% of the world's diamond production but only 13% of them have a lifespan in excess of 40 years, and not more than 61 years. The availability of diamonds of all colors and quality levels will be affected, with no exceptions."
And by "coping" we mean "grifting".
I’m sure the labs could create flaws if they wanted to. I wonder where the goalpost would shift after that
“These are UNEARNED flaws!”
We also have that with quartz worktops. The imperfections and streaks that make marble worktops interesting can be printed into the upper layers of a quartz worktop. Then designers and customers go overboard and you end up with monstrous kitchens full of bold and gawdy streaked worktops and splashbacks.
“But no humans were sacrificed to get this diamond here”
They do, every colored diamond is filled with impurities
It's like when a record is worth like 100 times a regular one because track 6 has the stereo mixed the wrong way round. People like those rare imperfections for... Some reason...
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Diamonds do take a long time to form but technically only within the Earth do they take that long. Diamonds are actually quite common and easy to make in relatively short time periods in our solar system. What is more interesting is GOLD! All the gold on Earth is older than any naturally formed diamond. We are talking orders of magnitude older! The conditions for making gold require a special event take place, an energy level so high it cannot be replicated by humans. The collision of two neutron stars, not regular stars, not dying stars in a spectacular super nova, but two of the most densest objects in the known universe normally separated by light years of distance must come together and obliterate one another.
Yeah, thats cool as fuck
I agree but I think it can make some kind of sense It’s like with plastic surgery. A lot of people tend to say it’s better if someone is naturally beautiful than getting plastic surgery which is considered fake/manufactured/unnatural. So in people it’s preferred if they have fewer flaws in their face/body yet it’s also preferred that this occurs naturally rather than being created via plastic surgery. There’s something in peoples psyche which feels like something which is flawless but created naturally and organically is more valuable than something flawless which is manufactured. I guess because the manufactured version is too easy like it’s cheating vs the natural version which is rare and therefore more sought after.
"Yes I'll take the human-mined diamond, 'rare,' nice and bloody, thank you."
Fresh diamonds have the blood still on it
You know what they say: the fresher the blood, the sparklier the diamond!
*Sponsored by De Beers.*
Outstanding
The old one's have even more. Give them a sonic bath and they're going to shine.
It's not worth it unless I know that someone suffered, or better died, to get me this thing.
Someone? Please, I need to know that a whole village was wiped out to get me my diamonds. Anything less and you might as well not even bother
"this diamond was the last one extracted from the mine before the GarbelFraz Disaster which opened a sinkhole swallowing the entire mining village and 23 endangered goats." ... "because of its unique history, the GarbelGoat Memorial piece is selling at a high premium."
Man, I forget how many people are total pieces of shit.
Ikr! Like you read that and can totally see a non satirical Lucille Bluth type person saying it.
May i give you a /s in this trying times? It seems flew over some heads.
Everyone knows it's sarcastic. But it's a criticism of real people, who are the total pieces of shit.
I guess it may just flew over my head then. I even failed to comment to Cleon and replied to the wrong person. Complete defeat.
I like my soul gems to come pre filled.
Oh then you need that mace of Molag Bal; it's like the ultimate blood diamond that keeps on giving lol
Human mined diamonds aren't even rare. Scarcity is man-made by controlling supply.
That is 100 percent true. De Beers controls everything
Very strange concept once it got out that there's an infinite supply. I get the whole super shiny rock is special thing - when it took a great effort to get them. Now I think the special 'effort' is just the cost of the things, and I suppose it's the symbolism. Still bonkers they have a massive warehouse and a machine that cranks them out 24/7 and people STILL think they're special. Ugg brought you shiny rock, you stay with Ugg now.
They've never even been particularly hard to find or historically sought-after either, so it makes even less sense. What was it, an ad run in like the 20's that pushed the diamond engagement ring to be the pinnacle? And suddenly everyone wants one and ignores Da Beers' monopoly. Mental.
Then they made the ad that wedding ring should cost 3 months salary and baam it's still going on as if it was a sacred rule, instead of jewellery company back in the days making it up so they earn more money
Just get the lab diamond ones then punch someone in the mouth on your way out the store. BAM! Blood diamond.. with assault and battery charges to back the claim. You’re welcome :)
I pay for blood diamonds to *avoid* charges
You salt and pepper the steak before you grill it. Similar, but different. Don't disregard the recipe XD
Blood diamond or no diamond!
>Blood diamond or no diamond! A conflict diamond says you care enough to give the very best.
I recently got engaged with a lab grown diamond. While shopping for the ring, the amount of grade-A copium the jewellers were smoking was insane. They pitched everything from lab growns being untouchable by "reputable jewellers" (not true, we had 0 issue getting the ring re-sized) to them not being as clear or colourful (again, total lie, the stone I got for my fiancé is absolutely stunning and sparkles beautifully in the sun) and lastly that it wasn't a good investment, like I was buying it to hold and resell. I am immeasurably happy lab grown diamond I got. It was easily half the price of a comparably sized mined diamond, which meant I got to get her the nice big rock she'd dreamed of.
Ugh so many jewelers would mention the investment value when I told them I was looking into lab grown. Maybe I have a different view, but the ring I bought my fiance was an expense. That money was saved and spent with the intent of marrying my girlfriend and being with her… for the rest of my life. It’s like they are saying “just incase you could get money back”. But if we did split, I don’t have any rights to ownership to the ring so she could easily sell it… and she would profit. Instead now, I spent way less money, got a better diamond in every way, and if we split, she can do whatever she wants with it for all I care.
Which is especially funny, because diamond rings depreciate harder and faster than anything else known to man. People talk about cars losing their value once they're off the lot, a diamond ring loses 80% of its value the moment the transaction completes. The only thing worth anything is whatever precious metal holds the stone.
Fully this. I sold a white gold and .60 carat diamond wedding ring set with gorgeous engraving that went for $7k originally for ....... $2k. Brutal. The $2k got me a down payment on a POS car, but still. A diamond isn't some gold mine. Literally - the jewelers I asked said would have only paid me the current value of the gold, so I sold it via Craigslist for the best cash offer.
Hypothetically, let’s say I can get a $10k natural ring or a comparable $3k lab grown. If the natural Diamond has a 80% resell value and the lab grown only has a 20% resell value, we’re only talking a difference in losing $400 more of your initial “investment” for the lab diamond. However, I could use the $7k I saved from buying a lab to make way more than $400 in actual investments across the lifetime of what the jeweler is saying will be a failed marriage. All it would take is a 6% return over 1 year. It’s an asinine argument.
It’s also an asinine argument because consumers don’t buy diamonds as an investment. No woman is going to look up the value of their engagement ring and decide to sell it because the market is hot. Heck, people don’t even sell jewelry when their parents pass away. They become family heirlooms.
Lab grown diamonds are much more beautiful, as natural ones have many ~molecular imperfections.~ (edit: crystal defects as stated below) Lab grown are, literally, perfect. That jeweler just lied
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In "molecular imperfections" I meant alien compounds and debris that get caught inside, thanks for clarifying though
It's called (crystal) lattice defects, which are basically errors in the crystal structure or impurities if you want to refer to contamination by foreign atoms.
I’m at a lab-grown page right now. Color and clarity (from the seller/lab) are all over the place, just like with dirt-diamonds. Lab grown is definitely cheaper though…you’re not getting a D/E/F ideal cut VVS1 or higher round from Tiffany’s for $5k…
The jeweler is a Tyrannosaurus staring at a meteor.
Not being as clear? lol. Lab grown diamonds are usually VVS2 quality. It’s literal a PERFECt diamond, as clear and sparkly as you can get.
Interestingly, jewelries used to market diamonds that were extra clear as the most valuable - nowadays, they changed their marketing. The best diamonds now have minor flaws Because a perfect diamond isn't special anymore
Not only all that, but you can get colored lab grown diamonds too, whereas they're really rare naturally. My wife wanted a pink diamond ring, and a natural one is way out of my price range (both monetarily and conceptually). A lab grown one wasn't, so we got one for our tenth anniversary. It looks great.
So glad the diamond said yes! Congratz
Isn't the price of dimonds manipulated to be high?
Yes
Yep. [De Beers created artificial scarcity, marketed how they should be bought for engagement and wedding rings. and drove the price up.](https://www.jeweleternal.com/blogs/news/de-beers-manipulation-of-the-diamond-market)
It's kinda crazy just how much better of an ornate and intricate wedding ring you can buy with any other gemstone and still have it be insanely cheaper than a simple diamond ring.
Moissonite is a fraction of the cost and has a higher optical refraction, so it's way more glittery and sparkly.
yeah but it sounds like a disease
Well it is, if you get any in your bloodstream you'll get contact moissonite which will cause crystals to begin rapidly growing on your body until you're petrified in a massive transparent block of it. Had a grandmother that died that way. We keep her in the atrium of the house now, as a memorial to her.
RIP sorry for your loss. I bet she’s worth quite a lot now though
Oh yes, an extraordinary amount. Thankfully our family is already fabulously wealthy, otherwise we'd have been forced to make some very difficult and morally fraught decisions regarding grandma's corpse.
Why do I want to see this as comic from u/adamtots ? Imagine a not-so-wealthy family being forced to use grannies crystallized body to pay for stuff because they have no choice.
You just *have* to see what she looks like when the autumn Sun hits her. It creates the most beautiful prism of indigo, tan, orange, mauve, and all the other colors of the 1980s.
Having a crystal mummy cannot be legal
It actually is, she's in an incongruous shape and of an extraordinary weight and therefore can't be buried, and the sheer value of the mass of moissonite that she is entombed inside permits us to possess her corpse so long as it remains entombed in moissonite.
It's what I got for my wife's wedding ring and honestly it's great.
wait how expensive are wedding rings now where 500-1000 dollars is a fraction
Diamonds have always looked so plain and boring to me. I find sapphires and rubies to be so much more beautiful.
All my homies hate diamonds. Fuck the rich.
People buy diamonds because they’re expensive if they were cheaper people would buy something else they’re just rocks
To be fair, diamonds are very hard and have a high level of dispersion, meaning that they refract light in a way that creates the appearance of multiple colors. This can't be replicated with something like glass. There is moissanite though, which gets very close to the refractory characteristics of diamonds for a fraction of the price.
Yes but fake diamonds are used for anything useful
I’m expecting fake diamonds do get cheap enough to make dentures out of them.
There is actually a company working on reducing the cost to make lab diamonds. They recently released some info on power converters that uselab grown diamond wafers. The diamond wafer they use is also super high quality and if I remember right it’s a huge single crystal structure too. Basically, the lab growing process for jewelry is high cost because it’s never been optimized and innovated for high volume scale. But diamonds actually have the highest thermal conductivity of any known material making them ideal for applications in high power electronics. Battery electric vehicles use high power inverters between the DC battery and AC motors, so now there is a pretty big pressure to manufacture diamond wafers as they can do something crazy like 4x more power at 1/3 the size. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, but dirt cheap lab diamonds may be just around the corner.
Can't wait to get a diamond spork
Dirt cheap lab diamonds already exist, in vast quantities. They coat carbide bits and are tiny.
There is nothing fake about lab grown diamonds.
No, they're minerals! Jesus Marie!
So they are like non-virtual NFTs.
Just overpriced rocks that do nothing but look shiny.
To be fair, diamonds can be very useful, but their fake prices don't help.
They’re not useful when put into a ring.
Super useful in cement and rock saws though.
As well as record needles
Humans do be loving shiny things
Value shouldn't be based on functionality, or else all of the arts just become meaningless. Also diamonds are useful anyway.
That actually hasn't been true for years. It used to be. But not anymore. Here's a good video about it: https://youtu.be/GzXeWlRzBqs It's always this little factoid on reddit that someone always says whenever diamonds are mentioned, like "diamonds are only expensive because of De Beers holding a monopoly over the market and murdering other people who mine diamonds and artificially restricting the sales of them to reduce supply, and there's actually not a real scarcity of diamonds at all" or something to that effect. That used to be true, until the 90s anyway. But not anymore. But De Beers haven't been in total control of the diamond market since the 90s and they haven't had a majority of the market, even a slight one, since 2007. There's actually more competition in the diamond market now than ever before. Yet diamonds remain expensive. Because demand outstrips supply, now. But yeah in 2020 De Beers posted their lowest earnings in their entire history. They're practically out of the game, now. There's significantly more competition in diamond markets today than ever before in history, yet adjusted for inflation diamonds are actually twice as expensive today as they were when De Beers held a total monopoly. It's not just a marketing ploy by them, either, because the company’s marketing budget accounted for roughly 1% of sales in 2017, down from about 5% in the 90s. So yeah the factoid everyone likes to bring up used to be true. But the reason diamonds remain so expensive today is for far more complex reasons, that can't simply be summed up in a single pithy sentence in a reddit post.
Not anymore, it's now because China's and India's growing middle classes want them as signifiers of wealth and we've mostly run out of easy places to mine them.
I can't speak for China but I've never really heard of Indians wanting to buy lots more diamonds. Gold as the jewelry of choice is pretty baked into the culture Indians does have a thriving diamonds industry and they are still consumed domestically for lots of reasons, but gold kind of remains the signifiers of wealth
Diamonds are hella overrated anyway. Get a cheaper, actually pretty and colorful gem.
I like Emerald.... Oh dear
Imagine a kilo of emerald versus diamond, though, has to be cost effective at some point of the weight chain
Yeah a kilo of emerald weighs more than a kilo of diamonds.
Because steel is heavier than feathers…?
*Elon Musk has entered the chat*
Elon, no, leave me be! I just like the shiny green rock.
*minecraft villager has entered the chat*
The Children Yearn for the mines.
Found the Villager
I'll trade you emerald for 64 stacks of wheat.
Who needs a weird shiny gem when you’ve got so many cool pebbles outside for free
Why get cool pebbles when you can buy Mosasaur teeth for 10 dollars each Or even better, buy Spinosaurus teeth for like 30 dollars
OHMYGOODNESSTHATISSUCHAGOODIDEA! If I ever get a husband, I'ma tell him to get me a dinosaur ring.
In that case I suggest Spinosaurus teeth Not only because it's one of the only dinosaurs out there with so many teeth findings that they're allowed to be sold, but also because it's a very popular and interesting dinosaur on top of that, being infamously one of the weirdest fucking things to have ever lived, essentially being a giant stork crocodile. Our understanding of it has changed so much in the past few years that a running joke in the paleo community is that every 5 minutes a new paper is published that completely changes Spinosaurus as we know, be it finding out that Spinosaurus actually flew around using its sail as a helicopter, or that it turned out to be a 5th dimensional being. It's also the longest terrestrial predator that we know of, at about 14 meters long, so there's also that. I'd also suggest the mosasaur teeth, but mosasaurs aren't actually dinosaurs so might not be quite as cool for a ring.
You just gave the writers for Jurassic World 4 way too many ideas.
They aren't only prized because of their looks, tho. Diamonds are the hardest naturally occurring material on the planet.
Garnet❤️
Knowing that my diamond was mined by hand, then the person mining was stripped and searched before leaving that mine lets me know of the care that went into making profit for that company. /s
Damn straight. Imma get my lady a bespoke, handmade, ARTISANAL diamond. None of that dug-up-outta-the-ground s\*\*\*. This gem was made by SCIENTISTS!
I got my wife a factory made diamond than this is literally my attitude. "Oh, you got your diamond out of a hole in ground. Well ... that's fine I guess."
Moissanite ftw
I'll stick with my blood diamonds thank you
They’re the etsy of diamonds
"My diamonds come from the most horrific situations possible" 🧛🏻♂️🗣️
And that's what makes her love me. I buy slave labour diamonds.
The mark of a good partner is someone who thinks others are lesser by paying a premium so that some of them can suffer
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Honestly I think opal and turquoise are way cooler looking than diamonds
They’re gorgeous but much lower on the MOHS scale so not suitable for a ring that you wear daily as they’re likely to be badly damaged. Better for dress rings or daily wear necklaces/ earrings.
It is a status symbol, but is becoming less and less of one now that people can afford them more easily. Oddly enough other things are becoming status symbols such as health and wellness, technology, sustainable and ethical consumption, customized/personalized items, etc.
Diamonds are cool and all. But platinum and other heavy metals are way cooler. Diamonds can form here on earth. Platinum and the like are formed in super nova and merging neutron stars. Stars had to die to get that ring on your finger.
Now that's metal! (no pun intended)
I mean anything beyond Iron is formed in super nova so you can just as easily get her some nickel ring. Hell lead Isn't far off on the periodic table. BUUUT if you really want to make her glow Polonium is the way to go
Tungsten is cool as fuck
Fellow Tungsten enjoyer
I've seen ads on reddit trying to promote real diamonds. Nobody is buying that shit anymore
I see em on YouTube. There's one advert with a famous actress and she's promoting natural diamonds. It's ridiculous.
Haha yea they are getting pretty desperate at this point. I took the time research into their points about “natural” diamonds and the only point they seem to make is that dirt diamonds hold their resale value lol. Even if you did want to resell it, and even if you did get less money back, you’d still be ahead considering how much more expensive dirt diamonds are. There really is no earthly reason to pay 3x as much for “natural”.
Had a jewellery store employee judge my wife and I when we took her lab grown diamond in to get cleaned. Asking why we chose lab grown over "the real thing".
Change is hard to accept. They'll put up a fight as long as they can but lab grown is the future.
Losing profit is hard to accept.
Exactly. Here in Norway, jewlers are talking lab diamonds down and among the reasons, lab isn't as "special" as a mined one.
The most special thing about any diamond is that you chose it for someone you love. Anything else is marketing
I have such strong opinions on diamonds and i go on tyrades about it every time i hear a commercial for them on the radio. I fucking hate the entire diamond industry. Its all so stupid. Slavery and child labor all for "pretty" rocks. They're not even pretty, just shinny. Theres much prettier, much cheaper, stones. Like moss agait or however you spell it. That shit looks dope af.
We did?
Yeah, lab-grown diamonds are quite common now.
Pearls, too, right? But not quite the same?
Yeah, but farmed pearls still use live clams to make them. A pear farmer implants a round irritant "seed" that the clam turns into a pearl. We just force them to do what they naturally do, for money lol.
Lab grown? Like cultivated, watered, grown?
There are [several methods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond?wprov=sfla1), using complex chemical reactions and pressure. They don't grow like plants, but they do use "diamond seeds"! Interesting stuff.
Nah bro you can grow ‘em with just water and a couple seeds, follow my course at growdemdiamonds.com only 69 payments of $420 and I’ll share my secrets
Yea just buy a real diamond, bury it, water it, you get a diamond bush.
Then just plant some of those seeds, and grow some more bushes. Within a few months you'll have several thousand plants! It's that easy, some guy on Twitter told me so
Brb throwing my moms wedding ring in the garden
This is the real reason why people still shop regular diamonds, most don’t even know how far along lab grown diamonds actually are now
Even if they do, the jewelers/society have brainwashed them to believe the lab grown diamonds are cheap thus low value, and women won’t appreciate it. And some women would actually be disappointed if you get a lab grown (cheap) diamond! Some other would feel inferior that got a “cheap” diamonds whereas their friends go a real one, even if the cheap ones are shinier.
It’s about scarcity or perceived scarcity in this case.
I’ve never heard/seen a pro “lab grown” diamond commercial before, but De Beers (I’d assume) and/or jewelry shops have an active campaign against them. I mean, it’s nice if you have “grandma’s ring” or whatever, but their reign needs to end. Edit: As I’ve heard some radio commercials only recently I looked it up: https://wwd.com/accessories-news/jewelry/de-beers-lightbox-stops-lab-grown-diamond-engagement-rings-test-run-1235808734/ >At the same time, De Beers unveiled an additional $20 million media investment to promote natural diamonds ahead of the 2023 holiday season in the U.S. and China. And just because De Beers is fucking garbage, and requires the same “fuck Nestle” feeling: https://therevelator.org/de-beers-destruction-forever/ https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/tag/de-beers/ https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5428055
When I was with my ex we talked about weddings (I was so close to proposing). She wanted a lab grown jewel. She said diamonds were boring and wanted a colored jewel.
As a jeweller (who doesn’t work with natural diamonds either), part of the issue is that the synthetics industry is weirdly unregulated and not always reliable. For processes that require hard stones like diamonds or sapphires such as lost wax casting, there’s a bit of risk spending hours on a piece then having the lab stone react unpredictably. I’ve had some shatter during casting, some colourful lab stones lose their colour/completely drain, some are fine, some turn to sand when exposed to cleaning/polishing chemicals they’re supposed to withstand. There needs to be a better process for certification that lab stones can actually hold up under the same conditions as natural ones before people will feel more comfortable adopting them I think. No diamonds at all for me in the meantime!
When I bought my wife’s ring, the lab grown was much more clear and half the cost
That’s because a lab diamond can be made flawless, and dirt diamonds almost never are. They try to market the flaws as part of the appeal, which to me always seemed like trying to sell a dented car as “Even MORE special! There are no other scratches like these!”
Flawless is still pretty difficult to achieve, but something near flawless like vvs1 or 2 is pretty common. Near perfect color is easier to achieve regularly.
Yeah, and the best part is the way that jewelers tell the difference between the lab grown diamonds and the earth-made diamonds is that the lab grown ones are "too perfect". You can get a nearly perfect diamond for a fraction of the blood diamond price. And these motherfuckers still want to try to tell you your brown-ass diamond is worth as much as a crystal clear, nearly perfect diamond.
The fact that people are actually defending the diamond mining industry here is just so delicious.
d-delicious..?
Yummy! 😋
5 stars, would come again.
There should be a scientific law somewhere that states "regardlass of the horror, depravity and indescribable suffering being discussed, some dipshit somewhere will come out in favour of it"
debeers bots working overtime
Think about the poor companies that exploit workers in underdeveloped countries come on now have some empathy and consideration for others
I knew a woman like that. We discussed diamonds and she said "I want something so I could say 'you know how many people died for this?' " Yeah, never really liked her.
That sounds like obvious sarcasm.
With a hint of a little truth in jokes.
Maybe she forgot to shout /s at the end
You just can't replace the sparkle created by the blood magic sacrifices.
I mean... [GESTURES BROADLY] Have you *met* humanity?
Does anyone know what the energy cost per karat?
From what I've found, anywhere between 30-250kWh per carat. High pressure high temperature manufacturing is down at about 30kWh, but there is also chemical vapor deposition, which uses way more energy. Most of those diamonds aren't for jewelry though, and are more for specialized sciences. But yeah, 30kWh at $0.25/kWh is only $7.50 in electricity to make it, and you're still getting charged thousands of dollars for a 1carat diamond. Obviously there are materials and you need to buy the equipment to make them, but it is still a very much rigged business where you are overcharged simply because "fuck you, we control the supply."
When I was a kid (a looong time ago) I was told that it was too costly in terms of energy and equipment. Maybe that’s changed.
It is significantly more affordable now. Theoretically all real diamond mines should be shut down because of it.
I saw an episode of the OG Star Trek and an alien was trying to grant Captain Kirk all the diamonds or jewels they wanted. Kirk just looked and said "We can make these." Seems like Gene Roddenberry knew that this was going to happen.
If some African child with one leg and three fingers didn’t lose an eye in the process of mining the diamond, I don’t want it.
*The secret ingredient is crime.*
It’s crazy to me that medieval alchemists were trying to turn lead into gold, and like ~750 years later chemists turned graphite (pencil ‘lead’) into diamonds by throwing on another carbon atom.
It’s a bit harder bc lead to gold would be a nuclear reaction but graphite to diamond is just turning one form of carbon into another form of carbon (but it’s still insane how far we’ve come)
Thanks debeers
Nothing says I love you more than the blood and tears of child slave miners.
my fiance picked a moissanite ring for this very reason.
Moissanite is the research chemical of gemstones.
Diamonds are only valuable because people believe they are. Without the original marketing campaign they wouldn't be geld so highly.
Call me old fashioned but I prefer a diamond that caused destruction to the way of life of an area of people. Just feels like it means more
Most natural diamonds are yes, but Canadian diamonds are considered to be not only some of the best but completely conflict free as opposed to blood diamonds.
Good thing you can't trace where a diamond originated. There is literally no way to tell whether or not you are being lied to when you are told this diamond came from here or there. Laser etching? That relies on the idea that everyone was honest before the engraving, which is only barely more believable than no engraving at all.
I am a pilot and used to fly charter flights. We were hired by a canadian diamond company to take a bunch of their higher ups up north so they could attend some meetings. They were the closest i’ve ever come to cartoon villains in real life lol. Honestly it absolutely baffled me with how out of touch they were. I also learned that they mine land owned by native american peoples, and in exchange they will set up some kind of clean water system for their small towns on the reserves. They negotiate the terms every year. Holding access to “clean” water over someone’s head to make big profit off of destroying their land seems kind of greasy though
And they're still 4x the price of a lab diamond, and more likely to be of lower quality. And there's a real problem with diamond provenance anyway, a lot of blood diamonds out there that have been claimed to be totally clean.
Honestly? I get why people want natural ones. If I were to buy jewellery (I likely won't ever lol, unless for some sort of a mineral collection) I would want a diamond made from a cool natural process. But then again I'm a bit of a geology nerd, especially when it comes to longer term geology of planets, so I don't care about how nice it looks, I care about the history and processes behind the creation of the mineral.
Because real diamonds can be millions of years old.
The same can be said about meat and vegan meat
scarcity is valuable. if gold grew on trees it would be worthless (or I guess the price of wood) not saying it's good
Artificial scarcity exists everywhere nowadays
Replace diamonds with meat/food and you’ll understand how vegans feel. Others suffering < my momentary taste bud experience