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I would love to see this diamond in person, but I can't see it being a good investment given the technological change coming, both in sorting for diamonds up to

I would love to see this diamond in person, but I can't see it being a good investment given the technological change coming, both in sorting for diamonds up to 5000 carats and the real risk someone will figure out how to grow diamonds this big.

adt2bt 10y ago
I agree. It seems that Lamb advertising that he's installing equipment to look for ~3-5kcarat diamonds is signaling 'just wait, this 1100 carat diamond is gonna be yesterday's news soon.' The expectation that supply will grow ought to drop the price of this super large stone for anyone willing to wait a few years for the next massive one. However, I do think there will always be a market for large diamonds extracted from cold hard Earth. Yes, synthetics will likely eventually surpass these stones. Owning one of the largest natural stones ever found will probably always seem sexier in many (read: likely non-high-tech) circles of ridiculous wealth.
- jonah 10y ago
  Add enough qualifiers and anything can become the most whatever.
jonah 10y ago
What was most interesting to me is that giant diamonds like this regularly get crushed to bits by the extraction process. I wonder how many other 1000+ karat stones have been destroyed in the history of diamond mining.
- gwern 10y ago
  Not that hard to estimate. Lucara mines ~90k carats per quarter (http://www.lucaradiamond.com/i/pdf/CP-Q12016.pdf http://www.lucaradiamond.com/i/pdf/CP-Q12016.pdf), or 360k carats per year. They recovered the OP stone in question after 5 months, and it was not that unprecedented as a sale by them of the Constellation 813-carat stone is also mentioned. So 1 every 6 months or 2 per year is entirely possible at this point. But we'll go with 1 1k stone per year, or 1 per every 360k carats mined. Global diamond output is somewhere on the order of 137 million carats per year (http://www.mining.com/web/despite-de-beers-and-rios-efforts-global-diamond-output-to-jump-1-3-this-year/ http://www.mining.com/web/despite-de-beers-and-rios-efforts-...). If all mining has a similar rate but they are crushing the big ones, then that suggests that 137000 / 360 = 380 stones are being destroyed each year currently. Production has risen steeply over history (http://www.gia.edu/cs/Satellite?blobcol=gfile&blobheader=application%2Fpdf&blobheadername1=Content-Disposition&blobheadername2=MDT-Type&blobheadername3=Content-Type&blobheadervalue1=attachment%3B+filename%3DGlobal-Rough-Diamond-Production-Since-1870&blobheadervalue2=abinary%3B+charset%3DUTF-8&blobheadervalue3=application%2Funknown&blobkey=id&blobtable=GIA_DocumentFile&blobwhere=1355958157734&ssbinary=true http://www.gia.edu/cs/Satellite?blobcol=gfile&blobheader=app...) but "The total global production from antiquity to 2005 is estimated to be 4.5 billion carats". So for an all-time estimate, 11*360 + 4500000 / 360 = 16460. This seems improbably high: surely at least some of those 16k giant stones would've survived? So maybe Lucera's current mine got lucky, or it's unique in providing lots of giant stones. ("It has an enviable share of the world’s heavyweight diamonds. Of the 52 biggest diamonds discovered in the past three centuries, 10 have come from Lucara in the past three years. With modifications under way at the mill, Lucara will soon be able to recover diamonds up to 3,000 carats, and next year, up to 5,000 carats—as big as a softball.") Still, I would personally stay the hell away from giant diamonds as any kind of investment or prestige trophy.
  - jrehor 10y ago
    The Karowe mine is unusual in its high proportion of large diamonds. The only similar mine is Letseng in Lesotho. Both Karowe and Letseng have very low grade ore (in terms of carats per tonne) but high proportion of large stones. DeBeers discovered Karowe but never developed it because it was judged uneconomical; Lucara took a big bet that the quality of the diamonds would offset low yield. I wouldn't extend the ratio of large diamonds found at Karowe (or Letseng) across the whole industry. They are fairly unique mines.

adt2bt 10y ago

I agree. It seems that Lamb advertising that he's installing equipment to look for ~3-5kcarat diamonds is signaling 'just wait, this 1100 carat diamond is gonna be yesterday's news soon.' The expectation that supply will grow ought to drop the price of this super large stone for anyone willing to wait a few years for the next massive one. However, I do think there will always be a market for large diamonds extracted from cold hard Earth. Yes, synthetics will likely eventually surpass these stones. Owning one of the largest natural stones ever found will probably always seem sexier in many (read: likely non-high-tech) circles of ridiculous wealth.

jonah 10y ago
Add enough qualifiers and anything can become the most whatever.

jonah 10y ago

What was most interesting to me is that giant diamonds like this regularly get crushed to bits by the extraction process. I wonder how many other 1000+ karat stones have been destroyed in the history of diamond mining.

gwern 10y ago
Not that hard to estimate. Lucara mines ~90k carats per quarter (http://www.lucaradiamond.com/i/pdf/CP-Q12016.pdf http://www.lucaradiamond.com/i/pdf/CP-Q12016.pdf), or 360k carats per year. They recovered the OP stone in question after 5 months, and it was not that unprecedented as a sale by them of the Constellation 813-carat stone is also mentioned. So 1 every 6 months or 2 per year is entirely possible at this point. But we'll go with 1 1k stone per year, or 1 per every 360k carats mined. Global diamond output is somewhere on the order of 137 million carats per year (http://www.mining.com/web/despite-de-beers-and-rios-efforts-global-diamond-output-to-jump-1-3-this-year/ http://www.mining.com/web/despite-de-beers-and-rios-efforts-...). If all mining has a similar rate but they are crushing the big ones, then that suggests that 137000 / 360 = 380 stones are being destroyed each year currently. Production has risen steeply over history (http://www.gia.edu/cs/Satellite?blobcol=gfile&blobheader=application%2Fpdf&blobheadername1=Content-Disposition&blobheadername2=MDT-Type&blobheadername3=Content-Type&blobheadervalue1=attachment%3B+filename%3DGlobal-Rough-Diamond-Production-Since-1870&blobheadervalue2=abinary%3B+charset%3DUTF-8&blobheadervalue3=application%2Funknown&blobkey=id&blobtable=GIA_DocumentFile&blobwhere=1355958157734&ssbinary=true http://www.gia.edu/cs/Satellite?blobcol=gfile&blobheader=app...) but "The total global production from antiquity to 2005 is estimated to be 4.5 billion carats". So for an all-time estimate, 11*360 + 4500000 / 360 = 16460. This seems improbably high: surely at least some of those 16k giant stones would've survived? So maybe Lucera's current mine got lucky, or it's unique in providing lots of giant stones. ("It has an enviable share of the world’s heavyweight diamonds. Of the 52 biggest diamonds discovered in the past three centuries, 10 have come from Lucara in the past three years. With modifications under way at the mill, Lucara will soon be able to recover diamonds up to 3,000 carats, and next year, up to 5,000 carats—as big as a softball.") Still, I would personally stay the hell away from giant diamonds as any kind of investment or prestige trophy.
- jrehor 10y ago
  The Karowe mine is unusual in its high proportion of large diamonds. The only similar mine is Letseng in Lesotho. Both Karowe and Letseng have very low grade ore (in terms of carats per tonne) but high proportion of large stones. DeBeers discovered Karowe but never developed it because it was judged uneconomical; Lucara took a big bet that the quality of the diamonds would offset low yield. I wouldn't extend the ratio of large diamonds found at Karowe (or Letseng) across the whole industry. They are fairly unique mines.