>I imagine diamonds need to maintain some minimum price point in order to sell, after all, they are a luxury good. Yep, but only (or however mostly) because of

>I imagine diamonds need to maintain some minimum price point in order to sell, after all, they are a luxury good. Yep, but only (or however mostly) because of the DeBeers marketing. > And a 10x margin is high enough to not raise eyebrows, but low enough to undercut the competition. My eyebrows are raised nonetheless. We are not talking of technology, design or "brand" such a Mustang or a Lamborghini, we are talking of (almost) RAW materials, not entirely unlike gold or any other "mined" material. As an example in Napoleon III times, aluminium cutlery was a "luxury" item, because the metal was more valued then gold. Reference: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/05/aluminium-cost-gold/ http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/05/aluminium-co... (coincidentally the above article talks in passing-by of diamonds, citing a report thaat is giving completely different valuation of the diamonds market, so maybe the numbers cited are completely off ) I cannot access the Bain report cited, right now, but is dated 2011 and available via Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20170830050614/http://www.bain.com/Images/PR_BAIN_REPORT_The_global_diamond_industry.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170830050614/http://www.bain.c...