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Diamond prices are in free fall in one key corner of the market
- latchkey 3y agohttps://archive.ph/hDBZu https://archive.ph/hDBZu
- vsskanth 3y agoIt's been a while since I've seen someone wearing a diamond ornament
- threadweaver34 3y agoAs a single guy, I'm checking the ladies' hands for rings all the time.
- mellavora 3y agoAs a married guy, I see my wife's ring every day.
- sublinear 3y agoMy experience has been that you just don't see people wearing wedding bands all that often anymore. They're inconvenient and unfashionable. Marriage is as unpopular as ever and only the most conservative areas actually care about marital status.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ftxbro 3y ago> the kinds of stones that go into the cheaper one- or two-carat solitaire bridal rings popular in the US have experienced far sharper price drops than the rest of the market
- OJFord 3y agoIt's crazy to prefer a natural diamond for anything other than a collectors' item. It's not about being 'cheap' - whatever your budget is, if you're picking an engagement ring say, why not get a technically superior (or larger) stone for the same price tag?
- Xcelerate 3y agoI want a lab grown diamond in the shape of a giant wafer. That way I can build a pan around it and use that to cook food in. That incredible thermal conductivity is wasted sitting in a piece of jewelry.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoLab diamonds are routinely grown in the shape of giant wafers. (And then smaller parts are cut out of the wafers.) This shouldn't be that hard to get if you really want it. (I have a friend who used to have a job drawing cut plans for diamond wafers at Kyocera Unimerco.)
- OJFord 3y agoHm, almost 5x the thermal conductivity of copper. Since this is HN.. let's say we were actually to build such a pan, is it practical? My first thought is that the high conductivity doesn't necessarily mean it won't, being loose and hand-wavey with terminology because I don't know it, fracture with thermal shock, like non-borosilicate glassware (don't change the temp. too quickly) say, or ceramics (don't introduce too much of a temp. delta across the item, e.g. heating on a hob)? Second thought is 'is it too much better than copper', in the sense that is the conductivity no longer the limiting factor? Copper is prized (and actually bloody hard to get these days - afaict everything on Amazon is copper-coloured or at best clad aluminium) because of fast 'response time' to change in heat, as you adjust the burner or pull it off the heat altogether. Conductivity also helps with even heating of course, but it doesn't help it cool particularly, which is limited by the rate of loss due to convection through air (and what's being cooked, which is what we want to limit if we're hoping for it to cool) and radiation?
- causality0 3y agoFrankly I'm amazed it took this long for people to realize diamond isn't that special a material, at least considering how easy it is to make.
- silisili 3y agoNot just that, even natural diamonds just aren't that rare. This is what happens when one company corners a market, and controls supply and marketing.
- jewelry 3y agoIt's also a product that's not required for day-to-day.
- TheDudeMan 3y agoUnless you have to cut really hard things.
- londons_explore 3y agoWhich conveniently can be done with tiny dust-sized diamonds.
- hinkley 3y agoI think the geological formations that were guaranteed to contain diamonds only became common knowledge in the late 1990's or early 2000's, yes? I recall reading an article about some researchers testing their theory by buying a chunk of land in Canada, and proving they were right. People thought that was the beginning of the end for de Beers, and between that and better synthetics that seems to be how things played out.
- arcticbull 3y agoDe Beers basically controls the whole diamond market. They make it almost impossible to resell them and strictly control the supply. They were also responsible (via advertising agency N. W. Ayer) for the idea that diamonds should be used in engagement rings in 1938-1941. This write-up from The Atlantic from 1982 explains the situation well. [1] Not sad to see the cartel taking an L. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo...
- zokier 3y agoLots of things have happened in the 40 years since that article was written. De Beers do not control the market anymore the way they did before. Wikipedia says > De Beers's market share of rough diamonds to fall from as high as 90% in the 1980s to 29.5% in 2019 > De Beers sold off the vast majority of its diamond stockpile in the late 1990s – early 2000s and the remainder largely represents working stock (diamonds that are being sorted before sale). This was well documented in the press but remains little known to the general public. > As a part of reducing its influence, De Beers withdrew from purchasing diamonds on the open market in 1999 and ceased, at the end of 2008, purchasing Russian diamonds mined by the largest Russian diamond company Alrosa
- willcipriano 3y ago[flagged]
- adolph 3y agoWhat an interesting story of pricing in a cultural market with encumbant and new tech, and a cartel attempting to retain its market power but slowly losing ground. In June 2022, De Beers was charging about $1,400 a carat for the select makeable diamonds. By July this year, that had dropped to about $850 a carat. And there may be more room to fall: the diamonds are still 10% more expensive than in the “secondary” market, where traders and manufacturers sell among themselves. . . . . . . India, where about 90% of global supply is cut and polished. Lab grown accounted for about 9% of diamond exports from the country in June, compared with about 1% five years ago. Given the steep discount that they sell for, that means about 25% to 35% of volume is now lab grown, according to Liberum Capital Markets. . . . About five years ago, lab grown gems sold at about a 20% discount to natural diamonds, but that has now blown out to around 80% as the retailers push them at increasingly lower prices and the cost of making them falls. The price of polished stones in the wholesale market has fallen by more than half this year alone.
- skywhopper 3y agoMakes total sense. Lab-created diamonds have been indistinguishable (for the typical consumer) from natural ones for years. DeBeers kept jewelry retailers in line in pushing "real" diamonds, but it was just a matter of time until something happened to shake that hold lose. Given the rapid switch away from gold for wedding bands etc after the 2008 crisis led to a major price spike, it is not surprising to me that jewelry consumers are willing to question whether "real" diamonds are worth the premium cost as well.
- webignition 3y agoMight lab-grown diamonds have reached a point of being indistinguishable from natural diamonds such that people pass off lab-grown diamonds as natural diamonds without anyone being able to tell?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoI have read that the distinguishing feature is that natural diamonds have flaws. Entrapped dirt or what have you that is not found in the sterile environment of the synthetic ones.
- zeitgeistcowboy 3y agoI bought a yellow lab grown diamond for my wife's wedding ring and with a jewelers loupe you can see the flaws in it. It looks like dirt.
- OJFord 3y agoMaybe a specialist could tell a natural, formed over thousands of years, flaw from a lab-grown flaw, but really I think it's more like you can get a better grade from a lab (and especially with consistency, frequency, at a much lower price due to being rare to find naturally occurring). i.e. you can get flawed and coloured lab-grown diamonds too. (A mix of taking less care/time, older equipment, and binning the results like silicon wafers I assume.)
- hinkley 3y ago
- gnicholas 3y agoI wonder what the second-order consequences will be. That is, people will still want to signal their commitment/ability to provide when proposing, so the drop in the price of diamonds won't necessarily reduce the overall outlay. Instead, it would shift the expense to another category (platinum or other expensive metals) or simply lead people to buy more carats (4 is the new 2!). In some ways, these moves could help luxury brands like Tiffany, since their well-known price premium would provide the same signaling device for folks who want to spend tens of thousands of dollars when proposing.
- paxys 3y agoRings will get bigger/more extravagant and get mixed with other precious gems or metals. What is not going to happen is stores selling cheaper jewelry.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoMy naïve assumption is that outside of geologists and jewelers, it is impossible for a layman to identify natural, synthetic, or even a different gemstone.
- gnicholas 3y agoI would agree, but I think that after some period of time, it will become known that the price of diamonds have dropped dramatically. This means that if a man wants to signal that he's spent a chunk of change on a ring, he'll either need to go with a much larger stone than before, or he'll need some sort of external signifier. That could be a certificate that it's a natural diamond, or that the setting is somehow super fancy.
- dahdum 3y agoBespoke. Allocate the savings from lab diamonds to design and you can get a more meaningful ring with higher quality materials for similar cost. Customization has been on the uptrend for several years.
- sublinear 3y ago
- kylehotchkiss 3y ago> Diamond demand across the board has weakened after the pandemic, as consumers splash out again on travel and experiences, while economic headwinds eat into luxury spending Are people becoming more careful about such valuable purchases since losing a diamond ring is so heartbreaking? It seems like the concept of "throwaway" rings is increasing so you don't have to worry about losing the real one which is an argument no person ever wants to have with their spouse. I keep my real one locked away and wear a titanium one around.
- Fezzik 3y agoWhat a great opportunity to re-share one of my favorite articles: https://priceonomics.com/diamonds-are-bullshit/ https://priceonomics.com/diamonds-are-bullshit/ I really can’t think of an example better than people buying shiny rocks for absurd amounts of money that demonstrates how non-advanced we are, as a society generally.
- bluedevil2k 3y agoThe same can be said of BMWs, Philip Patek, Louis Vuitton, and dozens of other luxury brands. People like buying status signals, but it doesn’t signal how “non-advanced” we are. It’s how society has always worked and will always work.
- Tao3300 3y ago> It’s how society has always worked and will always work. There are a lot of things throughout history that you could say about. At the time it would have been impossible to see any other way, and yet we have advanced.
- Fezzik 3y agoSurely it does - the fact that most people—or large numbers of people—are still incapable of distinguishing between when they are exchanging their dollars for something that has no value beyond the hype behind it and making good financial decisions shows we, as a society, have a long ways to go in improving how we teach ourselves and others to value stuff. It’s one of many things we have to improve on, but rocks purchased for tens-of-thousands-of-dollars are a prime example of supremely poor financial decision making. At least cars are modes of transportation, watches tell time, and bags hold things. Diamonds are truly just bullshit.
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoStatus symbols are just that. Status symbols. If you look through nature, you see very similar behaviors everywhere: the "frivolous" use of resources to demonstrate an individual's status in the group, and their desirability as a mate. Peacock's feathers, caribou antlers, those absolutely kickin' nests that some birds assemble, penguins with their shiny rock collections, humans with our shiny rock collections. It's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma, in that one's unwillingness to engage in such demonstrations of status will be interpreted as an inability to do so, but to the individual its still an optimal play. At least it gives us an excuse to acquire pretty things. Can you imagine how ugly the world would be if no one was building architectural marvels or designing elaborate cars or jewelry because they could poor concrete into cubes more cheaply?
- another_poster 3y agoA good analogy is ice. We all use “freezer-grown crystalline water,” but prior to the invention of refrigeration, we harvested natural ice from frozen lakes and stored them in ice houses for use throughout the summer. Sure, there’s some romance from hand-harvested ice, but you can’t beat the price and purity of ice from a freezer.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoIce from a freezer is extremely impure. If it was pure, you could see right through it, the same way you can with a pure diamond. (The freezer, of course, has nothing to do with this - it's the water you're putting into it that's impure.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deeg 3y agoIt has little, if anything, to do with the water. Ice made in a freezer is cloudy because of air bubbles. There are techniques for making clear ice using directional freezing. Here's one way: https://altonbrown.com/recipes/cocktail-ice-cubes/ https://altonbrown.com/recipes/cocktail-ice-cubes/
- satvikpendem 3y agoNo, being able to see through it has nothing to do with water purity (unless your water is so muddy that it's not clear even as a liquid), it's to do with the formation of the ice and the incorporation of air bubbles. You can make clear ice pretty easily with molds.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago"This crystal isn't impure - it's just full of pockets of an alien substance"?
- satvikpendem 3y ago
- typest 3y agoI just got engaged. When we looked at rings, the jeweler asked my fiancé if she wanted natural or synthetic, and she responded “I don’t want a blood diamond!!” Of course, mined diamonds aren’t blood diamonds, but her impression was still they were a little ickier. The jeweler told me that one reason to get a natural diamond was that the prices of lab grown diamonds had been falling, whereas natural hasn’t as much, so the ring would hold more value. I told her that was exactly why we wanted to go with a lab grown diamond! This isn’t an investment — we aren’t planning to sell the ring. Ultimately, for a price that didn’t break the bank, we got an absolutely gorgeous ring with diamonds larger and higher quality than we would have been able to afford with natural. Diamond rings may have started as something to resell in divorce, but for us (for my fiancé really), it was more about getting something that was beautiful, and if it didn’t cost as much, great! I suspect most Americans will feel similarly.
- downWidOutaFite 3y agoInteresting that your salesperson used the same line as DeBeers does at the end of the article about lab diamonds being too cheap. It must be a sales talking point that comes from on top. It's seems crazy that Debeers is actually trying to drive lab prices down to make them seem too cheap for bridal use. Their strategy is to try to retain the higher-end luxury market while giving up the more mainstream market where they can't compete.
- willis936 3y agoI mean, the whole thing is a soulless marketing trick. https://youtu.be/N5kWu1ifBGU?si=icEExKO1WRazcybP https://youtu.be/N5kWu1ifBGU?si=icEExKO1WRazcybP
- wrsh07 3y agoStrategy letter five says to commodify your complements, not substitutable goods https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
- 3y ago
- Tao3300 3y ago> "With the increase in supply we’ll see prices fall through the price point and reach a level where, long term, it does not compete with bridal because it comes too cheap" WOOSH
- jgalt212 3y agoI've bought a number of lab grown diamonds. For anything at 1 carat or under, you'd be a fool to buy a mined diamond. I really want to buy a lab-grown tennis bracelet, but no luck yet finding one from a reputable vendor.
- jiveturkey 3y agowhy don't you just buy the stones and have the bracelet made?
- water-data-dude 3y agoI wonder how prohibitively expensive it would be to grow a ring made entirely out of diamond.
- tbrownaw 3y agoSounds like it'd be fun to try to resize.
- iamdbtoo 3y agoThere's a good documentary about this that came out last year. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16317380/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16317380/
- AlbertCory 3y agoWhy do I think, whenever someone male defends artificial diamonds, that it's Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory talking? There's no logic involved here.
- amanaplanacanal 3y agoIf it’s a beautiful rock on a ring, and you show it off to people and nobody can tell the difference. Make your own decision I guess? People buy all kinds of expensive stuff because it has a brand name on the outside. It’s not what I would do, but there it is.
- AlbertCory 3y agoThat's very logical.
- motohagiography 3y agoOne of the scandals post 2008 crash was how bankers in Switzerland would use diamonds packed into tubes of toothpaste to spirit millions of dollars out of various countries. Diamonds were essentially a shadow banking system, with analogies to the way crypto exchanges work today. You put cash in to get a tiny portable stone that you could exchange for cash or deposits anywhere else in the world, and you could reliably transfer massive amounts of capital around without records. Simultaneously diamonds made wealth both highly visible, and completely invisible when they disappeared. No public ledger either.
- listenallyall 3y agoThat's a big part of the plot of the terrific film Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman and Lawrence Olivier
- jiveturkey 3y agotitle is clickbaity. HN title should improve on it. This is about rough cut diamonds under 2 carats. the price is down due to popularity of synthetic diamonds of these sizes. retail price of a finished product hasn't felt it yet, and may not.
- anjel 3y agoThe big ones still make for excellent "portable wealth" when you're in that kind of situation. But as middlemen go, jewelers make realtors look like saints.
- michael_vo 3y agoToo bad we can’t use virtual NFT engagement rings mined specially with high carbon footprint with the gas fees donated to the babies of divorce lawyers.
- unixhero 3y agoOrdinary Things Diamonds, https://youtu.be/PYUMKRwJzNg?si=zNMAdUqinaL0ORWz https://youtu.be/PYUMKRwJzNg?si=zNMAdUqinaL0ORWz