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> The market for natural diamonds will cease to exist when you can buy lab-grown versions for a couple bucks. Just like the luxury watches market ceased to exi
by bsoqk 28d ago
> The market for natural diamonds will cease to exist when you can buy lab-grown versions for a couple bucks.
Just like the luxury watches market ceased to exist when you could buy quartz watches for 10 bucks.
- Loughla 28d agoExcept in this case, the quartz watches would be better quality than the luxury watches I'm not sure your analogy has teeth.
- literalAardvark 28d agoThe quartz watches are (way) better at time keeping. And the rest is just a matter of paying for luxury. The main reason the analogy doesn't really help is that the mechanical watch market absolutely cratered, and it's only being propped up by enthusiasts of cool machines. Diamonds can't really have that. They've already scammed the general population into using slave diamonds at monopoly prices for 30 years longer than they needed to, but no one is _passionate_ about slave diamonds.
- tptacek 28d agoIt's a poor analogy because mechanical watches and quartz watches aren't perfect substitutes and aren't purchased for the same reasons. Everybody's phone keeps better time than a watch; absolute accuracy isn't the exclusive measure. Lab diamonds and mined diamonds are literally identical products.
- Der_Einzige 28d agoNow a days the imperfections themselves in the rings are what are valued in natural diamonds. People from India, thailand, Myanmar etc have not and probably won’t for a very long time abandon a strong preference for natural diamonds, regardless of how much “better” the lab grown ones are. This is a textbook case of “worse is better”.
- dingaling 28d ago> and aren't purchased for the same reasons Yes, that's his point. Quartz watches have eaten the market for "I need a cheap portable time piece", like artificial diamonds did for "I need diamonds for tooling". Both mechanical watches and natural diamonds have therefore been pushed into a niche market of posers and the easily-influenced, who buy them for different reasons than the mass market. > Lab diamonds and mined diamonds are literally identical products. No, mined diamonds are inferior for any industrial task due to their flaws and weaknesses.
- hn_submit 28d agoMechanical watches are a luxury item where the intricate craftsmanship is highly valued, even though they're completely obsolete compared to even the simplest quartz movement. That analogy doesn't hold for natural diamonds and the comparison therefore falls flat on its face.
- pibaker 28d agoThere will certainly be people who will pay a premium for certified 100% natural diamonds. But there is probably not enough to support the diamond mining industry as it exists today.
- hn_submit 26d agoLike I said: there will be scams where lab-grown diamonds will be sold as natural ones which will ruin customers' willingness to pay more for them.
- cjbgkagh 28d agoWell the privet to luxury was due to quartz watches taking their core business, and now Chinese superclones are in the early days of threatening their luxury business. At a certain point it’s hard to care about the residual difference.
- ButlerianJihad 28d agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privet This may have been a nerd-snipe for Harry Potter fans, but I still struggle to interpolate an acccurate word there. "pivot to luxury"?
- cjbgkagh 28d agoYes ‘pivot’ somehow a double typo or perhaps some weird autocorrection. Sorry about that.
- mcv 28d agoI've heard that even experts can't tell those superclones apart from the originals anymore. Are they equally reliable?
- cjbgkagh 27d agoI wouldn't know
- preg_match 28d agoA luxury diamond and a lab grown diamond are equivalent. Well not always, lab grown are typically higher quality. The comparison doesn’t work.