This is not exactly true. Dollars are “legal tender” and can be exchanged for goods or services, or to reduce indebtedness. No creditor has to accept diamonds for bills you owe.
SnakesCatLady already addressed this, but I wanted to chime in. Dollars (or any form of money) are a medium of exchange used to transfer value. The diamonds we’re talking about in this thread are a consumer product. Let’s use another consumer product as an example, like a car. If I sell my car to my neighbor and he gives me $3,000 in cash, the cash represents a way for him to transfer (pay) to me the value of the car. The car has a use–transportation–and the money exchanged is what he and I have agreed this use is worth.
The point many have made in this thread is that diamonds have no inherent use beyond vanity. They’re dug up out of the ground and made into jewelry, but they are valuable only because people are willing to pay money for them, not because they serve an actual purpose. (Cecil himself has weighed in on this subject.)
Diamonds would become worthless overnight if people stopped wanting to buy them. But this couldn’t happen to a product which has inherent value through its use, because people will still need to do whatever that product is made to do. A car is valuable because people need to travel, for instance, so people couldn’t just stop driving cars.
The fake premise of the diamond “industry” is why man-made diamonds and the movement to restrict conflict diamonds probably had DeBeers shitting their pants. They are already trying to use their clout to restrict the artificial kind of diamond from getting market share.
“In that regard,” I said. The value of either one depends upon the faith and trust of those who value them. The difference is that if the dollar is devalued, the creditor will have to eat the loss.
They are quite pretty up to 1 carat, like most other stones. After that they look tacky. But so do sapphires, emeralds etc…(IMO)
Plus, lab diamonds are incredibly nice and NO inclusions/occlusions.
OP, yellow diamonds are no longer rare. Gemesis lab manufactures them.
I REALLY want a “cultured” diamond. It fulfills the girlie part of me which likes sparkly things, the liberal part of me which abhors the idea of blood diamonds from Africa, and the Scientist in me, which just thinks making diamonds in a lab is really cool.
That’s it! I’m moving!
I’m betting the next trend is breaking out their huge stocks of deeply flawed diamonds with loads of huge black inclusions, marketing them as “leopard” diamonds, and reaping untold millions from wealthy idiots.
And money is only valuable because people are willing to exchange goods and services for it.
Money would become worthless over night if people stopped wanting to exchange goods and services for it. Money is worthless if perceived that way by the public. It’s happened before. Money and diamonds are a lot alike in that respect. Would you prefer to be paid a debt in Zimbabwean diamonds or Zimbabwean Dollars?
I’m not going to argue that a diamond is more useful that a car. However, a couple of points:
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Something’s value is a function of its usefulness and scarcity (or perceived usefulness and scarcity). In fact, a classic example from econ 101 illustrates why diamonds are expensive and water is cheap.
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Someone can derive utility from a good with no inherent “usefulness”. The enjoyment a woman gets from impressing everyone with her huge diamond or whatever it is she does with it can be greater than the utility I get from driving my car. The Mona Lisa wouldn’t work too well to patch a hole in the roof, but that doesn’t mean people don’t value it.
In conclusion:
-money has no special properties over any other good; it’s just a hell of a lot more convenient than barter.
-“useful” goods have no special properties over “non-useful” goods, other than that the “useful” good would likely be worth a lot more if of equal scarcity.
“You’re right, dear, that’s disgusting. Besides, your Mom would be shocked and sickened if she found out…”
Never fails.
Days before we got married, my now-husband and I went on a beach vacation. On a tiny store in a dark alley there was a little artisan shop selling silver jewelry. I chose a band in the shape of a rope (husband is a navigator) as my wedding ring. It cost US$12.00. I still wear it, in fact that’s pretty much all the jewelry I posses.
Years ago my apartment was broken into and some family jewelry that had been passed on to me, plus my graduation ring were stolen. I was sadder about my missing laptop.
Diamonds are stupid and a waste of money.
I have a question: are diamonds useful as an investment? I have been told that you never get your money worth if you sell it afterwards.
I just want to chime in with the “I dislike diamonds.” Not hate, except when they’re blood diamonds, but I just don’t like them as much as sapphires and emeralds. My husband gave me a sapphire for my engagement ring with celtic-type engraving on the silver and I loved it (and it cost no more than a couple hundred dollars).
Part of the disallure of diamonds to me is that everyone has them. Why would I want to be like every other engaged girl out there? For that matter, why do they all want to be like each other?
My father was a pawn broker in Houston. One of his pet peeves was people looking to hock diamonds and the shock when they were advised what the diamonds were really worth.
One lady came in with “$3,000” worth of diamonds, wanted about $750 (pretty standard for pawnbrokers, 25% of sale value…) My Dad offered her $200, and she hit the ceiling, stormed out, came back about an hour later with a jewelry store reciept for $3,000. He told her he didn’t doubt that she paid that much, only that, well, she got screwed, good and hard.
He hated dealing with diamonds.
light strand, Apollo Diamonds. I’ve read that they’re the best (plus, you’re moving there).
Also want to say that once I saw that they make them in the lab now I came around to their appeal. Plus the lab ones are in what I think are a perfect size about 1/2 a carat or so.
The difference is that diamonds perform the role of currency pretty badly, hence they only get used as currency when society is in various stages of breakdown. In particular, diamonds, unlike dollars, are indivisible - it isn’t easy to get your change back when you buy a pack of smokes with a 5 karat diamond. Also I would think that diamonds as a currency are more susceptible to forgery, though I am not certain on that one.
The value comes largely from scarcity, combined with the sparkling prettiness of the things. That’s of course the huge dilemma for anyone who can make “fake” diamonds that pass as the “real” thing - by selling them you destroy the value of that which you are seeking to copy. Far better to keep your invention secret and sell a very small number a year.
Just want to say if you guys want a good (quite hysterical read) check out DeBeers’s reaction to Apollo Diamonds.
They’re histrionic over the thought of Apollo grabbing even a bit of their marketshare.
My ring is 3 carats, and very beautiful, AND it’s not a real diamond. It’s a cubic zirconia, but you wouldn’t know it to look at it. The way it is cut makes it just as sparkly as those “fire and ice” diamonds that are advertised, but it cost about a tenth of the price. Oh, and I paid for it myself. The only reason I wanted a big rock was because my family (and hubby’s) have always been at the bottom of the proverbial barrel. In school, we were the kids who wore hand-me-downs and bought lunch with food stamps. Now that we’re grown and have a little bit of money (enough to get by without too many worries) I wanted something nice for myself.
I like diamonds. I think they’re pretty and sparkly. But I also love sapphires just as much, so when it came down to it, we had my engagement ring made with my husband’s grandmother’s heirloom diamond (about 150 years old, and not a ‘blood’ diamond), and sapphires. I love it, although the diamond is considered highly imperfect by today’s standards (it’s actually a K-L in color, although it’s hard to tell because of the cut). I don’t care - I love it because I was entrusted with this amazing piece of history. Had we not had the family diamond, I probably would have asked for a sapphire engagement ring.
I have no desire for another ‘real’ diamond, but I’m happy to wear CZs all day long because I like how they sparkle;). In fact, I’m wearing a CZ wedding set right now because my real rings are too small to fit on my stinking fingers, which grew during pregnancy and won’t shrink back down, regardless of threats. I’ve gotten tons of compliments on my ‘fake’ set, and no one has any idea it’s fake.
I don’t really care what others spend their money on, though. If someone wants a $30K ring, and their fiance can afford it, more power to them.
E.
Look for diamond rings on ebay, and see what people are bidding for them.
And elucidator hits on an important point. Somehow we’ve been sold the idea that diamonds are valuable. Except what happens when you try to sell a diamond? You won’t get half of what you paid for it. Why exactly is that? Diamonds are forever, right? They don’t depreciate. So why is a “new” diamond selling for $1000, but if you try to resell the same diamond you’ll never get close to $1000 for it?
Because diamond merchants who want to get diamonds from DeBeers have to agree not to buy diamonds from any other source. Which means there is no secondary market for diamonds, because no one is willing to jeopardize their supply from DeBeers. And so new diamonds from DeBeers are sold for high prices, the exact same diamonds cannot be sold for the same price afterwards. Diamonds are a terrible investment, because DeBeers holds vast stockpiles of diamonds that they keep off the market to inflate prices. And of course, man-made diamonds are only going to get cheaper and cheaper.
How classy will that giant diamond ring look in 30 years when people in trailer parks are buying diamond coffee tables?