I think “What could I sell this for tomorrow?” is a good question to pose. For a gold bar you can get 98% or more. But for a diamond? 60% if you’re lucky. OTOH, Diamonds are Miss Lorelei Lee’s best friend — present one to her and you won’t need to worry about reselling.
And diamonds are fascinating! Didn’t astronomers discover a distant planet that’s solid diamond? :eek:
And diamonds’ hardness makes them an interesting vehicle for geologic discoveries.
I’m just waiting for Apple or Samsung to come out with a smartphone with a diamond screen.
Diamond would be a terrible material for a phone screen. Much more fragile than glass.
And yes, I’m being serious. Diamond is exceedingly hard, but it’s also brittle.
HMS Runcible, a custom-set diamond wouldn’t be a bespoke diamond; it’d be a bespoke setting. I’m talking about the diamonds themselves being made. And yes, I know that it’s not the usual term used for such diamonds. I’m trying to shift the connotations. People think of “synthetic” as being bad, but “bespoke” being good, even though they both mean the same thing.
I’ve heard “lab-grown” used to describe the manufactured diamonds.
I wouldn’t call it a “scam,” since you are getting what they say you’re getting. the insane prices of natural gem-quality diamonds is just a masterful marketing campaign by De Beers (“Diamonds are Forever!”) convincing men that they needed to spend 2 months salary on an engagement ring, and convincing women that if he won’t spend that much he’s not worth it.
yep, you can get all sorts of lab-created gemstones. the materials they’re made of aren’t anything special, it’s just that it’s rare to find them in that form in nature. lab-created ruby and sapphire gems are dirt cheap, like $40 will get you a few 12x12mm cut gems. and they’re just as real as natural rubies and sapphires, they’re honest-to-god corundum with whatever impurities to give the desired color.
you do have to read the details, though, because there are also “synthetic” or “simulated” gemstones which are made to look like a particular gem, but created from a different material.
Yes.
I have a small diamond engagement ring. I didn’t really want it, but my fiance insisted. And he was right. When I told my mom we were engaged, her first response was, “did he give you a ring?”. Sometimes it’s good to use socially recognizable signals.
Anyway, I wore that ring for years, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed looking at the way it diffracted light. I have a lot of glass prisms and such, I enjoy other things that play with light. Diamonds do it better.
Another anecdote: A coworker bought his fiance a large diamond ring. While he was negotiating to buy it, he took a liking to the same ring done with cubic zirconium. The salesman ended up throwing that in with the diamond ring (for “free”) and he brought both to the office.
They were easy to tell apart with the naked eye. In a lot of ways, the CZ ring looked nicer. The CZ stone was perfect, the diamond was slightly flawed and slightly yellow. But even so, it was more sparkly.
Are they worth what they cost? Naw, not to me. At least, not for anything other than signalling, “yes, I’m engaged”. But I’d happily wear cheap man-made diamond jewelry, and I’d prefer it over cut glass.
(I have china and silver from my wedding, too. The silver is now worth a lot more than what it cost, due to fluctuations in the market. The china is only worth it if you like that pattern, of course, but it happens that I do. We use it a few times a year to mark special events, and I’m happy to have it.)
yup
High end watches have (man made) sapphire crystals. Nice because they are unlikely to get scratched.
This is from a few years ago, and gorilla glass is up to version 6 (at least) but here’s a comparison between sapphire and gorilla glass for cell-phone screens.
Sapphire vs. Gorilla Glass: Why Corning is Scared of a Sapphire iPhone | Digital Trends.
Ooh, also from 2014, when I guess Apple invested a lot in sapphire technology, and there was a lot of speculation about whether they would switch to sapphire screens:
it’s a video from “youbreakifix” where they break a lot of gorilla glass and sapphire screens, and compare their functionality. Their conclusion is that sapphire is stronger, but because it is so much more brittle, it’s unlikely to yield a net benefit.
Bespoke always carries the connotation of being made for a specific customer (i.e. a bespoke suit of clothing). Synthetic diamonds are grown in batches in labs and shipped out to whoever cares to buy them.
A lab-grown diamond is not bespoke in any sense until a customer specifies that it be cut according to their personal, individual taste. Then it can be considered bespoke, as would likewise be true of a mined diamond.
I guess this is my failing then. I’m partially colorblind–I can’t tell which colors look good together and which clash. I wear clothes that are basically shades of white, gray and black. A tone deaf person probably feels the same way about music as I do when I see a diamond.
Ignorance ought.
I have a couple of loose brilliant cut cz that look sparkly enough for me. One is around 1 ct, one much smaller. I would swear that one of them literally came free in a cereal box, in some promo where they were giving away gemstones. But I’m not seeing mention of that on Google.
Diamonds actually have two remarkable optical properties, both of which contribute to their “sparkle”: They have a very high index of refraction, and they also have very high dispersion. That is to say, light bends a lot going through a diamond prism, and the amount that it bends by depends a lot on wavelength, so it’s very good at separating colors.
CZ is one of the few materials with an even higher index of refraction, but IIRC, its dispersion is less. That’s probably what puzzlegal meant by it being “less sparkly”.
For my money, though, the prettiest gems are star sapphires. The star is a holographic effect, and floats slightly above the surface of the stone.
Lapis lazuli FTW.