Ehh, Supes ain’t no gemologist. His manufacturing skill set would be “Squeeze. Squeeze hard… more… and, done.” Like natural diamonds, they’d look like blobs. NOT like a handful of sparkling, meticulously cut diamonds as seen in comics.
Fine. I’ll take that Super-Weaving power above. Fastest wedding dresses known to man. Set up shop in Vegas, retire on my ‘we need to get married while we’re still high’ proceeds.
I guess I was thinking about it this way. You wake up tomorrow, in our non-super-powered world, with a superpower. As far as you know, you’re the only one. Certainly, they are not widely known. And for whatever reason, you don’t want to be a superhero. You don’t want to make the world better. You don’t want fame and fortune. You just want to get quietly rich. Certainly you don’t want it known to anyone at all that you have superpowers.
So, for instance, take the classic super-strength-and-super-toughness. Think Mr. Incredible. That would obviously be an awesome power to have. But how could you convert it into cold hard cash? Particularly, quickly? An obvious answer is to be a sports star of some sort. But unless you are a high school student to start with, that’s going to attract a TON of attention: “40 year old apparently-out-of-shape man becomes greatest MLB slugger ever”, etc. Not only would you presumably end up with all the fame that comes with being a sports star, you’d have to either spend YEARS going through the normal development process, or you’d have to risk being even MORE famous due to your meteoric rise to success, etc.
(And the less famous a sport makes you, the less lucrative it probably is.)
So, anonymous powers and anonymous riches.
Good, I think that makes it more of a challenge… and it’s what I’ve been striving for ever since I got bitten by… oh, I mean, it’s what I WOULD want if I ever got powers which of course is totally total fiction of course…
I guess if you had the powers of Matter-Eater Lad you could make a fortune from doing hazardous waste cleanup. You could be anonymously dropped into an area, chow down on whatever needs to be “disappeared” (nuclear waste, dioxin-laden dirt, dead whale carcass, etc…) and have money wired to your offshore account. All that’s left afterwards is to go home, bathe in Clorox, and take whatever pills are needed to blot out the memory of what you’ve just eaten. Voila!
And the Saturday morning “Adventures of Matter-Eater Lad and Pals” would be called:
The Super Fund Super Friends!
To continue taking this too seriously…both natural and lab-made diamonds come out looking like a blob of fancy rock. Both need to be cut and polished by an expert. So Superman’s gems would essentially be indistinguishable from either type of raw diamond except through chemical analysis.
Don’t the big companies maintain their artificial scarcity on diamonds with a certification and registration process? Without a serial number, what happens to the value of our Super Diamonds, even after being cut and polished?
Do you know, or care, whether your grandmother’s engagement ring came from South Africa or Russia?
Superman could set up his own company, and sell diamonds legitimately, and still be 99% anonymous.
Right, because 40 year old out of shape man becomes greatest bowler ever is only middling interesting news.
Also only middling interesting financial reward.
Part of that cleanup is documentation on what you did with the waste. If it just disappears, they are going to assume that you just dumped it into the ocean or something.
I have always thought that Professor Xavier’s power would be ideal. A genius-level intellect with the power to mentally influence people would come in handy in amassing a fortune. You could just have Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and / or Warren Buffet bequeath a small part of their fortunes to you.
I would refrain from influencing people who did not have money to spare, of course. That would be unethical! 
Oh, and I mean that I would like to have these powers without being a cripple.
That would be a matter (ha!) between Matter-Eater Lad, his toilet, and the practices of the local sewage treatment plant.
Hey, does Matter-Eater Lad bother to bring plastic bags when he takes his dog out for a walk? He could probably make a few bucks re-enacting the final scene in Pink Flamingos if he didn’t mind dressing up like Divine.
Wouldn’t he leave his fingerprints on the surface?
I’m thinking Aquaman-type powers would give you access to all sorts of sunken treasure. The ability to telepathically communicate with sea creatures to find the ships, the ability to swim down to the wreck (does Aquaman have a depth limit?), and the strength to recover the loot on your own…
I think I would choose the ability to time-travel, go back to 1976 and offer Ronald Wayne $1000 for his 10% stake in Apple before he has a chance to sell it back to Woz and Jobs. Then jaunt ahead a couple of years and buy Microsoft stock at $21/share. Pop back to the present and you are the richest person on the planet nobody has heard of.
Haven’t read thread yet so this could have already been mentioned (but somehow, yeah, kinda doubtin’) - I wish I was the SuperFonz and I could just go “eeeeehhhhhh”, and zap - bills appear in my hand. Wads.
A bowler might not get you much money though. A golfer on the other hand could make one a ton of money. It might be kind of believable too, yeah, I just picked up golf a year ago and got really, really good.
You know, a person with the kind of super-strength that could pick up buildings (while miraculously having them hold together) could probably make a few quick millions today, if they could get to Egypt.
It’s “Aaaayyyyyyyyy.” The Fonz was not from Toronto. ROFL!
Another thing Frozone could do is sell fresh water to places like Capetown that are desperate for it. He could pull moisture from the air and make ice shoot where he wants it to go. So he could easily just go out there every Summer, and fill up their reservoir for a few million. I’m sure LA and a few other cities would pay him as well.