They know how to keep a monopoly going.People forget that,in addition to Africa, major diamond sources include:
-Canada: vast new diamond fields have been discovered in the past 15 years
-Australia: huge diamond fields
-Russia: used to market through DeBeers, now the Russians are getting smart (and are selling direct)
-Even the USA! (Crater of the Moon NationalParK in Arkansas is the only known US diamond field)A few years back a commercialmining venture was about to getgoing, forget what happened to it.
So, as others have said,diamonds areNOT rare, they are extremely common! DeBeers keeps the pricesup by manipulating the market
I would not invest in either the “natural” diamond or the man-made anytime soon. (The natural diamonds are hardly in their natural state.) I can see the whole market for diamonds come tumbling down unless DeBeers buys the patent. Even then, the situation would be shakey.
I have heard that before the man-made diamonds, you could not tell for certain where your diamonds came from. I wouldn’t want to take a chance that I have a play-pretty at the expense of someone’s life.
I must admit to being impressed with the beauty of my daughter’s engagement ring. (Can’t help it; I’ve been programed.) But what impressed me even more was that my son-in-law took the time to read a book about choosing a diamond before he picked one out for her. Now that was cool!
Now, if I could get my husband to read about book about buying up some real estate for me…
The resale value of diamonds is actually very low, so DeBeers probably has little to fear from that angle. The idea of the incredibly successful “diamond is forever” advertising campaign was to create a hyper-inflated market with as low as possible resale activity – that would generate added demand, since misguided consumers were brainwashed with the impression that these extremely valuable stones had to be bought new for each occasion.
DeBeers is sitting on stocks of diamonds of all sizes – they restrict supply to keep demand and therefore prices up-- though of course the mini-carat stones are far more plentiful than the large ones.
This article goes into quite a bit of detail explaining the incredibly brazen and dirty tactics employed by De Beers for at least 70 years. It also explains how difficult (and disappointing) it is to sell second-hand diamonds:
Even the prices of Canadian and Australian diamonds seem to follow guidelines set by De Beers, which makes this one of the most outrageous operations in the history of economics.
As for the natural vs artificial diamonds, some people here may be missing the point that the two are physically and chemically identical – both are real diamonds in every sense of the word. One just took three days instead of millions of years to form. Otherwise the distinction is about as meaningful as the excellent example of natural table salt and artificial table salt.
On the other hand, cubic zirconium or massoinite are fake diamonds, in the sense that they may look similar to the real thing but have different physical and chemical characteristics. But the diamonds discussed in the Wired article are most definitely real.
It’s very likely that, as the two processes of diamond production are perfected, these artificial diamonds (as well as natural ones)will fall dramatically in price – unless De Beers gets to them first, of course. It’s quite possible that Gemesis is charging a substantial amount for its gems in order to support its research and rake in a bit of cash while diamonds are still over-valued.
I’m guessing that De Beers will probably want to keep the consumer gem market for itself, and will try to restrict companies like Gemesis and Apollo Diamond to handle industrial diamond needs and the like – lower profit margins and little option to influence markets with monopolistic advertising in that business.
But if their marketing campaign is successful then they become (a) fashionable and (b) valuable.
Hmm. I’d rather have a synthetic diamond (then I’d know a slave child didn’t get his arm cut off because of it). But, then again, diamonds and the diamond industry piss me off, so I wouldn’t want any kind of diamond. For the past couple of weeks I"ve been interested in moissanite. That’d make a cool engagement ring, and a wedding ring with amethyst stones would make a kick-ass combination.
(and as a tiny hijack, how the hell does one pronounce moissanite? This question has been niggling at me.)
It was shut down. By De Beers.
If my husband bought me a two-carat created diamond, I’d bitchslap him. Because he’s clearly not paying attention to what I like and what I want. I don’t like diamonds, and I have no desire to wear diamonds. They have no warmth, no character, and they’re not very attractive. As such, they should be limited purely to accents for colored stones.
Besides, I don’t like big stones. I think they’re–how can I say this delicately–a little too flashy for my personality. And a 2-carat single stone is pretty flippin’ big.
So, yeah, he’d be in big trouble for getting me a big, honkin’ created diamond. He’d be in even more trouble for buying me a natural one, though, because we both have moral and ideological objections to DeBeers and the way they do business.
As for the sentiment of buying “the real thing”, I think that’s a load of crap. It’s not the sacrifice of money that spells love, sincerity, and devotion. It’s the little day-to-day sacrifices you make for each other. It’s feeding, walking, and playing with your fiancee’s dog when she’s sick–even though you really don’t like dogs. It’s skipping a poker game with the guys when she’s had a really bad day. It’s scooping up the last bite of the wonderful dessert you’re sharing–and putting it in her mouth.
As for leaps of faith, I don’t know that they get much bigger than my Christmas present the year we got engaged. DrJ is most decidedly not a dog person. He’s especially not into hyperactive crotch-rooting indoor dogs who shed everywhere, eat his sunglasses, and upset his cat. I had very recently acquired just such a dog, and I loved her very much. This was the third animal we owned between us. He doesn’t approve of having more pets than humans in any given house. He bought me a training system and a big thing of treats for my dog.
To me, it said that he was fully accepting her as a part of his daily life. He was accepting the dog hair all over his clothes, the chew-toys in the floor, the shrill squeaking of said toys, the cold nose prodding him awake in the wee hours, the barking, the whole package of stuff he wasn’t used to and didn’t much care for. And he was doing it because he loved me and accepted the dog as something that was important to me.
DeBeers can keep their stupid rocks. I’ll keep my plastic tub of liver crisps, thank you very much.
I kinda like the LIFEGEM
What is a LifeGem?
A LifeGem is a certified, high quality diamond created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to their unique and wonderful life. In other words the diamond is created from the ashes of your loved one.
The LifeGem diamond is more than a memorial to visit on the weekends… it is a way to embrace your loved one’s memory day by day. The LifeGem is the most unique and timeless memorial available for creating a testimony to their unique life
LifeGem created diamonds are identical in every aspect to natural diamonds. They have the same brilliance, fire, and hardness as any high quality diamond you may find at Tiffany’s.
LifeGem created diamonds are identical in every aspect to natural diamonds. They have the same brilliance, fire, and hardness as any high quality diamond you may find at Tiffany’s.
tracer I can’t get to the site that you provided. What does it say? That is a very good question you pose. I guess it’s not like you could take it to the jeweler and ask them could you? <g>
I guess I am just a little more trusting then others. I would have just taken it at face value.
They can do your pets too!
tracer I can’t get to the site that you provided. What does it say? That is a very good question you pose. I guess it’s not like you could take it to the jeweler and ask them could you? <g>
I guess I am just a little more trusting then others. I would have just taken it at face value.
They can do your pets too!
It’s a link to a discussion thread in the James Randi forum, where someone questioned whether LifeGem was legit or not. The consensus in the thread was, yeah, they could get all the carbon they needed (which ain’t much) from crematory ashes, and it wouldn’t be any more costly than extracting the carbon from more conventional sources like coke, but since they’re not using the Gemesis or Apollo methods of creating the synthetic diamonds, the stones you get back are going to be pretty cruddy.
Anybody know what impurities are responsible forgreen diamonds? They are extremely rare…I’d sure like to knowif synthetic ones can be made!
According to the folks Wired talked to, they’ll be able to make them fairly soon.
That would be the Russian method which starts with a diamond “seed” and uses intense pressure to create a diamond by adding carbon.
Personally, I would prefer a diamond that flouresces MORE. That is the quality which makes a diamond sparkle. You also don’t have to worry about anyone dying to get the diamond to market.
I understand that red diamonds are even rarer.
A patent also prevents anyone else from using your process. If one person discovers how to do it, I would think it would only be a matter of time until someone else figures it out. If I were the first one to figure out the process, I sure wouldn’t waste any time getting it patented; otherwise someone else could do so, and I’d be left high & dry.
many gemstones are actually rarer than diamonds.
True – but one funny thing about patents is that they don’t actually have to work. They merely have to be non-obvious. There have been plenty of unscrupulous con artists over the years that have patented worthless processes and inventions in the hopes of attracting investors and then running off to Mexico with the proceeds.
For all we know, those flawless diamonds that the Apollo guys showed off in the Wired article might have been just plain old natural diamonds that the Apollo folks bought off the open market.
Only if (1) you have a patent in effect in the jurisdiction in question; and (2) you can catch the folks who are infringing on your patent.
In the case of a process for making artificial diamonds, both assumptions are questionable. What’s to stop some Oriental corporation from cranking out artificial diamonds using the process in your patent? Or a cash-hungry government?
**
Perhaps, perhaps not. A lot of stuff is not patented but instead maintained as a “trade secret.”