Somewhat inspired by this thread and a few others in the past.
I’ve noticed that many dopers are against purchasing, harvesting and the trade of diamonds. I’m ignorant about the diamond industry. Fill me in.
While I can’t provide cites, and I’m not sure how well (if at all) it’s been documented, or if it’s just legend, the story goes that diamonds aren’t all that rare, really, not even the gem quality ones. They are expensive because there is a very small number of people in control of the market - in some tellings, only one family - DeBoers - has the lock on the diamond market. It is suspected that they control the prices by controlling the supply artificially.
In addition, the idea that an engagement ring (or any ring meaning “true love”) HAD to be a diamond is a relatively recent one, again, it is said, a story planted and nurtured by the DeBoers family to increase the market for diamonds. This part, at least, I belifve. I read enough old books and have seen enough engagement/wedding rings of my great-grandmother’s generation to be fairly sure that rubies, sapphires and other gemstones were more common in those days than diamonds.
And finally, of course (I see on preview that **Operation Ripper **has covered this, which saves me looking for a cite), there is the fact that diamonds are often taken without just compensation from “savages” who don’t know their true worth in the west.
So there you have it. Conspiracy theories, not wanting to be played by marketing, and actual political and human right’s reasons why getting your wife an opal might be the more heartfelt and ethical option.
Also, you can be like me whenever I get blitzed at big holidays (for jewelry anyway) in the mall and asked if I want to buy a ring or something for my girlfriend or the like. I just say that the existence of diamond is thermodynamically unfavorable and ask if they guarantee their diamonds to not convert to graphite (sometimes I also ask if they have a warranty good until the heat death of the universe.) But that’s only if I get pinned. Luckily, I’ve yet to run into a physical chemist who also hocks jewelry.
Diamond, like gold, has a value way out of whack with its usable properties (especially with how common diamond is.)
Diamonds embody support for modern day slavery. Is that how you want to start your married life? Put your “two months salary” in a mutual fund, if you really love each other.
Diamonds are forever? So is water. Big deal.
“You have this on the one hand, that on the other hand. That is why you wring your hands.” --Taxi Driver Wisdom 
The Master speaks about diamonds.
If you must have a diamond, you’re much better off buying vintage.
Most of them are prettier than today’s cookie-cutter rings, anyways.
I am against diamands because of a documentary I saw on the BBC. Basically at the time the Russians were very close at making synthetic diamonds that couldn’t be told from real ones. So what was DeBeer’s answer?
They said that if the Russians were successful in this they would simply impliment a special microscopic mark that only DeBeers could produce, thereby assuring the buyer it was not a manufactured diamond.
So this to me is like buying something only because Michael Jordon has his name on it. Or saying if it doesn’t have the Disney tag on it, it isn’t the real one.
Now when I buy Jewelry I buy gems that are ACTUALLY rare, not just because someone in society dictates to me I SHOULD want them.
Or go to Arkansas. You can dig your own and keep whatever you find. Someone found a 5+carat canary last week.
Despite all the recent articles about the de Beers manipulations of the market and such, it’s worth pointing out that diamonds do have qualities that make them admired and desirable – their extreme hardness (hardest in natrure at STP), their very high refractive index (among the highest in the visible) and chromatic dispersion (which makes them much more readily sparkle in different colors), their comparative rarity to Europeans, at least until recently, their availability in almost clear as well as a variety of colors, and the natural cleavage of the crystal into aesthetic forms made it a very unique and pretty stone that was prized long before deBeers decided to restrict the market and control prices. It’s not as if they happened upon a stone and decided that they were going to make this one the basis of their fortunes, and began rigging its market to make it thus. You can find plenty of references to the beauty and high esteem diamonds were held in prior to de Beers I think the expression “Diamond jubillee” preceds them. You don’;t have "Emerald Jubillee"s.
Of course, once the company was there and started exploiting the Kimberley pipes, they knew they’d have to keep a lid on things, and they also kept a lid on competuition and built up demand. But they did it with a proven commodity. They’d have a harder go if they were selling, say, mud.
What is funny about the “I of Argon”?
Such a straight line!
Read:
Read the original, unexpurgated version first. Try to do it out lousd without laughing. Then, my advice is to read the MST3K-ed version.
Theis’ story suffered not only from its own defects, but from being poorly typed and copied. As the Wiki article says, the end has at long last been found. (Although it wasn’t worth the wait – but at least the ambiguous ending we’ve known all these years wasn’t Theiss’ fault.)
Here’s a good story on synthetic diamonds from a few years ago: The New Diamond Age | WIRED
Yes DeBeers is looking for ways to brand their “real” diamonds from the manufactured ones. It is worth noting though that the manufactured ones are as real as real ones so it is all marketing BS. Despite that I have spoken to various women I know about these and all have said they would feel ripped off by a manufactured diamond in an engagement ring no matter how real it is. The notion being that they like the idea of a diamond that has been waiting in the ground for a few million years rather than one turned out of a machine. Go figure…
Totally anecdotal, but when I got engaged 11 years ago, I told my boyfriend that I didn’t want a diamond. Now I didn’t know about all of this, but I didn’t want one because 1) I have always found diamonds a bit plain compared to colored gemstones and 2) they were fairly recent as engagement rings so why not wear something else and 3) everyone had a diamond, I wanted an emerald!
Everyone told me I’d regret not having a diamond (I don’t know why), so my husband compromised and got me a smaller diamond solitaire with a gorgeous emerald wrap. It’s very pretty and I guess I have the best of both worlds. It’s still a diamond so everyone knows it’s an engagement ring, but it’s different from what most people have.
Of course, I also got two wedding rings, so I wear four rings on that finger! I got two because with the double engagement ring, it was hard to find a wedding ring that looked right. Somehow getting two small plain gold bands looked better than one of anything else. I joke that I can tell my husband really loved me, with 2 engagement rings and 2 wedding rings.
And I’m still not a diamond lover.
Hardly unique. Just about everything there can be said of CZ, which sells at a tiny fraction of the price of “real” diamonds, and the two can’t be told apart easily, either.
I don’t like diamond rings, especially diamond solitaire engagement rings, for a couple of reasons (other than the conflict diamonds aspect, which someone else already mentioned). Some people will supposedly measure the worth of a woman’s fiance as a person by the size of the diamond in her ring. I find this abhorrent. Also, they’re boring and conventional. I think a colored stone is more interesting than a diamond, and for me, “everybody has a diamond” is a much better reason not to get one than to get one.
For a non-engagement ring, I like big and sparkly more than I care about having a diamond. A diamond is almost never going to give you the maximum “big and sparkly” for your money. I’d rather have a bigger, sparklier CZ.
Oooooh, pretty!
I have problems with vintage rings, though. They’re usually too small for me- I have big fat fingers at least partly from muscles that I’ve built up by typing. People back when probably generally didn’t type as much, so their fingers were smaller. Also, I have other finger-shape weirdness going on, and the thin bands that vintage rings tend to have (as opposed to thicker modern bands) tend to be uncomfortable for me.
CZ has only been around for about 100 years, so it hasn’t the background diamonds have. Even in the 19th century, no one would have praised CZ. Even had it existed earlier, it has no cleavage planes, so they wouldn’t have been able to make gems of it (Baseball diamonds and diamond suits of cards got that name because of the way diamonds cleave naturally).
I agree that CZ is a good substitute for most purposes today (except, notably, for its thermal conductivity, which is one of my chief interests in diamonds now), but my point was that de Beers didn’t create the allure of diamonds from whole cloth, that they had a reason for being prized. Until recently, CZ wouldn’t even be know, and, if known, wouldn’t have been prized.
I’d much rather have a manufactured diamond than a natural one. However, I’d rather have a sapphire (natural or manmade) over a diamond.
IME the diamonds I’ve bought have been certified in some manner, the name of which escapes me right now. Meaning they’re obviously not DeBeers but they were AH!!! Now I remember - “Conflict Free”.
I love my rocks. I wish they were bigger and had more clarity. I don’t consider cut very often, but I’ve gotta say that the marquis cut sucks. I get much more enjoyment looking at my round brilliants. There’s an awful lot of waste in a marquis cut and they’re not nearly as reflective. I just didn’t know better when I started out accumulating jewelry. Live and learn.
You can enjoy diamonds just 'cuz they’re pretty to look at looks at hand, thinking “oooh, sparkly”.
And here is where I chime in to state that diamonds from Canada are not at all involved in slavery.