According to this thread, world wide sales of diamonds in 1932 were only $100, 000. Using Wolfram Alpha, I calculated the present value to be $1.56 million. I find this hard to believe. I doubt you could even support one industrial diamond mine with that amount of money. Can anyone explain this?
You’re right. According to the Statistical Abstract for 1933, page 504, sales of diamonds in 1932 were closer to $10 million just in the U.S… Link. (A few years later Marion Davies sold her jewelry collection for almost $1 million in and of itself, though I don’t know how much of that was in diamonds.)
Could that 100,000 be in direct wholesale from the mine to the cutters in Antwerp and other locations? Then with their markup to the manufacturers of jewelry you could get the 10 million sum.