131–140 of 314 posts
> De Beers is fighting Chinese lab-grown diamonds And I hope they lose. https://priceonomics.com/post/45768546804/diamonds-are-bulls... (and HN comments on original posting 2013-03-19 -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5403988 )
I wonder if I could buy lab diamonds from alibaba, I'm currently not able to check. I would certainly get the cheap "fake" over the ""real stuff"".
You can, but they aren't as cheap as I had been hoping. If I recall correctly from when I searched a few years ago, they are about 30-50% the price of mined diamonds. Much cheaper overall, but not at commodity levels yet. I had been hoping that they would be cheap enough to buy a few hundred, then hand them out as party favors to weird people out. At some point, I hope they get there. Rubies, on the other hand, are r…
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Feel like diamonds are such a great example for the 'a free-market' people. They typically argue that in a truly free-market everything is better. Well diamond trade exists largely in a free market until it hits some of the countries they sell in but before that we basically have blood being spilt over them and companies existing outside of strong regulated countries to funnel the diamonds into and control the price.…
A truly free market requires complete transparency, something the diamond market has historically lacked.
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What exactly is that internally consistent argument? They now basically say, "the more pure they are, the more valuable, because they are incredibly rare (because we artificially limit supply) unless they are really, really pure, because we can't limit supply of those." Remember, lots of things are natural, but only the rare ones are valuable.
The internally consistent argument is that these items are, like many other luxury goods, designed to signal status (or, more rarely, to elicit a response of much more fundamental appreciation, the sort a fellow watchmaker might have for a Patek Philippe). Diamonds are not unique in this regard, because many people prefer natural/real over artificial/synthetic/fake when it comes to art, antiques, luxury items, etc. I…
Do you keep the price tag on it?
Or do you just talk about how, obviously, you'd never stoop to buying man-made diamonds?
> At a trade fair in Hong Kong on Tuesday De Beers unveiled its latest diamond verification technology, the coffee-machine sized AMS2 that costs US$45,000 – already a substantial discount to the US$65,000 price tag of its predecessor. Within the first few hours of its release, over a dozen orders had flooded in, the company said. All I can think when I read this is that of course they get orders -- all the companies…
> At a trade fair in Hong Kong on Tuesday De Beers unveiled its latest diamond verification technology, the coffee-machine sized AMS2 that costs US$45,000 – already a substantial discount to the US$65,000 price tag of its predecessor. Within the first few hours of its release, over a dozen orders had flooded in, the company said. All I can think when I read this is that of course they get orders -- all the companies…
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If you ever want a proof that the market can be utterly irrational, look no further than: > The arrival of lab-grown diamonds has challenged the widely-held assumption that diamond prices could only go up
Feel like diamonds are such a great example for the 'a free-market' people. They typically argue that in a truly free-market everything is better. Well diamond trade exists largely in a free market until it hits some of the countries they sell in but before that we basically have blood being spilt over them and companies existing outside of strong regulated countries to funnel the diamonds into and control the price.…
> De Beers fights fakes with technology as China’s lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems From what I understand, these gems are actually better than natural ones, since they're 100% pure. Maybe it's time to call lab-grown diamonds "real" and mined ones "fake".
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In Napoleon's day it was more expensive than gold. By the time the Washington Monument was constructed the price had dropped to roughly the level of silver. Titanium might be poised to follow in its footsteps after the discovery of electrolysis of titanium oxide in molten calcium chloride, analogous to the cryolite process.
I'm curious, what are some of the places we would start to see titanium if the prices dropped?
Looks like this is starting to happen alreadt: https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/titanium-hinges.html
$0.25 for a hinge
Titanium is light, but my favorite thing is it is next to impossible to bend. So anything that shouldn't bend will be better with titanium.