Does anyone know of a good, reputable online store that sells these lab-grown diamonds?
Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems
141–150 of 314 posts
Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bought a "real" diamond after protracted negotiations (with my SO, not the diamond seller), and I still don't really understand it. She cried more during the process than when her grandmother was dying, and she still wanted one particular diamond even though I'd explicitly given a significantly larger budget for either lab grown or moissanite. And although she understood why there was no real difference outside of…
>And although she understood why there was no real difference outside of price, I think she was very worried she would be judged by other women for not having (or being worth) a "real" diamond. get fake diamond, claim it's real to everyone else. it's not like they can tell the difference, or they will take her ring to get tested.
Oh, I told her I'd ordered a duplicate ring with lab grown stones of identical quality, and she could have them appraised and choose whichever one she thought was better.
I haven't been snarled at many times in my life, but that was one of them.
Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems
#143I just don't get it. Who cares what the source of a diamond is? Isn't the point of a diamond its beauty in the eye of the beholder? If I had a big diamond I would definitely want the cheapest one possible with a visual aesthetic I like. Fortunately, my wife and I don't like diamonds and we have purple sapphires in our wedding bands.
Jewelry has always served as an efficient way to show status, hence the effort behind trying to grade a diamond and verify its origin.
Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems
#144> 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…
I was about to quibble with you about the usage of organic, but then I remembered that diamonds are literally just carbon, so, by chemistry, you're right.
Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems
#145I think that many of us are missing the main factor in what makes organic diamonds so expensive. Organic diamonds are "desirable". Desire is strong emotion that can defy logic and is pinnacle to the purchase of any luxury item. It is always the same argument when many of us like to compare a luxury item based on its utility rather than its desirability be it $100k tesla vs. $2k beat up honda, $1k iphone x vs. $600 an…
Counting on that for my next startup, artisanal electricity.
Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone should tell the bitcoin people.
But now we can make more diamonds :) there will never be more than 21 million bitcoin
Great business idea. Here is the freshly made AD[1]. Curious to see if there is any business plan follow ups.
Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems
#147I would like to know who held this "widely-held assumption" because everyone outside of debeers at this point knows full well how much of a scam diamond pricing is.
Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems
#148I 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…
Real rubies I awesome. I picked up 50 of them that are 1cm in size to replace the plastic ones that come in my board games. The weight of them in my hand is unexpected. The upside had to be when I brought them to work and got to pore a pile of real rubies into someones hands. Only "downside" is that even though they are really hard, they can scratch each other. But eh they are cheap enough that I just tossed them in a velvet bag and in the board game box.
Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems
#149> 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…
Would be very surprised if they don't vet the purchasers and lock them down with very, very strict terms. In fact, I'd be surprised if they weren't more so loaning instead of selling the devices, with the right to reclaim in case of "misuse".
You can't vet friends of friends. If a respected jewelry house in Hong Kong buys one, that in no way implies a synthetic diamond producer isn't best bar buddies with the jewelry house's owner and deals for access to the machine aren't made outside of business hours.
Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aluminum in the 1800s was more expensive than gold, and was used as jewelry, fancy cutlery, the capstone of the Washington monument, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aluminium Inexpensive mass production moved it from niche prestige uses to unlock its many utilitarian applications.
Iron was more expensive than gold at the dawn of the iron age. The only way humans obtained iron was from meteorites.
This is so incredibly badass. I mean, just imagine that the only practicable place to get this new, incredibly strong material, was from space.
On the topic of found vs made materials: I’ve read that shipwrecks are getting mined as a source of steel because it’s more or less impossible to make new steel that isn’t contaminated by trace amounts of radiation from 20th century nuclear testing. While not a problem for skyscrapers, certain lab equipment requires the relatively more rare variety of found steel.