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Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

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Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#161

Post by scythe »

baldfat wrote: post #140
dmix wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what are some of the places we would start to see titanium if the prices dropped?

Cheap titanium bikes are high on my list but I think the killer application is titanium hinges. Springs will last a lifetime. 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.

I doubt it's happening already. Metalysis currently owns the patent rights to the process and is focusing on tantalum and zirconium (higher profit margins) while working on scaling it up.

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#162

Post by jasonsync »

I recently went shopping for a diamond.

Price depends on grading factors such as cut, colour and clarity (inclusions). I was surprised to learn that lab grown diamonds also vary in colour, and may have inclusions, and as such are graded on the same scale as natural diamonds.

At most of the stores I visited, the price of lab-grown diamonds was about 30% cheaper compared to their natural counterparts at the same grade.

Most surprising though was that the sales people were really pushing hard to sell the lab grown diamonds over the natural ones.

I would imagine the markup and commission is much much higher.

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#163

Post by rhino369 »

pluma wrote: post #37
dsacco wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re called fake because they’re artificial, not because they have more flaws. The diamond industry might have once thought it could rely on artificial diamonds being less perfect, but it’s under no such illusion now. I think it’s fair to acknowledge that, even if we don’t like it, many people prefer natural diamonds because they’re natural, not because they believe they’re somehow more “pure.” In other words, I b…

Sure but even "natural" diamonds aren't as rare as they're made out to be. There's an artificial scarcity because De Beers wants to keep the prices up: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07...

The De Beers cartel fell apart when mines in other locations were established. It was only valued at 13 billion in 2011.

De Beers definitely mined cornered the market for a long time. But its over.

The meme that diamonds are falling off frees if not for De Beers is not accurate. But with these artificals, it may very well come true.

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#164

Post by ancap »

ameister14 wrote: post #113
kalcode wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I disagree. I think in a lot of cases buyers should or would demand transparency (ie. has this house ever been flooded?), but I don't think it's a strict requirement in the broad sense you may be implying.

Transparency can be subjective. For example, a person sells 100 shares of ACME stock to a savvy buyer. A short time later the stock triples in value, and the seller sues the buyer because they were not "completely transparent" about their knowledge that the stock would rise.

Of course, in all of this I am not talking about deliberate fraud which would be strictly forbidden in a free market.

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#165

Post by Pulcinella »

OtterCoder wrote: post #144
andrewla wrote: post #98

> 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.

Feel free to quibble with the PC! “Organic” in chemistry usually means compounds that contain carbon-hydrogen bonds. So diamonds, graphite and graphene, carbon mono- and dioxide, carbonates, and even cyanide* are traditionally considered inorganic forms of carbon.

*Cyanides are considered inorganic even though hydrogen cyanide contains a C-H bond.

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#166

Post by kps »

ce4 wrote: post #48
cptskippy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's organic vs synthetic. Not real vs fake. There was a similar problem with Rubies and they detected the fakes by virtue of the fact that they were flawless.

Even if they succeed (edit: with that fake-vs-natural campaign), what if the next step introduced artificial flaws and impurities?

It doesn't matter. If factory diamonds are cheap, the tacky hoi polloi will slap them on everything Swarovski-style, the appearance of diamond will no longer connote wealth, and the wealthy will drop them like a… rock.

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#168

Post by badosu »

intrasight wrote: post #101
kbutler wrote: post #35

Earlier 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.

I don't understand this statement, they could not mine iron ores but could gold ones?

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#169

Post by swebs »

kalcode wrote: post #108
vanderZwan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I hate comments like these. You could have used this as an argument against the free market in general, but instead you tried to turn it into some us-vs-them tribalistic debate punctuated with an appeal to emotion. It's the lowest form of dialog crafted only to rowdy up people, split them into two extremes, and pit them against each other.

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#170

Post by vinceguidry »

tibbetts wrote: post #17
moccachino wrote: post #5

From the article: >The arrival of lab-grown diamonds has challenged the widely-held assumption that diamond prices could only go up I'll admit I don't know a lot about the diamond market and perhaps I'm misinformed, but how on earth was this a widely held assumption? In a world where people are increasingly aware that De Beers and other companies hold major stockpiles of diamonds solely to keep the price inflated, an…

An assumption can be widely held even if most informed people would dispute it. For example the widely held belief that housing prices will only go up, despite historical and theoretical arguments to the contrary.

I don't think that's the sense in which the article stated it. It seems to me like there might be a significant number of people in the industry that believed it.
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