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The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

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21–30 of 619 posts

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#21
post #4

Has anyone ever tried to sell an engagement or wedding ring with diamonds? You get cents on the dollar. Even or I should say especially brand names like Tiffany. The whole thing is a scam from start to finish and I wish I could go back in time and avoid the entire thing.

The origin of diamond engagement rings was insurance: with the decline of "breach of promise" suits, the fiancée at least had something to sell as a settlement if the fiancé reneged on the promise of marriage.

All of that nonsense is long gone; the fetish for engagement rings is just a residual and empty metaphor. Good riddance.

My US gf was astonished and dubious that my relatives (in various other countries) didn't have diamond engagement rings, or engagement rings at all.

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#22
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rains diamonds on neptune?

Seems like a reasonable conjecture that stretches the meaning of the word rain. Naomi Rowe-Gurney: So I mentioned methane being the reason why these two planets are blue. Well, methane has carbon in it and that carbon can occur by itself and also be crushed by the immense pressures that happen, like, deep in the atmosphere, so much deeper than the levels that I look at. And inside the planet, when it gets really hot…

More snow, really.

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#23
post #21
post #4

Has anyone ever tried to sell an engagement or wedding ring with diamonds? You get cents on the dollar. Even or I should say especially brand names like Tiffany. The whole thing is a scam from start to finish and I wish I could go back in time and avoid the entire thing.

The origin of diamond engagement rings was insurance: with the decline of "breach of promise" suits, the fiancée at least had something to sell as a settlement if the fiancé reneged on the promise of marriage. All of that nonsense is long gone; the fetish for engagement rings is just a residual and empty metaphor. Good riddance. My US gf was astonished and dubious that my relatives (in various other countries) didn't…

It's easy to fall prey to advertising:

How an Ad Campaign Invented the Diamond Engagement Ring

    In the 1930s, few Americans proposed with the precious stone. Then everything changed.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#24
post #3

I would like to take this moment to thank https://diamondssuck.com/ for preventing me from buying my wife a diamond, and getting her a much prettier moissanite instead. It's been on hn's front page several times.

I understand what he’s saying, but he doesn’t get it.

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#26
post #21
post #4

Has anyone ever tried to sell an engagement or wedding ring with diamonds? You get cents on the dollar. Even or I should say especially brand names like Tiffany. The whole thing is a scam from start to finish and I wish I could go back in time and avoid the entire thing.

The origin of diamond engagement rings was insurance: with the decline of "breach of promise" suits, the fiancée at least had something to sell as a settlement if the fiancé reneged on the promise of marriage. All of that nonsense is long gone; the fetish for engagement rings is just a residual and empty metaphor. Good riddance. My US gf was astonished and dubious that my relatives (in various other countries) didn't…

This was really never true though. Second hand diamonds have been incredibly cheap compared to retail for a long time. Good luck reselling that engagement ring, the pawn shop has a box overflowing with them.

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#27
post #4

Has anyone ever tried to sell an engagement or wedding ring with diamonds? You get cents on the dollar. Even or I should say especially brand names like Tiffany. The whole thing is a scam from start to finish and I wish I could go back in time and avoid the entire thing.

> Has anyone ever tried to sell an engagement or wedding ring with diamonds? You get cents on the dollar.

Does that mean you can buy one second-hand at a low price, and avoid the inflated market entirely?

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#28
post #3

I would like to take this moment to thank https://diamondssuck.com/ for preventing me from buying my wife a diamond, and getting her a much prettier moissanite instead. It's been on hn's front page several times.

I was in the market, but I came to find moissanite to be too sparkly. Still looking but thinking white sapphire is going to be the eventual purchase.

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#29
post #4

Has anyone ever tried to sell an engagement or wedding ring with diamonds? You get cents on the dollar. Even or I should say especially brand names like Tiffany. The whole thing is a scam from start to finish and I wish I could go back in time and avoid the entire thing.

Best thing I ever did was buy my (now X) wife's engagement ring off Craigslist.

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#30

https://archive.today/89rNF

I haven't been able to access archive.today in a good long while. Cloudflare's challenge page lets me solve a captcha, but doesn't actually remember that I've solved it. So I'm in an endless loop of challenge pages. If you're wondering, I'm on Firefox connected thru Google Fiber. I've tried disabling Enhanced Tracking Protection, but all that does is make it so I don't have to solve a captcha. I still get the endless…

Other talked about the reasons, but I just want to point it's not Cloudflare - they always put their logo on all the pages, but that captcha page is missing any logos of any sort.

(Plus, since last month, Cloudflare no longer has captchas at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37799413)

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