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Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

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Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#151

Post by anjel »

fortran77 wrote: post #22
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #11

Over the past 10 years, there has been an explosion in cheap lab diamond and moissanite producers in China and India. 10 years ago, it was hard to find quality lab diamonds at a reasonable price, and moissanite was still reasonably expensive at $400-600/ct. Today, given cutthroat competition and "race to the bottom" pricing strategies, lab diamonds are ubiquitous, extremely high quality, and cheap. Less than $200/ct…

I need diamonds to play my records! What do you think a record stylus ("needle") is made from?

The moon-rock tipped styluses are vastly superior. /Zappa

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#152

Post by LanceH »

Nevermark wrote: post #136
pessimizer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A man-made television isn't an artificial television; a man-made taco isn't an artificial taco. Man-made beef and artificial beef are both the same thing: a not-beef beef substitute. Beef is by definition cow-made. Man-made diamonds are just diamonds.

Last I heard from the forefront of geology and ecology, "natural" televisions and tacos have yet to be found. So I don't think the distinction is best analyzed with examples like that. If something is normally created and nature, and humans find a way to reproduce it, it is common to call the human produced versions artificial even if the result is identical in principle. Humans make lots of distinctions that fall ap…

Burn hydrogen to make water. Is that artificial water? Or is it forever artificial water? Is all water that mixes with it artificial water? Is all water now artificial since it has mixed with human made water?

While the basic definition seems to be merely "man-made", I would say it holds there is some underlying distinction between the natural and artificial. Natural light vs artificial light -- the two are distinctly different. But are the photons produced by a light bulb artificial, or are they natural photons?

Artificial diamonds are more diamond than diamonds. The diamond portions are identical, regardless of origin.

Or maybe there are trapped gasses or other identifiers left in them that make them distinct. I don't really know about this point.

Anyhow, the natural vs artificial distinction really seems to break down when things are (literally) physically and chemically identical.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#153

Post by pyrolistical »

asdff wrote: post #116
gwbas1c wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's based on supply and demand. In 2012, when I was shopping for an engagement ring, a natural 2ct diamond cost $250,000. (I bought a 2ct moissanite for much, much less, and my wife is very happy with it.) When I looked in fall 2023, a natural 2ct diamond cost $20,000. That's a loss of over 90% of value, not counting inflation! (Now the supply of diamonds is much higher, and the demand for natural diamonds is much l…

The realities of this market have not hit the consumers. Even young people are still out there spending 5-6 figures on a rock and ascribing real value and aspirations towards eventually "upgrading" into said rocks from perhaps an existing synthetic alternative already set in the ring. Even if the supply side price argument is so perverted now, we still have a culture that wants to put a high value on this object for…

A good example of how marketing can produce cultural values

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#155

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

dboreham wrote: post #130
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard that they are the ones that made diamonds the engagement stone, and that was relatively recently. My mother and grandmother had sapphire engagement rings.

So did Princess Diana. Some of this is regional -- the US is the epicenter of marketing diamonds while other places don't value them so much.

Both me mum and grandmum were British.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#156

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

dboreham wrote: post #133
gwbas1c wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's based on supply and demand. In 2012, when I was shopping for an engagement ring, a natural 2ct diamond cost $250,000. (I bought a 2ct moissanite for much, much less, and my wife is very happy with it.) When I looked in fall 2023, a natural 2ct diamond cost $20,000. That's a loss of over 90% of value, not counting inflation! (Now the supply of diamonds is much higher, and the demand for natural diamonds is much l…

Quick note that a very nice 2ct stone has never cost $200,000. Not sure who was trying to charge you that much in 2012 or why, but gem diamond prices haven't changed much in the past 30 years, although there was an uptick in the covid/inflationary years, and a reversion to trend more recently. https://www.pricescope.com/diamond-prices/diamond-prices-cha...

Jewelry store wanted to anchor the price?

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#157

Post by notfed »

fidotron wrote: post #96
notfed wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like some people want to pay more money. Good for them. I'm happy to have a cheaper option.

The whole point is to spend money and to be an honest signal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory In the event artificial diamonds are genuinely indistinguishable from natural ones they will all, natural and artificial, become worthless aside from practical applications.

That's a really, really dim signal though, right? You literally need a microscope to see the signal.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#158

Post by poisonborz »

istrice wrote: post #138

I started looking into diamonds two years before I proposed to my now wife and went really down the rabbit hole of the chemistry, history, and marketing behind diamonds. Lab-made was a no brainer, I got a flawless and huge stone for the price I would have paid for a crappy 1ct from DeBeers. My only regret is that whatever I paid for the diamond will still be way over-market in a few years but well, had to get married…

Why and how became diamonds a necessity of marriage in the US? Did your fiancé really expect a diamond, and would have she be disappointed by something that has only worth to you?

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#159

Post by indoordin0saur »

cyberax wrote: post #144
indoordin0saur wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would love to see us turn iron into gold as well as nature does with supernovas.

You can do that in an accelerator. It's not going to be cost-effective for a long time, though. Once we get to asteroid mining, we'll be able to get gold cheaply enough to not care about it. On Earth, most of the gold sank into the planet's core because it dissolves well in molten iron. So the gold that we're mining comes mostly from meteorites.

If you do the math on the theoretical maximum energy efficiency of turning iron into gold we'll never be able to do it cost-effectively until energy becomes cheaper by like 10 orders of magnitude. That's why heavy metals all come from the most energetic processes in the universe, like supernovae and neutron star collisions :)

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#160

Post by agumonkey »

Animats wrote: post #105

That's a good article. The whole history is there. The commercial side has made huge progress, too. Look up "diamond making machine" on Alibaba. You can buy a high-pressure, high temperature six sided press for about US$200,000. A chemical vapor deposition machine is about the same price. De Beers, the diamond cartel, has an R&D operation, Element Six. They sell synthetic diamonds for lasers and other exotic applicat…

How will they maintain their jewelry business ? It feels like Sony CD-R drives in the Playstation era.
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