Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

worksinprogress.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 511 posts

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

#161

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

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…

> "natural" televisions and tacos have yet to be found.

I refuse to give up hope!

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

#162

Post by Modified3019 »

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…

Yeah, these days when it comes to gems like diamond or moissanite meant for high quality beauty, the actual cost is in the time and skill it takes to properly cut one for optimal optical properties.

Mind you most people won’t be able to tell a difference unless you put the $5 cut next to a $500 cut.

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

#163

Post by Vox_Leone »

jajko wrote: post #16
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…

They never had any value, apart from specialized ie glass cutting tool. Only when DeBeers realized they could push some fictious heavy marketing 'to prove your worth to woman you are asking to marry' for those shiny stones nobody wanted to buy, people who didn't know better got manipulated into buying them. They are supposedly very common in universe, and probably in deeper Earth too. Correction is healthy and benefi…

>>They never had any value

As they say, "If you want to know a diamond's worth, try selling one"

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

#164

Post by bluGill »

Joker_vD wrote: post #49
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 expect diamonds to lose almost all of their value. Artificial diamonds, you mean. The natural ones will keep their price, just as "hand-crafted" goods did (and, I suspect, as "human-produced" content in the future will); it's a matter of status and signalling that you can afford to buy an inferior, more expensive product.

Given the moral conditions around natural diamonds it is artificial diamonds that should command a premium.

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

#165

Post by vlachen »

batch12 wrote: post #55
Joker_vD wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I expect diamonds to lose almost all of their value. Artificial diamonds, you mean. The natural ones will keep their price, just as "hand-crafted" goods did (and, I suspect, as "human-produced" content in the future will); it's a matter of status and signalling that you can afford to buy an inferior, more expensive product.

Now we just need artificial diamonds that are flawed enough to be indistinguishable from real diamonds.

Just like the "distressed wood" trend caused a booming business of making products that all have the exact same "distressed" pattern. History doesn't repeat, but it certainly rhymes.

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

#166

Post by gwbas1c »

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…

> No one wants to hear that diamond rings are worthless.

You might convince them that their diamonds are worthless, and that a better investment is cryptocurrency!

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

#167

Post by derriz »

crazygringo wrote: post #81
rowanG077 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Natural diamonds are the inferior product in every way.

For the same reason you can make a print of a classic painting, and digitally brighten and re-saturate the colors to counteract the darkening and yellowing of the original with age. Remove all of the cracking too. And you'll still only be able to sell the print for tens of dollars, while the original is worth millions. People attach value to authenticity and originals and tradition, however they define that.

> People attach value to authenticity and originals and tradition, however they define that.

That (some) people might attach (some) value to those attributes does not guarantee that the monetary value will be preserved. Pre-20th century antique "brown" furniture is a notorious example - where market value has collapsed in the last few decades as fashion has shifted.

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

#168

Post by Raydovsky »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #124
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…

This is certainly good news for lasers. Many people don't realize how good diamonds are for this. Transparent with a 65% higher refractive index than glass, and 8x the thermal conductivity of copper. And completely scratch-proof!

No deeper groves at 8?

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

#170

Post by grues-dinner »

db48x wrote: post #146
acchow wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> also wonder if impurities will become fashionable, just to show that a specific diamond is actually natural and can't be made in a lab. Why can’t you add impurities when manufacturing a diamond? “Doping”

You can, but a flaw in a gem is usually an inclusion of some other mineral, a crack, or a hollow space.

This is Gary: his job is to give the machine a solid kick once a day and crack the vacuum seal on Fridays. Gary made us 120 million in imperfections last quarter.
Post reply on HN