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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

#201

Post by takinola »

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…

I am curious to know if there is precedent for goods losing their veblen status.

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

#202

Post by FactKnower69 »

Kaijo wrote: post #20

This is true with some qualifications. If you're interested in the kind of investment grade diamonds that a major auction house would deal with, then you're looking at heavy weights and/or fancy colors that synthetics can't reach yet. In the diamond trade the word "paragon" is sometimes reserved for flawless or near-flawless stones above 100 carats, of which there is a long list of famous examples, but the largest ge…

"Investment grade", hahaha! "Speculation grade" would be a much less pathetic way to articulate this absurd concept

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

#203

Post by taneq »

agumonkey wrote: post #160
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.

Better to move into a new related business than to Kodak yourself.

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

#204

Post by karunamurti »

agumonkey wrote: post #160
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.

Do it like here in Japan. They charged you 3x-4x the gold price and said "Oh it's not the gold price, but the craftsmanship".

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

#205

Post by kylehotchkiss »

Approaching the end of De Beer's awful diamond scam is wonderful. Too many injustices perpetuated in Africa, too many lies to Americans about what matters in relationships. I'll never forget a college acquaintance a decade ago who spent $10,000 on a ring to woo his rich girlfriend. The engagement failed just a few weeks later. Good riddance. Long live synthetic diamonds.

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

#206

Post by taneq »

fennecbutt wrote: post #193
hammock wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredible, great info. We are now living in the Diamond Age.

Where's my magic book then. And my atomic fabbers! Lemme 3d print a phone.

“You wouldn’t download some RAM”

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

#207

Post by jiggawatts »

fennecbutt wrote: post #193
hammock wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredible, great info. We are now living in the Diamond Age.

Where's my magic book then. And my atomic fabbers! Lemme 3d print a phone.

Magic book = iPad or Remarkable

Atomic fabber = chip fabs making things on ~10 atom scales

3D printing homes is possible now, just a bit niche

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

#208

Post by _ph_ »

biomcgary wrote: post #183
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Diamond eyeglasses? The lenses would still be cheaper than the Luxottica frames.

I am pretty sure, diamonds would make awful eyeglasses. While their index of refraction is high, which makes glasses thin, their chromatic dispersion is high. That is the very thing which makes their glitter so colorful. For good optical systems you want to try to reduce the dispersion, to 0, if possible.

Another story is the scratch-resistance. For that it would be sufficient to coat the surface of the lens with a thin layer of diamond. Which is done in several applications.

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

#209

Post by elihu »

djtango wrote: post #25
Kaijo wrote: post #20

This is true with some qualifications. If you're interested in the kind of investment grade diamonds that a major auction house would deal with, then you're looking at heavy weights and/or fancy colors that synthetics can't reach yet. In the diamond trade the word "paragon" is sometimes reserved for flawless or near-flawless stones above 100 carats, of which there is a long list of famous examples, but the largest ge…

A diamond the size of a moon? Does that mean it's a single molecule of pure carbon the size of the moon? I wonder what effects gravity has at that scale

The density of diamond is about 3.5 g/cm^3. The Earth's moon has a density of around 3.3 g/cm^3, so if you replaced it with a diamond of about the same size, it actually wouldn't be all that different in terms of gravity. Solar eclipses would be pretty wild though.

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

#210

Post by jayd16 »

Terr_ wrote: post #182
db48x wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not quite. They were making diamond windows from atmospheric carbon dioxide at room temperature in household machines or machines you could rent at the post office. We’re a ways off from that yet.

Also the whole aerostat thing where you make a diamond "balloon" full of vacuum that floats in air, using the strength of the rigid diamond to avoid it being crushed and popped. I'm no materials-scientist, but I did some napkin-math on that once and it came out to some ridiculously-thin-sounding layer of diamond.

so I guess it needs to be like 1/4th the thickness of the latex in a balloon (diamond is 4x the density). Vacuum gives you a bit more lift than helium but not that much. Yeah, seems pretty thin.
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