I just got engaged. When we looked at rings, the jeweler asked my fiancé if she wanted natural or synthetic, and she responded “I don’t want a blood diamond!!” Of course, mined diamonds aren’t blood diamonds, but her impression was still they were a little ickier.
The jeweler told me that one reason to get a natural diamond was that the prices of lab grown diamonds had been falling, whereas natural hasn’t as much, so the ring would hold more value. I told her that was exactly why we wanted to go with a lab grown diamond! This isn’t an investment — we aren’t planning to sell the ring.
Ultimately, for a price that didn’t break the bank, we got an absolutely gorgeous ring with diamonds larger and higher quality than we would have been able to afford with natural. Diamond rings may have started as something to resell in divorce, but for us (for my fiancé really), it was more about getting something that was beautiful, and if it didn’t cost as much, great! I suspect most Americans will feel similarly.
> Of course, mined diamonds aren’t blood diamonds, but her impression was still they were a little ickier
For all intents and purposes, they are. The voluntary processes the diamond cartels adopted to supposedly reduce diamonds coming out of "conflict areas" are a joke. Most diamonds are mined under exploitive conditions, often with severe ecological impact, and the owners are almost without exception "blood on their hands" people even if one particular mine operates more ethically.
If you object to the mine owners (rio tinto) "blood on their hands" (from > 2,000 years of mining since Roman occupied Spain) then get rid of all your steel products as they're a major supplier of raw high grade iron ore (and copper, and ...)
Sources to any of these wild (and grossly outdated) claims?
> Most diamonds are mined under exploitative conditions
You’ve clearly never been to a diamond mine. More than 70% of diamonds come out of “modern” countries like Australia, Canada, Russia, and South Africa. Botswana used their diamond bounty to teach hundreds of their citizens to grade/cut/polish the very stones mined in the country, ensuring tons of high skill jobs.
> the owners are almost without exception "blood on their hands" people
Well you’re only right on a loophole on this one - the Russian government owns the company that produces 40% of the world’s diamonds and it would be tough to argue Putin is blood-free.
That's just ridiculous. May as well ask you why you never cited his comment when you commented?
You can Google this. Russia, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Botswana.(the contentious one would be DRC). These are regulated countries with labour rights and human rights. If they operate in these countries they are subject to those laws. May as well say you won't buy anything imported if you still feel there's ambiguity.
These are industries in these countries. Without these exports these people don't have jobs which feed them.
Interesting that your salesperson used the same line as DeBeers does at the end of the article about lab diamonds being too cheap. It must be a sales talking point that comes from on top.
It's seems crazy that Debeers is actually trying to drive lab prices down to make them seem too cheap for bridal use. Their strategy is to try to retain the higher-end luxury market while giving up the more mainstream market where they can't compete.
> whereas natural hasn’t as much, so the ring would hold more value.
This is purely the diamond scam. There is no market for selling ur used diamond. The diamond merchant sell u the high price, but u will not be able to do same to get the money back from the next sucker
A nice little white lie by omission anyway, as the resale value of a diamond drops up to 50% when it leaves the store! If you were planning for an investment, you'd be better off looking elsewhere.
That’s how I got a lavish engagement ring for my wife, I simply bought it used from a guy who’d bought it a year ago for a relationship that fell apart.
Met him at a jewelry store and had it verified and appraised, he had the receipt for the 12k or so he paid, it appraised for 16k (not sure why they appraise for more than the retail price), and I paid him 5k (CAD).
This was years ago, and I think it was a 1.4ct VVS2.
That same budget in store had me looking at sub 1 carat SI2 crap that was cloudy as all hell.
Diamonds have 0 resale value, not sure why people think otherwise when it’s so easy to see simply browsing used ads.
Unless you're buying a named diamond, it's close to worthless. Diamonds of the size used for marriages are not rare. They're super abundant, with the supply artificially limited by the diamond cartel.
Actually, right now there's a significant chance that mined diamonds are blood diamonds. Russia took over the international diamond industry after the collapse of DeBeer's monopoly, and naturally they claim any conflict they're involved in doesn't make their diamonds conflict diamonds, but on the other hand Wagner is being paid in mineral extraction rights for their actions in some very bloody African conflicts.
But how on planet Earth will my wife carry around a moissanite ring that's worth the 3 months of salary I'm supposed to spend on this thing? That's a heck of a big chunk of mineral! A diamond is just more practical /s
Frankly, if you're marrying a person who requires you to spend 3 months on a diamond ring, it may be time to remember an important bit of wisdom:
Never enter into a contract where one party benefits by breaking it.
I'm not knocking marriage or (outright) stating that financial motives may be at play, here, but it's a big indicator if "who your with" is more concerned about what's "on their finger" than about what's "around their arm".
Depends on the law of your country, but the ring forms part of a contract, breach it and they have to give it back.
May be the least of your concerns at that point.
When I bought my wife's engagement ring the jeweler showed me 3 different diamonds in my price range and then had me pick the one that I thought looked the best.
I ended up picking a lab grown diamond and was able to get a larger and (in my opinion) prettier diamond. My wife didn't seem to mind that it was lab grown when I eventually told her.
$3k is a bit much for me to feel comfortable spending at a store well known for selling Chinese knockoffs. Is there a way for a layman to test that the stone is indeed a diamond, and not something like lab made cubic zirconia?
I do see some entries like you're describing on Alibaba for bulk orders, but is there anything for consumers buying a single gem in this price range? I couldn't find anything on other websites that's as cheap.
A 3 karat diamond is still a crystal (approximately) the size of your pinkie nail that takes a fairly large energy input to create... and only the ones that've grown clear and without flaws are viable for jewelry purposes. The bigger it gets, the lower the yields are at the appropriate quality level, and so the more effort / waste is involved in getting one. (As opposed to industrial diamond uses, which mostly don't have those requirements and so have their price even more heavily impacted by synthetics.)
Diamond is not the energetically favorable form of carbon at room temperature and pressure, so to manufacturer there will always need to be expensive tricks. Not as expensive as digging out tons of kimberlite, but still not cheap.
Diamonds are a TERRIBLE investment and usually lose around 50% (natural) to 90% (synthetic) on sale. But think like this: if a ring costs 10K natural and 2K synthetic, a 50% loss on natural would correspond to losing 5K. A 90% loss on synthetic would correspond to losing 1.8K. You're still on top big time.
I gave my wife a large synthetic diamond ring for our 15th anniversary and she absolutely loved it.
It's my opinion they're not an asset, unless you own the cullinan diamond or something very pricey, they're going to depreciate, just at a slower rate perhaps. Older diamond cuts go for less as we get better at cutting techniques, the rest of the ring also loses value as the setting goes out of fashion.
The icky diamond thing is arguable, these are generally mined in countries with decent labour laws. On the contrary, lab diamonds require few workers and takes food out the mouth of poorer mine workers who become jobless.
When I proposed I got a ring with natural diamond. But being aware of all the shenanigans around diamonds I decided to get imperfect diamond. Especially because of the artificial diamonds - I assumed they would strive for perfect diamonds and therefore would make my imperfect one more unique later. Salt & pepper one. It looks like somebody has trapped a galaxy inside it. It's beautiful and it didn't cost much (compared to pure diamonds).
Sorry to be negative, but I think the conventions around marriage needs to be redone alongside all the other changes around marriage. To wit, the ability of a woman to divorce you and receive alimony and child support for basically the rest of her life. It's not clear to me what reason a rational person has for NOT getting divorced after enough time has elapsed that alimony is possible. Roughly 50% of marriages end in divorce; 50% of those are high conflict. When you buy a ring and give it to her, this will not factor into that judgement. You can pay for everything and the only thing the judge will look at is your incomes. Be smart and split everything down the middle, including the ring.
> It's not clear to me what reason a rational person has for NOT getting divorced after enough time has elapsed that alimony is possible.
I mean, assuming that you like your spouse, it's a perfectly rational decision to stay with them despite it being possible to make money by leaving them. It's economics-paper level sociopathy to suggest that "I could maximize my personal income by divorcing the person I love" is an action to be taken.
Thanks for the laugh. I really wish this type of thinking weren't so common in the population, but the fact is, it is pretty common. You need to account for it.
You have ruined your own argument though. Divorce because you no longer love your husband is a completely different thing than divorcing because of monetary incentives.
That only works if both partners have similar income, similar working times, and also split household work equally.
Most relationships are not like that, especially when kids are involved, but often even before that. So you often have one partner work more while the other takes care of most of the household. This leads to a situation where one partner is financially dependent on the other.
Marriage laws are supposed to protect the dependent partner in that case.
> To wit, the ability of a woman to divorce you and receive alimony and child support for basically the rest of her life.
Child support doesn't last that long — just until the child reaches 18. And alimony stops if the spouse ever gets remarried (though of course some people dodge that by not technically getting married to a new partner).
In many places (and all the ones where I've lived) it is the state that determines that you are married and not the couple. You may try to improve your odds with a prenup, but according to my friends that have tried, it doesn't offer much protection.
"Be smart and" don't get an expensive ring! Spend that money on your honeymoon, wedding, just save it, or donate it to a charity. Doing anything else makes more sense really.
De Beers basically controls the whole diamond market. They make it almost impossible to resell them and strictly control the supply. They were also responsible (via advertising agency N. W. Ayer) for the idea that diamonds should be used in engagement rings in 1938-1941.
This write-up from The Atlantic from 1982 explains the situation well. [1]
Lots of things have happened in the 40 years since that article was written. De Beers do not control the market anymore the way they did before. Wikipedia says
> De Beers's market share of rough diamonds to fall from as high as 90% in the 1980s to 29.5% in 2019
> De Beers sold off the vast majority of its diamond stockpile in the late 1990s – early 2000s and the remainder largely represents working stock (diamonds that are being sorted before sale). This was well documented in the press but remains little known to the general public.
> As a part of reducing its influence, De Beers withdrew from purchasing diamonds on the open market in 1999 and ceased, at the end of 2008, purchasing Russian diamonds mined by the largest Russian diamond company Alrosa
"Adam Ruins Everything" is a really, really terrible source. I encourage you to take everything you've learned from it and throw it out entirely.
Every episode makes horrific errors, uses subpar sources if any, and frequently gets really basic facts wrong in an effort to "ruin everything" and weave a narrative.
A good analogy is ice. We all use “freezer-grown crystalline water,” but prior to the invention of refrigeration, we harvested natural ice from frozen lakes and stored them in ice houses for use throughout the summer.
Sure, there’s some romance from hand-harvested ice, but you can’t beat the price and purity of ice from a freezer.
It has little, if anything, to do with the water. Ice made in a freezer is cloudy because of air bubbles. There are techniques for making clear ice using directional freezing. Here's one way: https://altonbrown.com/recipes/cocktail-ice-cubes/
No, being able to see through it has nothing to do with water purity (unless your water is so muddy that it's not clear even as a liquid), it's to do with the formation of the ice and the incorporation of air bubbles. You can make clear ice pretty easily with molds.
I did a bit of Googling and pretty much every article on the subject of clear ice includes impurities other than air:
> The most common impurities found in tap water include lime (also known as limescale), calcium, fluoride, nitrates, magnesium and certain other organic elements that are practically impossible to remove with regular filtration methods. So, when water freezes, the impurities that were evenly distributed in the water, tend to congregate near the middle, making ice cubes the whitest at their center. [1]
> But the reality is, most of the “impurities” found in your freezer ice cube are more likely nothing more than the minerals present in your tap water. Tap water commonly contains minerals such as: Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium [2]
Do you have a citation to back up the claim that it's only air bubbles?
There are other impurities than air, but they don't contribute making the ice cloudy. The only thing making ice cloudy is the bubbles. And you can verify it experimentally in your own freezer just by using a different freezing technique to create perfectly clear ice: https://youtu.be/E1G1I1LJjrI
I don't think this video is really sufficient to prove your point that "the only thing making ice cloudy is the bubbles". The directional freezing technique is essentially a filtration method - the H2O freezes first into the growing crystalline structure and all the other impurities (various minerals AND dissolved air) get "pushed down" and concentrated into the liquid water below.
As evidence that directional freezing can filter out impurities other than air, I would point out that the directional freezing process is an effective enough filtration method to filter salt out of sea water in sea ice. [1] So my assumption is that those other minerals commonly found in water (lime, calcium, fluoride, magnesium, etc) are also being filtered out in the process - and it certainly seems plausible to me that filtering those out contributes to the clarity of the resulting ice.
So my intuitive understanding, along with what I could learn with a bit of googling, is that there are a number of impurities which can make ice appear cloudy including (but not limited to) dissolved air. A number of people here seem to be adamant that it's just air bubbles, so I'd honestly like to know why they believe that to be true (e.g. sources, some clear explanation, etc)? So far the only justification I've seen is "because directional freezing works" - but as explained above I really don't see that as being a sufficient justification since it filters out a number of impurities other than air.
When you said the water was "impure" in your previous comment, no one thought you meant it was sullied with... air. While not technically incorrect, if you honestly thought "impure" was a good way to describe water with air dissolved in it, the best I can say is to watch out for your subtext when using a word much differently than basically anyone else does.
I don’t think referring to dissolved gas in water as an impurity is all that uncommon. To quote wikipedia:
> Water purification is the process of removing undesirable chemicals, biological contaminants, suspended solids, and gases from water. The goal is to produce water that is fit for specific purposes. [1]
Other sources list carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen as impurities that can cause corrosion in pipes [2], or can form bubbles in systems where there are major changes in pressure or temperature, blocking pumps, fine tubing, filters, etc. [3]
So it’s a bit context dependent, but there are situations where it is totally reasonable to view dissolved gases in water as an impurity. And this context - the discussion of what makes ice clear or cloudy - is one of them.
How can you claim so confidently that “no one thought” something, or that the parent is “using a word much differently than basically anyone else”? If you honestly think that you speak for all 1.35 billion English speakers in the world - or even all the people reading this thread - the best I can say is speak for yourself.
Yes, I used very slight hyperbole with "no one". Counterexample found, film at 11. A few highly technical contexts don't change the point: If someone holds up a flask of water and says "this is impure", what's at the top of the list of possible impurities in your mind, and how far down the list is air?
If by purity you mean any sort of "alien substance" whatsoever, stick with liquid water. And I hope you don't like any colored minerals, as those all have "alien substances" inside.
It's crazy to prefer a natural diamond for anything other than a collectors' item. It's not about being 'cheap' - whatever your budget is, if you're picking an engagement ring say, why not get a technically superior (or larger) stone for the same price tag?
I pitched this to my wife a few years back. She insisted she’d rather have a smaller natural diamond. It makes no sense to me. Shiny carbon is shiny carbon to me. There’s no real logic in it. But given it’s a status symbol that derives its value from its rareness, I suppose it’s no different than a Luis Vutton or a Rolex. It’s not about the function, it’s about the fact that you can afford one. I hate that mentality, I refuse to buy anything like that for myself.
You're only considering intrinsic value. That's helpful for raw commodities.
For nearly everything else, value is tied to perception, history, etc.
If I have two identical baseballs, they're both "just" baseballs. But one of them could have much more value due to its history: maybe it was a homerun ball by a famous player, or a ball that I or a family member hit/caught. Same function. Could be otherwise identical, but could also be worth very different amounts.
The stories we tell is where the primary value is.
In this case, your wife values the story of a natural diamond that was formed through long, natural processes and required the effort of finding, excavating, cutting and so on.
Now you could disagree with that story, or you could dislike the tellers and amplifiers of that story, but the fact remains that your wife and many others value that story, making it more precious than merely "shiny carbon."
This is branding and marketing 101. Humans are storytelling machines and they understand value largely via stories and relationships. Misunderstanding that is a failure to understand essential human characteristics.
> In this case, your wife values the story of a natural diamond that was formed through long, natural processes and required the effort of finding, excavating, cutting and so on.
I see this come up a lot, but I doubt very much that this story forms a large part of many people's thinking.
People want the status symbol and they want what they perceive as the ‘real’ thing, not what they rightly or wrongly perceive as an imitation.
As such ‘natural’ diamonds currently have successful marketing around them. I really don’t think the geology figures in many peoples minds. Geologists excepted of course.
Humans are indeed story telling machines, but you know what else they are? Hierarchy-driven apes who love showing off shiny, expensive shit to make themselves appear high status. The emergence of chemically, physically identical synthetic diamonds has triggered this in really very predictable ways - rationalisations of prior behaviour and desperate searching for ways to utilise this new phenomenon to maintain or elevate status.
The story here is a prime example. When both 'prettier' and 'not real' can no longer be defended, a new rationalisation for the large outlay of cash, and new explanation of how this makes the outlayer special, must be found. It doesn't have to be true (please don't try to tell me that all women have some sort of innate appreciation of carbon geology, I'm sorry but I don't believe it) it just has to sound right and allow the teller of the tale to continue to claim the high ground.
Because otherwise we have to face up to questions like "Did I spend all that and not prove I'm better than Bob who spent half as much?" and "Was I just doing this because of peer pressure and societal expectations? What does that say about me?"
For simplicity, I was considering "story" as part of the "status" side too (i.e.- there's a story here that I'm better than you for these reasons).
I know it's Hacker News, but come on folks, it's not that hard to understand that marketing, branding, storytelling and whatnot are real, meaningful forces in human dynamics.
Yeah this is very true. You have a painting, the artist may be Picasso, but uncertain. Suddenly it is confirmed it was Picasso. Same painting, different price.
That seems supremely othering. Do you have people in your life that you value over humans you don't know? What are the people you know, over the people that you don't, other than them being a meat bag that you know stories about, vs a meat bag that you don't?
At least people can tell their story I suppose, while a diamond cannot really once mounted on a ring (I guess you can get some certificate that tells a story, but it is not something obvious when looking at the ring).
but it does not seem visible to the naked eye when looking at jewelry... I guess with more lab made diamonds we will come to appreciate the geological beauty of it, and have bigger diamonds for the same price.
I personally find the decision to buy lab grown diamonds to be weirder, because if you are already thinking logically rather than emotionally and can resist the social pressure then why waste money on a diamond at all? There are plenty of gems or metals out there that are cheaper, prettier, more rare and hold their value better than diamonds (whether natural or lab grown).
If you like the shininess of diamonds, they're really hard to beat on the "pretty" front. Diamonds have a crazy internal refractive index, which, once exemplified by an appropriate cut, gives them a pretty unique shininess. The only gems that come close are substantially softer, meaning they lose they lose the precise cuts that give them the extra shimmer relatively quickly.
Don't enrich Russia by buying mined diamonds, but there's definitely a compelling argument for lab-grown ones.
But Moissanite are shinier than diamonds, very nearly as hard, but at a fraction of the price. And nobody can tell the difference without training and possibly a microscope.
When I last researched the topic, Moissanites almost exclusively came with a kinda ugly yellow tinge, but apparently that's not an issue anymore. Definitely a great choice. (Though I disagree that laypeople can't tell the difference between doubly-refractive and singly refractive gems)
When considering getting a Moissanite ring, I spent a significant amount of time researching the differences between diamonds and Moissanite, but I couldn’t explain or recognize the difference between doubly-refractive and singly refractive gems. We’ve even had jewelers who have looked at my wife’s ring and thought it was diamond. Admittedly that was a casual look and not a thorough appraisal, nevertheless, I doubt even a tiny percentage of the population could spot the difference.
Oh, looking at one or the other, almost certainly not. I mean that if you lined up 2 diamonds and a moissanite, I'd bet the average person would be able to pick out the odd one out.
Lie to them and say there's one diamond and they'd still pick the moissanite. Just being able to differentiate relatively with a biased test doesn't mean you can tell the difference one way or the other in absolute terms.
Logically, it's literally the hardest gemstone around and it also happens to look very pretty. I personally love the look of Emeralds and Opals, but they are so delicate that they would not stand up to daily wear and tear. Diamonds? You can abuse the hell out of it and it will look as nice as the day you bought it.
Naturally made, yes. the specific process called "grown" would better apply if there was, say, a plastic bottle-fruiting plant, but whether that plant was designed by humans or simply found by them in the environment does not change whether it is natural.
There is no such thing as natural versus unnatural, this dichotomy is a holdover from the time when we believed there was another plane of reality outside or distinct from the "natural" universe, which was somehow tainted by flaws unique to humans, being creatures with one foot in both realities.
I realize it sounds like a technically correct Internet argument of the nitpick variety, but I think that the norm of asseting an unchallenged bias toward "natural," and against "artificial," could use a general reassessment as it is constantly exploited by people using this ultimately baseless distinction as a way to bias opinion uncritically toward one kind of behavior or another.
The difference would be, that one was made artificial in a human machine in a lab - and the other by raw natural forces in the wild.
There is no practical value in jewelry anyway, it is a status symbol and the context of coming from the wild extracted under wild conditions (and maybe violently, ooh, blood diamonds, how exiting, erm shocking) has of course a higher symbolic value. So a artificial made one would be considered "fake".
Romanticism is not attached to logic. But it is still a real factor in human decision making. And to be honest, if I would be into jewelry, I probably would prefer the "real" one, too. But I am rather into extreme sports and any rings or alike are just dangerous baggage there (a friend of mine allmost lost a finger, while climbing over a fence and his ring got stuck on some metal piece).
But if your wife happens to be into it - applying logic here will be probably seen as a cheap way to save money.
> artificial in a human machine in a lab - and the other by raw natural forces in the wild
What do you suppose is the value that distinguishes these two processes? The story? Or is it the persistence of the naturalistic fallacy, surfacing in all sorts of places and in all kinds of minds including those one would expect are habitually vigilant against what is essentially a generalized form of superstition.
> What do you suppose is the value that distinguishes these two processes? The story?
Of course it is the story. The value in everything is the meaning we attach to it, not the thing itself.
With a natural diamond, it's the idea that you have a unique artifact formed over millions of years, an irreplaceable corner of the Earth and its history owned by you and you alone, which then suggests that you yourself have a certain uniqueness and irreplaceability.
You can argue that people should not choose that particular story and that particular meaning, but that's a moral argument, and not an argument about the object itself. (And if you choose to make that argument, I would first suggest introspecting over how much of your own stories and meaning are as arbitrary as that one.)
I don't care a bit for natural diamonds, but I have infinite respect for the stories and meaning people choose to embue their lives with. Ultimately, it's all we have.
>it's the idea that you have a unique artifact formed over millions of years
No it isn't. There are plenty of ugly diamonds — they are also formed over millions of years and are never sold to consumers. This is an ad hoc justification. People only cared about the beauty of the diamond until lab made ones came along. They are cut to increase the beauty. That already makes it processed. Nobody buys uncut diamonds. And I'm sure there are other stones formed over millions of years that are just black and nobody cares for. Raw olivine for example is priced by the ton. I'm sure there are even cheaper minerals at these depths that nobody cares about at all.
Only if you define them such that you exclude lab-made diamonds. But I agree that we can like things for multiple reasons and that rarity is a part of the demand for diamonds.
In any case, I believe people will eventually forget about "unnatural" diamonds. People will be more creative with thier works if a failure does not cost so much, and the average size will be larger. Consider that modern farmed perls were once considered unnatural. But they are not only cheaper but more uniform than wild ones and now nobody buys those.
I don't argue that stories are very important, and they are in fact the only thing we have. But that does not make themselves Justified categorically.
In fact my username, chain of fools, is the title of a song whose lyrics, although very brief, are very much about believing stories told with the motivation to do harm - or at very least to deprive others of something valuable so that the teller can have that same something cheaply.
"But that does not make themselves Justified categorically"
Diamonds are the hardest objects found naturaly. While everything around them was crushed and changed ober the eons - they persisted. And if polished they shined. And can cut any other known material.
It makes for a good story, which is why humans are after them, since a long time. Kings and queens wore them. Pirates stole and buried them.
Is the story justified categorically? I don't know, but it is an old story.
But personally I rather would like to have the sci-fi story, where diamonds are cheaply avaiable, as a very strong building material..
“Artificial” usually isn’t a positive thing when the word comes up. We’re often told to avoid artificial sweeteners, artificially hydrogenated oils, artificially enhanced flavors, artificial dyes and colorants… and that’s just in food and beverage, and totally ignoring the luxury image of natural hardwood instead of wood veneer, natural glass/crystal instead of plastic.
Diamonds are just about the only thing I can think of where artificial and natural are encouraged to be seen as equals. I’m sure some people have a naturalist/spiritual angle, but I’d bet most are simply applying the wisdom of so many other shopping areas to this one.
> that one was made artificial in a human machine in a lab - and the other by raw natural forces in the wild.
> ... has of course a higher symbolic value.
To some people, others of us think that it's frickin amazing what can be done with machines in a lab, and that the sheer ingenuity and advanced tech used to make that lab-created gem is awesome.
A good Rolex at least has a thriving resale market, and can actually increase in value over time. Same for a lot of other luxury goods as well as other stores of value (like gold or Bitcoin). Diamonds on the other hand are effectively worthless the moment they leave the store. Their high prices are a product of marketing and social pressure, nothing more.
> Diamonds are effectively worthless the moment they leave the store
That's not the case! You can have the stone removed from the ring and, in case you don't have the original certificate, sent to a certification authority (like GIA) to have it graded. I think it also, once graded, gets automatically laser-engraved (above a certain carat) but I'm not sure about that: maybe you need to pay for the laser engraving too. And it's then got a value on the market: there's a worldwide market (or several) and every single jeweler in the world can see which stones are available at which price depending on their specs and book any stone and have it shipped in a few clicks.
Source: I've got a good friend who's a jeweler and he showed that to me.
Now: fancy shops (with famous names) may make fun of people by selling them stones at 3x their values or more (I don't doubt that) but you can also go to an independent jeweler and have him model/build the ring (or he'll outsource the 3D modelling) then put the stone on it and you'll pay a price much closer to actual price of the stone (the jeweler doesn't really work harder for a 0.5 carat stone vs a 2 carat one, so the bigger the stone, the less is "wasted" on the ring).
Regarding the differing values: I think it's mandatory that every lab-grown diamond above a certain carat are laser-engraved so unless labs growing these diamonds are cheating, it's extremely hard to make a lab-grown one pass for a billion years old one.
Because the GEM Society is a business that wants to 1) continue grading diamonds and 2) begin cataloging lab diamonds. Both of which are revenue sources.
> I think it's mandatory that every lab-grown diamond above a certain carat are laser-engraved
That’s not “diamonds that are lab-grown by GEM Society members”.
Why would it be reasonable to require anybody who’s not the GEM Society to engrave their products, so that the GEM Society can protect its source of revenues?
I think you also mentioned “reasonable” and I’m pointing to the reason. You have to remember who makes the rules and also that this is an old business that’s rich with protected interests.
But there’s also a lot of concern about stolen jewelry and even diamond swapping for seemingly legitimate businesses. So, not too hard to make it also sound like it’s for the consumers best interest.
It is in Danish, but it is bankruptcy auctions, the high price is the valuation (typically the retail price before bankruptcy), the low price is the final highest bid, all in DKK.
These are mostly very small and not the colors you'd want, are there other places? Otherwise don't really consider this as proof you can source diamonds cheap (would love to know if so where).
Edit: searched and found about 25 places, none of them have much inventory, most are lower quality (or incredibly expensive), many are in-person only with no real pictures you can see, closest I can find is https://www.catawiki.com but still for the type/size I've been looking for there's really only two options and both are lower grade.
Look at it the other way. If you have a diamond in good condition, can you sell it anywhere for "market price" the same way you would gold or silver? No, because the rock is not rare, and there's basically no way to verify its origin outside of the store.
Look up Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace in your area and you'll find plenty of cheap listings for diamond jewelry. Will you really take a chance on any of them though?
Diamonds are not that rare. They're durable, so it's not like an old diamond is going to break or something. So, there should be plenty of diamonds for everyone who wants one. Rings made in the 1920s and up probably have some sort of diamond in it, and if you don't like the ring, keep the gem and craft a new ring around it. I prefer more rare stones, such as a padparadscha sapphire, or Alexandrite. I prefer to give my woman a gemstone as rare as she is, and as colorful as she is, not something which has virtually no color, and is definitely not rare.
You obviously haven’t seen the video of a diamond being hit by a hammer against a steel anvil…and it was fine, even putting a dent into the anvil. You have to cleave it in just the right spot to split it - blunt force isn’t going to do it.
Mild steel like that in an anvil is far from the hardest material you'll encounter in daily life. If you hit a diamond between two hammers, which are made of far harder and tougher tool steel, it will easily shatter and pulverize, no finesse required. See : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0EXgYA7ve8 for an example.
The reason why on an anvil you need to orient the diamond carefully to break is just because the tip needs to be facing some kind of reasonably hard material like tool steel, if it's being driven into mild steel, that will basically just act as a pillow for the diamond and allow the flat face to align parallel to the surface of hammer, minimizing the impact.
The big issue with choosing a smaller, natural stone is you can't really be sure it's actually natural. The industry has so many unethical practices I wouldn't be confident in any "certification" that comes with a stone's origin. Even lower-grade stones might just be from lab rejects, or labs intentionally growing good, but not perfect stones.
Mined and lab grown diamonds have entirely different suppliers, supply chains and certifications. The person I replied to has problems with the latter, which is idiotic considering the alternative is 1000x worse.
The difference between a $200 and a $2000 bottle of wine is mostly how expensive the thing you are drinking is. Tons of industries and products work like this. Why would it surprise you that gems are any different?
Outside of a few household-name Champagne houses, most expensive wine is expensive because it is desirable and the vineyards used to produce it are tiny. Standard economics.
> The difference between a $200 and a $2000 bottle of wine is mostly how expensive the thing you are drinking is.
Yes, but the subset of people that can afford and would drink a $200 bottle of wine is hardly any bigger than the subset of people that can afford and would drink a $2000 bottle of wine.
It makes perfect sense to me why people would drink the $2000 bottle of wine. Why not? They've got the money.
If you balk at a $2000 bottle of wine, you're probably not casually drinking $200 bottles of wine either - and if you are - you're in a very small percentage of people where the price difference means something. It's maybe 2% of the population.
The other 97.75% isn't buying $200 bottles of wine. And the other 0.25% can buy $2000 bottles just fine.
but the subset of people that can afford and would drink a $200 bottle of wine is hardly any bigger than the subset of people that can afford and would drink a $2000 bottle of wine.
I don't think this is correct. Most wine nerds/enthusiasts I know (and I include myself) would consider dropping $200 on one of their 'dream bottles' in the right circumstance, especially if splitting the cost with a couple of friends. I don't know a single person who would ever drop $2000 on a bottle of wine under any circumstance.
And I have a friend of a friend whose entire business is helping people sell wine for 20K a bottle and up. Emphasis on "and up"
I also have a friendly relationship with a local wine shop, where I usually buy bottles for 10-15 bucks. They also carry (and sell) many bottles at 5K a pop and up.
And if you want to get all mathematical about it, assuming the right kind of power law distribution, it is more likely to see one person who would pay 2000 for a bottle than to find 2 people who would pay 200.
power law stats is weird. Once you are outside of the bell, the bell area has NO constraint on the observation. Unlike Gaussian and similar distributions, where probability falls off very rapidly as you move out of the bell.
The trick about gifts for most women seems to be that they are more valued the less inherent uses they have. Roses and diamonds are good gifts. A vacuum cleaner or an alarm clock: not so much.
Assuming you work 9-5 in an office, would you be happy getting a commuter pass or an alarm clock as a gift? I imagine some work-obsessed people would, but most would prefer something more personal.
I purchased a 1 carat diamond ring for my now-wife in the mid-1990s for $600. For our 25th wedding anniversary my wife and I designed a new solid gold ring using Moissanite stones that cost about $700. She loves her new ring and everyone thinks the stones are real diamonds. We've even had jewelers comment on her diamond ring. I truly don't understand why anyone would go with diamonds these days.
We had it made in China. There are a number of online chinese jewelers. They will work with you to make the ring to your exact specifications. They will create a 3D rendering of the ring for your approval. They will let you pick out the stones you want. After it is manufactured, they will create a video showing the ring (or earrings or whatever) to you for approval before shipping it to you. I figured that for $700 we could risk it, but it turned out to be a gorgeous ring and we have had zero complaints about it in the 4 years since we received it. It is rock solid (pun intended) and as pretty today as the day she first put it on.
So funny.As I understand it, $1000 was the highest price tier Apple provided for the App Store.
There must be a lesson (or perhaps even a metaphor?) in that half a dozen or so copies sold. At least one or two of the "marks" claimed they bought it on accident. Maybe. Or maybe some people have a lot more disposable income than I do.
It still feels to me like developer performance art.
> At least one or two of the "marks" claimed they bought it on accident. Maybe.
Not really a problem if you're the developer; just offer an absolute refund guarantee.
My mother likes to tell the story of an American company that used to sell pills to determine the sex of your baby. You'd buy (and take) a girl pill if you wanted a girl and a boy pill if you wanted a boy.
If your baby came out the wrong sex, they'd give you a refund.
> The handicap principle is a hypothesis proposed by the biologist Amotz Zahavi to explain how evolution may lead to "honest" or reliable signalling between animals which have an obvious motivation to bluff or deceive each other. It suggests that costly signals must be reliable signals, costing the signaller something that could not be afforded by an individual with less of a particular trait
I want a lab grown diamond in the shape of a giant wafer. That way I can build a pan around it and use that to cook food in. That incredible thermal conductivity is wasted sitting in a piece of jewelry.
Lab diamonds are routinely grown in the shape of giant wafers. (And then smaller parts are cut out of the wafers.) This shouldn't be that hard to get if you really want it.
(I have a friend who used to have a job drawing cut plans for diamond wafers at Kyocera Unimerco.)
Hm, almost 5x the thermal conductivity of copper. Since this is HN.. let's say we were actually to build such a pan, is it practical?
My first thought is that the high conductivity doesn't necessarily mean it won't, being loose and hand-wavey with terminology because I don't know it, fracture with thermal shock, like non-borosilicate glassware (don't change the temp. too quickly) say, or ceramics (don't introduce too much of a temp. delta across the item, e.g. heating on a hob)?
Second thought is 'is it too much better than copper', in the sense that is the conductivity no longer the limiting factor? Copper is prized (and actually bloody hard to get these days - afaict everything on Amazon is copper-coloured or at best clad aluminium) because of fast 'response time' to change in heat, as you adjust the burner or pull it off the heat altogether. Conductivity also helps with even heating of course, but it doesn't help it cool particularly, which is limited by the rate of loss due to convection through air (and what's being cooked, which is what we want to limit if we're hoping for it to cool) and radiation?
Aren't diamonds quite brittle? I feel hitting banging the diamond pan against the burner slightly too hard will cause it to shatter. Or using a metal spatula too roughly.
I assume that wouldn't be as aggressive as tempered glass or something, but it's funny to imagine your pan shattering followed by every other piece of glass/ceramic in the room when the fragments hit them.
What is? The certificate? Because otherwise you wouldn't know. For the same value of 'how much it cost', a lab-grown diamond (we're not talking about other non-diamond synthetics) will look better (clearer, fewer flaws) and/or be bigger. If you want to show it off on your finger, you want lab-grown.
Sure you can just lie about it but most people don’t. This isn’t about when people look at it but for the follow up conversation where you mention “its natural and x carats.”
I'm not suggesting lying about it, I've just never heard anybody show off their finger and say 'it's natural' and it didn't occur to me anyone would. One can just not do that, and as a bonus, seem more normal.
But if we're being logical then you might as well go with Moissanite (lab-grown silicon carbide) instead of diamond, which is cheaper, nearly as tough, and also has better fire?
While a lab grown diamond might be technically superior, there's something sort of romantic and interesting with the fact that it has been in the earth for a billion years and somehow made its way into your ring.
That said, my wife has a lab grown diamond in her engagement ring.
They're not though, because they are actually a different thing (plastic) and you can tell that from some distance.
Lab-grown diamonds are the same thing as natural, the same material, and can be produced to a higher specification for the same cost as finding (due to scarcity, labour, etc.) an objectively worse stone. (Or equivalently a given spec can be manufactured cheaper than it can be found.)
The correct flower analogy would be growing nicely coloured varieties in a nursery vs. hunting for those random mutations in the wild.
My point is whether you use that or any other method to determine a budget, a lab-grown stone at that price will be objectively superior to a mined naturally occurring one at the same.
Or the cheeky version: use such a rule to determine the clarity, colour, etc. of natural diamond you want; then buy that lab-grown and pocket the difference.
I agree with you. My point is that logic clearly isn’t playing a role anyways. The origin of the stone, even if it’s fungible or even superior, likely has value to these people.
Plenty of people have been socialized to expect certain material things as part of the marriage process. Does it make sense? Probably not. Is it a character flaw? Absolutely not.
Unless you’re willing to bundle everything beyond pure Buddha-tier equanimity as “character flaws.”
it’s unfair to draw the line between “useless thing you were socialized to spend money on” and “useless thing someone else was socialized to spend money on.”
Eh… stupidly expensive, unethically sourced, low store of value, easily substituted by superior cheaper alternatives feels like the height of “bad” materialism if there is such a thing.
Considering how many marriages end due to finances and how often couples fight over money, "wastes money" is probably one of the least desirable traits in a future spouse.
"Failure to see reason" is probably the next biggest red-flag/dealbreaker for me.
Fortunately it's the future. Just (gently) advertise on your Tinder (well, more likely Hinge) profile that you've watched that movie about blood diamonds and will be buying your and your future wife a lavish foreign honeymoon instead of a blood diamond to pre-screen potential dates if it's a deal breaker to you.
Yeah well that’s society for ya. If you go with lab grown make sure you only go for a size that’s actually achievable in natural-diamond prices for your income level. The signaling game (silly as it is) is good at outing “that’s an excessively large diamond for his/her income, must be lab-grown” versus “that’s a large diamond for his/her income, that’s an indicator of priority.”
Are you telling me I can get lab-grown coffee and t-shirts that avoid the nastiest parts of the traditional processes? As for phones, I'm on a used iphone 6. That doesn't make its original sourcing any better, but harm reduction is still reduction
The utility of a diamond ring is not to have shiny rock. It’s meant to be an expensive useless thing to demonstrate that you/your partner can spend money on expensive useless things.
So a shiny thing that’s less expensive actually doesn’t satisfy the same role.
A shiny thing that’s just as expensive but less valuable (ie lower $/karat, ie lab grown) is so large as to out itself as not-the-truly-ridiculous waste of money that a real diamond is supposed to be for its signaling value.
Yes! Fairtrade coffee and pre-owned clothing is the least we can do in the face of capitalism's worst excesses. It won't end horrors of humanity that have existed since before capitalism but it's something. Hoping a usable Fairphone comes to the US, but getting a refurb iphone is still better than getting a new one.
You can't fix the whole world with personal choices, like an eyedropper against the ocean, but you can still opt out of the worst excesses without having to compromise every modern convenience.
A significant volume of the world's clothes are produced through sweatshop and child labor.
Then there's consumer electronics manufacturing...
...or being a tourist to the Saudi Arabia/Turkey/Russia/UAE where modern-day slavery is taking place at scale.
If you ask her if she'd prefer a lab diamond or one from the ground, and she says ground, you have your answer. If you force the issue and insist on getting the lab diamond, you're the douche.
Why ask? Personally I just nerded out over the specs a bit, filtered for colourless and unflawed as far as the naked eye can see (i.e. you can get better but requires a specialist with specialist equipment to tell, so who cares, she's wearing it not collecting or selling it) and then went with the largest I didn't think would look silly (or alternatively that's within budget, whichever limit's tighter).
I don't really think there's an unbiased way to ask. 'Lab-grown or natural' makes the latter sound more 'real' and better. 'Ethical or blood sweat and tears' is obviously out. 'Lab-grown and technically superior for the same money, or natural and more flawed' is about the best I can come up with, but the former is just objectively the correct answer isn't it? I don't see how anyone could understand the question and answer the latter. There just isn't a reason to prefer natural, all else being equal, for an item of personal jewellery that you're going to wear?
Why ask? Because when I’m giving a gift to my wife, the main thing I’m trying to optimize for is her happiness. And the criteria that I consider most important may not be the most important to her.
One of the scandals post 2008 crash was how bankers in Switzerland would use diamonds packed into tubes of toothpaste to spirit millions of dollars out of various countries.
Diamonds were essentially a shadow banking system, with analogies to the way crypto exchanges work today. You put cash in to get a tiny portable stone that you could exchange for cash or deposits anywhere else in the world, and you could reliably transfer massive amounts of capital around without records. Simultaneously diamonds made wealth both highly visible, and completely invisible when they disappeared. No public ledger either.
What an interesting story of pricing in a cultural market with encumbant and new tech, and a cartel attempting to retain its market power but slowly losing ground.
In June 2022, De Beers was charging about $1,400 a carat for the select makeable diamonds. By July this year, that had dropped to about $850 a carat. And there may be more room to fall: the diamonds are still 10% more expensive than in the “secondary” market, where traders and manufacturers sell among themselves.
. . .
. . . India, where about 90% of global supply is cut and polished. Lab grown accounted for about 9% of diamond exports from the country in June, compared with about 1% five years ago. Given the steep discount that they sell for, that means about 25% to 35% of volume is now lab grown, according to Liberum Capital Markets.
. . .
About five years ago, lab grown gems sold at about a 20% discount to natural diamonds, but that has now blown out to around 80% as the retailers push them at increasingly lower prices and the cost of making them falls. The price of polished stones in the wholesale market has fallen by more than half this year alone.
I really can’t think of an example better than people buying shiny rocks for absurd amounts of money that demonstrates how non-advanced we are, as a society generally.
The same can be said of BMWs, Philip Patek, Louis Vuitton, and dozens of other luxury brands. People like buying status signals, but it doesn’t signal how “non-advanced” we are. It’s how society has always worked and will always work.
Surely it does - the fact that most people—or large numbers of people—are still incapable of distinguishing between when they are exchanging their dollars for something that has no value beyond the hype behind it and making good financial decisions shows we, as a society, have a long ways to go in improving how we teach ourselves and others to value stuff. It’s one of many things we have to improve on, but rocks purchased for tens-of-thousands-of-dollars are a prime example of supremely poor financial decision making. At least cars are modes of transportation, watches tell time, and bags hold things. Diamonds are truly just bullshit.
Status symbols are just that. Status symbols. If you look through nature, you see very similar behaviors everywhere: the "frivolous" use of resources to demonstrate an individual's status in the group, and their desirability as a mate.
Peacock's feathers, caribou antlers, those absolutely kickin' nests that some birds assemble, penguins with their shiny rock collections, humans with our shiny rock collections.
It's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma, in that one's unwillingness to engage in such demonstrations of status will be interpreted as an inability to do so, but to the individual its still an optimal play. At least it gives us an excuse to acquire pretty things. Can you imagine how ugly the world would be if no one was building architectural marvels or designing elaborate cars or jewelry because they could poor concrete into cubes more cheaply?
It's not really bullshit, it is a physical manifestation of the commitment that is supposed to accompany a marriage. People are human, the stone is both a reminder of the vows that they took as well as a sacrifice the husband made to demonstrate love and commitment for that particular spouse. Yes of course it doesn't have to be a diamond per se, but that's basically what the entire world has agreed upon for this particular gesture. And because the entire world recognizes it, it does have value "beyond the hype."
Placing a hand on the Bible before testifying in court, physically signing a legal document, are both the same concept... a symbolic, physical representation of an intangible promise
You should read that article about how y’all got duped into buying diamonds as tokens of your love. It’s enlightening. And… I mean… we have (thank Satan) done away with swearing on bibles in all nations and all but a few backwater states in the US where politicians that sexually abuse children are viewed as champions of the people. Also, I’d wager a good chunk of my savings that most of the 50% of marriages that dissolve involve diamond rings. So clearly those physical manifestations are rather ephemeral.
Pointing out that diamonds specifically are not actually special, unique or rare gems and that marriage oaths they are intended to represent are still likely to be broken, does not make you as smart as you seem to think you are. All of this is already well-known and well-accepted by the vast majority of the population. Swearing on a Bible or just verbally affirming that you promise to tell the truth in court, again, entirely symbolic. However, these are the customs that the general population has chosen to acknowledge, and it is the ritual, the recognition of widely-accepted customs and traditions, that makes them valuable as signifiers that one is, to some degree, participating as a normal member of society. Like putting up a Christmas tree or singing the national anthem at a sporting event. Opting out is absolutely fine, but it's not a sign of enlightenment.
Subordinating women and minorities/outsiders “are the customs that the general population has chosen to acknowledge” for most of civilized history “that ma[de] them valuable as signifiers that one is, to some degree, participating as a normal member of society”. I would encourage you to never use that as an argument for anything, ever. It is devoid of weight or reason. You can do better, I promise.
The problem you're having is that you're unable to view purchasing a diamond in non-economic terms. It isn't "absurd" or "non-advanced," nor are people "duped" into making "supremely poor financial decisions." People aren't as dumb as you think, they know that a rock doesn't really represent anything, but they enjoy giving and receiving diamonds, and pretending that they do symbolize a commitment, and sharing that belief with friends and family.
You think my previous comment is "devoid of reason" because it's about ritual and symbolic gestures, not about economics, concepts you either cannot comprehend or choose not to. Which is fine -- most atheists believe they are wiser than believers, for example -- but no amount of rationality or logic is going to change people's minds.
> It’s how society has always worked and will always work.
There are a lot of things throughout history that you could say about. At the time it would have been impossible to see any other way, and yet we have advanced.
> Diamond demand across the board has weakened after the pandemic, as consumers splash out again on travel and experiences, while economic headwinds eat into luxury spending
Are people becoming more careful about such valuable purchases since losing a diamond ring is so heartbreaking? It seems like the concept of "throwaway" rings is increasing so you don't have to worry about losing the real one which is an argument no person ever wants to have with their spouse. I keep my real one locked away and wear a titanium one around.
I think the geological formations that were guaranteed to contain diamonds only became common knowledge in the late 1990's or early 2000's, yes? I recall reading an article about some researchers testing their theory by buying a chunk of land in Canada, and proving they were right.
People thought that was the beginning of the end for de Beers, and between that and better synthetics that seems to be how things played out.
Makes total sense. Lab-created diamonds have been indistinguishable (for the typical consumer) from natural ones for years. DeBeers kept jewelry retailers in line in pushing "real" diamonds, but it was just a matter of time until something happened to shake that hold lose. Given the rapid switch away from gold for wedding bands etc after the 2008 crisis led to a major price spike, it is not surprising to me that jewelry consumers are willing to question whether "real" diamonds are worth the premium cost as well.
Might lab-grown diamonds have reached a point of being indistinguishable from natural diamonds such that people pass off lab-grown diamonds as natural diamonds without anyone being able to tell?
If you buy a certified diamond they will come with a laser engraving that indicates it was lab grown. They can tell if it was lab grown with special equipment and/or the chain of purchase. So, I guess you'd have to believe the certification company if they say it is NOT lab grown and that's what you want.
I have read that the distinguishing feature is that natural diamonds have flaws. Entrapped dirt or what have you that is not found in the sterile environment of the synthetic ones.
Maybe a specialist could tell a natural, formed over thousands of years, flaw from a lab-grown flaw, but really I think it's more like you can get a better grade from a lab (and especially with consistency, frequency, at a much lower price due to being rare to find naturally occurring). i.e. you can get flawed and coloured lab-grown diamonds too. (A mix of taking less care/time, older equipment, and binning the results like silicon wafers I assume.)
Too bad we can’t use virtual NFT engagement rings mined specially with high carbon footprint with the gas fees donated to the babies of divorce lawyers.
I wonder what the second-order consequences will be. That is, people will still want to signal their commitment/ability to provide when proposing, so the drop in the price of diamonds won't necessarily reduce the overall outlay.
Instead, it would shift the expense to another category (platinum or other expensive metals) or simply lead people to buy more carats (4 is the new 2!). In some ways, these moves could help luxury brands like Tiffany, since their well-known price premium would provide the same signaling device for folks who want to spend tens of thousands of dollars when proposing.
> people will still want to signal their commitment/ability to provide when proposing
Anyone over about 25 and actually mature enough to commit probably doesn't care that much about the ring as long as it's not literally a funyun.
How about a nice home, a leisurely lifestyle and solid career, an amiable personality, a great social circle, track record of being dependable with family, etc. You know, the things the ring is supposed to actually represent.
Rings will get bigger/more extravagant and get mixed with other precious gems or metals. What is not going to happen is stores selling cheaper jewelry.
My naïve assumption is that outside of geologists and jewelers, it is impossible for a layman to identify natural, synthetic, or even a different gemstone.
I would agree, but I think that after some period of time, it will become known that the price of diamonds have dropped dramatically. This means that if a man wants to signal that he's spent a chunk of change on a ring, he'll either need to go with a much larger stone than before, or he'll need some sort of external signifier. That could be a certificate that it's a natural diamond, or that the setting is somehow super fancy.
> people will still want to signal their commitment/ability to provide when proposing
Will they? Why?
People getting married these days are far more likely to already live together, maybe own a house together. These sorts of signals to each other seem somewhat pointless. Especially as it's common for both partners to work, making it somewhat anachronistic for one partner to have this expectation on them.
This whole idea of stupidly expensive diamonds signalling commitment is just marketing bullshit, that has been so ingrained that people think it's somehow natural or necessary. If that's falling away piece by piece then that's something to celebrate.
Now the other form of signalling - "I am high status, look at my high-status shiny stuff", yeah that's not going anywhere.
> "With the increase in supply we’ll see prices fall through the price point and reach a level where, long term, it does not compete with bridal because it comes too cheap"
> the kinds of stones that go into the cheaper one- or two-carat solitaire bridal rings popular in the US have experienced far sharper price drops than the rest of the market
title is clickbaity. HN title should improve on it. This is about rough cut diamonds under 2 carats. the price is down due to popularity of synthetic diamonds of these sizes. retail price of a finished product hasn't felt it yet, and may not.
The big ones still make for excellent "portable wealth" when you're in that kind of situation. But as middlemen go, jewelers make realtors look like saints.
My experience has been that you just don't see people wearing wedding bands all that often anymore. They're inconvenient and unfashionable. Marriage is as unpopular as ever and only the most conservative areas actually care about marital status.
