He has been turned to the dark side. Your friends, up there in the store throwing their money away, are walking into a trap… as is your rebel fleet. An entire legion of stellar lab produced diamonds awaits them. Soon, you will witness the final destruction of the whipped alliance and the end of your insignificant rebellion. Yes… use your aggressive feelings… Let the hate flow through you. It is unavoidable. It is your destiny.
I don’t think the lab diamond argument is valid. Even if natural and fabricated diamonds are chemically identical, natural diamonds will have a price premium due to rarity. It’s not a practicality thing.
Maybe at first. But at some point, very quickly, people will switch to lab diamonds and as demand falls, so will the price premium of natural diamonds. Look, you have a diamond that is literally identical to a natural diamond, which would have no way of being differentiated unless someone saw it mined. They can even add flaws if necessary to make it appear authentic. Not even a jeweler would know without a certificate. So a guy knows he can pass it off as natural. Some (not insignificant) group of men will go that route. Then there are many poor soon to be newly weds. The guy says, I can get you a real diamond, or a real “earth grown” diamond. Your friends will never know the difference and quality will be the same. With the $10-15K we save we can have a fantastic honey moon or no debt. We could get you a new car. Which would you prefer." Trust me. In Asia, they sell knock off hand bags in grades depending on the quality of the knock off because it has taken off so much. Natural diamonds may demand a premium, but ultimately, the diamond empire is DOA. It just doesn’t know it yet
My dad is a jeweler, 30 years, he sees everything about the jewelry business, and all the transformations the industry has had over these decades. He sees guys pouring in buying these things, shelling out tens of thousands of $$ like their lives depended on it, and literally laughs at them after they exit the store.
you can argue all you want about the premium of earth grown diamonds, but that won’t stop the fact that over time it will crater prices down. Many (if not most) diamonds today are not certified as to their location and origin, so once they are mixed in with the population, there’s not much you can do and they will still register under tests as the authentic diamonds.
Seriously, say you spent $20k on a earth-grown rock, let’s say VS grade, H color, 1 CT ish.
Your neighor spent half of that, on a VVS, F color and 1.3CT and is shinier and has a cut with far more brilliance than yours. Goes around telling people yes it’s a real diamond. (which is true). Gets far more “oohs and aahhs” and “omg that’s so beautiful” than you.
How does that sound? I think a lot of guys will go for option 2. Which then starts to plunge the prices for the real ones because suddenly the cartels are up against labs that can produce them 24/7 like clockwork.
From the wired article. Point well made.
So, for now, Clarke is sticking with cultured. But in the end, he insists, it won’t really matter. “If you give a woman a choice between a 2-carat stone and a 1-carat stone and everything else is the same, including the price, what’s she gonna choose?” he demands. “Does she care if it’s synthetic or not? Is anybody at a party going to walk up to her and ask, ‘Is that synthetic?’ There’s no way in hell. So I’ll bite your ass if she chooses the smaller one.”
It’s only a matter of time before people with diamond debt look like idiots.
But, why hasn’t it happened yet? Is further technology still needed to lower the cost of artificial diamonds? Also, dilution of the diamond market from artificial diamonds needs to overcome the growth of the general market for diamonds. For instance, if artificial diamonds capture 10% of the market, but diamond buyers increase by 10% (due to growing Chinese middle class, or whatever), what is the change of price in natural diamonds?
Also, I think you’re failing to appreciate the “brand image” associated with natural diamonds. A woman can impress her friends with a manufactured diamond. However, once she admits that it is manufactured, all admiration will disappear. She will also know in her heart that it’s manufactured, which negates most of the satisfaction from owning the diamond in the first place. I am not saying this is rational behavior, but it is real behavior.
It has started already. prices have been on the decline for a few years (yes the economy tanking was part of that too) I got my former gf a pendant that was valued 2X more a few years ago than what I bought it for. The diamond industry has impacted the producers in India who polish them, tons of people have lost their jobs already.
But the thing is that the labs are busy producing higher grade stones of color (think >3carats and colored) because the payout is far higher at that level. But it will filter down, and that’s when the meteor straps on the rocket fueled jet packs.
These companies are still nacent. There’s only like 4 turning out any quantity and it’s all still in development. But they are successfully impacting the market. As iteracom stated, their diamonds are more in the 3 karat range. Many are currently selling overseas where they aren’t even required to market them as man made. An additional huge benefit, besides the not being a blood diamond argument is the fact that they’re “green” because they don’t require destructive mining processes.
Wait, how do you know the decline is due to lab diamonds at all?
Well as long as we’re assuming irrational behavior, then just tell her you got it at some jewelry store (which is true). She’ll tell all her friends it was from a store, which is where everyone gets their rock from -> a store. And you get all the goods.
Don’t worry, CFAI won’t revoke your charter for this.
Hmm yeah, well, there’s an easy fix. A) Noone will ever ask if it’s man made. B) They can get over that “feeling of regret” by not having debt, having a fantastic honey moon, or having a new car.
But no, Ohai, I completely disagree with your argument. When a girl with fake breasts walks into a party, she may deny they’re fake, but trust me, she still flaunts them. And every girl with small boobs will hate on her, but trust me, they’re all still jealous. Similarly, when the girl with a man made but real diamond has a better quality stone on a baller looking setting that is 3 karats and it looks amazing and everyone admires it and it costs half the price. All the girls who got mined 1.5 karat diamonds on mediocre settings with lower quality for twice the price and went on a crappy honey moon to the bahamas instead of tahiti are going to have to walk around the party saying “but mine’s real” to try to justify their small ring and budget honey moon. Yes, will absolute ballers who think $25-40k is no big deal still go for quality mined stones? Of course. But realistically, over time people will forget distinction or just stop caring. And eventually it won’t be worth the extra cost to mine these stones, and the real diamond trade will drastically implode.
^ good boob analogy 
I don’t know… I think we need to ask someone else about this. Neither of us seems likely to buy a diamond for ourselves, thus I don’t think we understand the psychological value attached to these things.
Sooner or later the DeBeers story will simply break down. People will realize that yes, we used to mine diamonds and pay outrageous sums. Salt was mined and used to pay salaries in the Roman Era. We used to dive for pearls and pay thousands on thousands for them. And I used to brag about my CD collection. But noone cares any more because it’s literally an identical product commoditized by technological advance. I know regime change is tough to cope with, but believe me, it won’t be the first time this happened in history.
I used to brag about my mp3 collection I pulled from the internet on my 56k modem.
Then cable internet and dsl were invented, and I was laughed at bec my parents were slow to get them, and my friends upgraded to downloading videos.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think any of those examples compare to diamonds. Salt is a consumable thing. Digital media is not distinguished by source. Natural pearls are still pretty expensive.
ohai is in denial.
I like the analogies, but if you think about it then a record collection is still pretty cool and records actually command high prices…not sure about mp3s:).
On the Coach bag front, it is true that there is a big pirated Coach bag industry in China. I have seen varying degrees myself in the Silk Market. But, Coach sells a bag in China for 3x the price it sells it in the US. Go figure, maybe the more something is ripped off is an indication of how much people value that thing and the more they want the real thing.
I bought a North Face rip-off in SE Asia in 2000…doesn’t appear to have hurt their brand any since then.
^ But to compare apples-to-apples, we’re talking about someone literally sneaking into the Coach Factory, started producing them with the exact materials and the same machines as the genuine ones, and left and sold them on the street as Authethic Coach.
So, maybe there’s a minor psychological discount bec it’s not “sold in a Coach store”, but it’s identical in every way. No one you show your Coach bag to will be able to tell if it was bought from a Coach store. Now imagine someone starting to mass produce them like this.