Posted on 08/18/2003 9:12:19 AM PDT by bedolido
My point about the mark-up in my dealings with Siggy should have been made a bit clearer for you. The fact that my customers saved 40-50% (gee only 40% over what a jeweller would have charged them) while I still doubled what it costs me only shows that the price to the end user is obscenely high in the straight market place (jewelry stores for the most part). Siggy once walked me (literally walked me along 47th) through the process from importer to cutter to wholesaler to the guy behind the counter and educated me about the exponential price steps. It was nothing but an inverted pyramid with everyone along the way stepping on it.
My customers paid much less than they would have for the stone. They also learned the diamond game and I'll bet they never bought at anything close to what jewelry stores charge again.
Your comment about the warehouses bulging with diamonds being held off the market only illustrates my point that the market value is artificial and requires a generally uneducated buying pool.....and btw, as long as diamonds are the lingua franca of the arms world they are death, maybe not for you or me but talk to the guy on the wrong end of the gun in rwanda.
Your Post #127. I concede you didn't say it first but you agree it's valid.
100% mark-up is 100%. On the rare occasions I sell diamonds, I buy them about 40% back of Rapaport (47th St. manufacturers' listed price). I mark them up 15-20%. I'd rather be my customer than yours.
Re: ad hominem. You seem to want it both ways: " It is no coincidence that the 47th Street dealer arrested last week dealt in them instead of vats of honey. This is of course no reflection on the individual dealers, it is simply a fact of life."
Why is it no coincidence it was a diamond dealer, not a honey dealer? And if it's "no coincidence" a diamond dealer was involved, what are you trying to imply about diamond dealers in general despite your last sentence?
Wow, diamond retailers mark their product up! What a revelation! Maybe you ought to take a look at the distribution and mark-up channels of any product, from screwdrivers to didgireedos. They ALL look like inverted pyramids. Maybe it has to do with offering customers what they want where they want it and the costs of doing business.
It's clear you won't be happy until DeBeers is gone and African diamonds are devalued. In order to do that we'll need to devalue diamonds from all sources because, unless you know more than professional gemologists do, no one can definitively tell where most diamonds were mined. But let's posit that was possible.
Then we'd have to quit trading in all African products: timber, gold, platinum, oil, minerals, etc., etc. because they could all be used in illegal trade by arms merchants, warlords and bad-asses of all stripes. The arms world would simply have a new "lingua franca." The poor Africans might starve but at least they wouldn't be victims of those horrible DeBeers people. FYI, the hatred between the Tutsis and Hutu in Rwanda has absolutely nothing to do with diamonds.
Yes, analogies are almost never valid. But one must ask why people believe diamonds are investments. DeBeers doesn't say that. Most jewelers don't say that. Yet people who want to buy diamonds from me often have that notion and it's the first thing I disabuse them of. Diamonds are sparkly and pretty. Their value comes mainly from their role as status symbols and gifts of love, and their inherent beauty. They most emphatically are NOT investments!
DeBeers long had a strategy of pricing diamonds a bit ahead of the rate of inflation in major world currencies so prices remained stable. When DeBeers lost control temporarily during the Jimmah Carter inflation years of the late 70s, certain diamond dealers stockpiled better grades of rough and sold the cut stones as a "hard asset" inflation hedge. The problem, of course, was that unlike precious metals or stocks, diamonds are neither fungible nor liquid. Despite several failed attempts to organize secondary diamond markets, most of the people who "invested" in diamonds got badly burned. I attended some major diamond conferences during that time and can say with certainty there were lots of shady characters involved in that scam: many of them from the financial adviser community.
During that time major diamond retailers bought paid avertising warning consumers that diamonds were far too high-priced and not to buy them.
The "value" of nearly anything is arbitrary. It's what public perception says it is, along with supply and demand. Dot coms aren't worth much these days. Neither are tulip bulbs, which sold for immense sums of money during the Dutch "tulip bubble." Some bottles of fermented grape juice with the right labels sell for outlandish prices -- and someone is willing to pay them.
Which reminds of of Omar Khayyam: "What is it that the vintner buys that's half so precious as the stuff he sells?" It all depends on your point of reference.
Diamond Layer Makes Steel Rock Hard
Dutch chemist Ivan Buijnsters from the University of Nijmegen has successfully produced a diamond layer on a steel substrate. This opens up the possibility of wear-resistant tools. The secret to this technique is an adhesive layer between the steel and the diamond layer.Look at the last paragraph. If the diamond coating can be detached from the substrate in a controlled manner, then you have a diamond wafer for semiconductors without need to slicing anythingBuijnsters made diamond layers by allowing methane gas diluted in hydrogen gas to dissociate on a hot wire just above the substrate. The carbon atoms present in the methane dropped onto the substrate and formed a thin layer of diamond there. However, this technique did not work on a steel substrate. Graphite mostly formed on this.
The researcher discovered why a diamond layer could not be created on some types of steel. During the deposition process the carbon penetrated several micrometres into the metal, where it formed iron carbides. Subsequently, graphite formed instead of diamond. This effect was found to be less strong in stainless steel, although it was still strong enough to prevent the formation of a well-sealed diamond coating.
To solve this problem Buijnsters looked for a material that could be placed between the steel and diamond layers. The material had to adhere well to the steel and be a suitable substrate for diamond growth. Silicon was an obvious choice. However, the carbon atoms diffused through the intermediate silicon layer into the iron causing the steel to weaken.
An intermediate layer of chromium nitride was found to work well. It was relatively easy to apply a good-adhering intermediate layer using a deposition apparatus. Good diamond layers were formed on certain types of tool steel in particular. However, the diamond layers on stainless steel were of a lower quality.
A surface treatment of steel with boron was also found to result in a good intermediate layer, even on stainless steel. An advantage of this treatment is that the difference in expansion between diamond and steel is gradually dissipated. After the production of diamond at about 600 oC, the steel contracts much more than the diamond coating and the coating can become detached as a result of this. A treatment with boron gives the external surface of the steel an expansion coefficient more or less comparable to that of diamond. This effect gradually decreases from the surface of the steel inwards.
Glass also shatters. But if you make it into a thin thread, it is very flexible. Take glass fibers in a resin matrix, and you have fiberglass, which is strong, tough, and light.
Look at post 146 about layering diamond onto a steel substrate. If it can be done cheaply, then we could see "sandwich" armor composed of alternating layers of steel and diamond.
Maybe, but what does after after a few years of housework, banging the setting into a multitude of immovable objects, and dropping it in pig slop. Nor is it as earth shattering when it's lost forever in a river and then while flipping through the channels you see a knock off on QVC. Hmm, shine or vacation cruise? ME women might have the right idea investing all their $ in gold - or has some alchemist discovered how to turn lead into gold?
MODERN alchemists turn silicon into phosphors. Transmutation doped (AKA Neutron doped) silicon is a commodity material. Much better doping uniformity than any other method. The very best material for precision sensors and electronics...
To exrend your logic to say that we would then have to stop trade in all African product is, as I said, just plain silly. How many young men spend a months salary (isn't that the amount that your industry suggests?) on a piece of lumber or a barrel of crude oil to show his love? How many arms dealers (read death) demand payment in a sockfull of platinum or timber? That by the way is why it was no coincidence that the man arrested last week was in the diamond trade, not the exotic pet business.
You're a jewelry salesman, good for you. But, you take offense personally when the dark side of your industry is discussed. That is unfortunate. You should not feel targeted. There is evil everywhere. To talk about one bad cop is not to paint all cops with the same brush. The same is true of your trade.
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