[Avalon Memories]

Simple common sense should tell anyone that diamonds are not as rare as the jewelry marketers claim. There are plenty of diamonds for sale in every mall, department stores, stores like Costco, and on TV outlets like HSN. Think of all the places in the U.S., alone, where you can buy diamonds in most countries on earth, and it’s easy to come to the realization that the cost of diamonds is indeed ridiculous. It’s all about marketing and De Beers, which operated as a worldwide monopoly until very recently.

[mylife]

I have worked some semi precious stone and love the art, but its a sham

[Ol' Dan Tucker]

Simple common sense should tell anyone that diamonds are not as rare as the jewelry marketers claim. There are plenty of diamonds for sale in every mall, department stores, stores like Costco, and on TV outlets like HSN. Think of all the places in the U.S., alone, where you can buy diamonds in most countries on earth, and it’s easy to come to the realization that the cost of diamonds is indeed ridiculous. It’s all about marketing and De Beers, which operated as a worldwide monopoly until very recently.

Yep. My point exactly.

If you want to see a rare gemstone, go find a blood-red ruby.

[Swordmaker]

Simple common sense should tell anyone that diamonds are not as rare as the jewelry marketers claim. There are plenty of diamonds for sale in every mall, department stores, stores like Costco, and on TV outlets like HSN. Think of all the places in the U.S., alone, where you can buy diamonds in most countries on earth, and it’s easy to come to the realization that the cost of diamonds is indeed ridiculous. It’s all about marketing and De Beers, which operated as a worldwide monopoly until very recently.

The Russians are sitting on top of billions of carats of gem grade diamonds in a crater where a meteor hit. De Beers has millions of carats of gem grade diamonds warehoused both cut and uncut. Both of them will not allow them out into the market for the same reason: if they did, the price of diamonds would tank. There have been over a thousand tons of diamonds mined in the last century, not all of them gem grade, but enough of them are to drop the price to between $10 and $20 a carat.

It now costs between $100 and $200 to grow a flawless D grade 1 to 2 carat diamond in the lab using a gas-diffusion pressure onto a seed diamond. That is only one method of growing synthetic real diamonds that turn out flawless. Those methods could be scaled to grow diamonds at production levels that could get the price down to $1 to $2 or less per carat.