Does De Beers still have a deathgrip on the diamond market?

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sat May 29, 2010 6:34 am

Global warming is moving the proper temperatures to grow various grapes. The EU has nailed down each zone each type can be grown in, the French are the toughest about this.

Champagne made in Champagne is actually very good; but it won't be for long. It'll go towards my taste (I like it sweet and sour, so Spanish sparkling is my fav right now) but that'll be considered downhill. Eventually, they just won't be able to grow the right grapes in the region at all.

Already several areas have had serious reductions in the number of grapes they can grow because they're stuck growing the grapes their region is famous for - not what will grow now that temperatures have risen two to five degrees in their valleys.

This is a boom for California, as it moves grapes up into the mountains and towards the north, where land is cheaper... But it's a death knell to any of the European growers who are stuck with 'historical' varieties.

-Crissa

http://www.slate.com/id/2251870
Just search 'global warming' and 'grapes'

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat May 29, 2010 6:21 pm

Maj wrote:But imitating something natural? That's a boundary that people in general have a tough time dealing with.

Vebyast wrote:I'm just throwing in my two cents here, but if (when?) I buy a precious stone for jewelery, I'm almost certainly going to get one that's explicitly man-made. It would be a rock-solid (hah!) reminder of just how bloody awesome science is.

I'm kind of surprised they don't market them like that, now that I think about it.

It's called Nature Woo and like Maj pointed out it's extremely hard to break the perception that just because something is 'natural' doesn't mean it's 'better'.

K · Post by K » Sat May 29, 2010 6:41 pm

Maj wrote:
K wrote:By law, synthetic gems are required to have certain chemicals in them to distinguish that they are in fact synthetic.
I tried to look this up, but I couldn't find any law to this effect. There are companies who voluntarily put easily-identifiable chemicals in their diamonds, but nothing that I've found says it's required.

I wish I could point it out to you, but I saw it on a documentary a few years back. It might just be a regulation, which is to say its a law which can be changed quite easily but still has the force of law.

The reason for it is clear: artificial markets don't exist unless you do something to make them. The gemstone industry controls the supply of gemstones to make sure they have constant profits, raising and lowering the costs at will. They even brag about it.

Basically, if it wasn't for price-fixing, there wouldn't be a gemstone market. De Beers can't even do business in the US because we have laws against that crap, so they sell things out of Europe.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Sat May 29, 2010 6:59 pm

The main thing with gems like diamonds is that they don't really do anything. At least not as jewelery. They're used like that by rich people because they're rare. And it's that rarity that makes their value. It's the reason that diamonds are expensive and rocks you find on the ground are dirt cheap.

If everyone had diamonds they wouldn't be worth anything. Now so long as it's possible to determine a lab-created diamond from a real-world diamond, The real ones will pretty much be more valuable. If you can create synthetics that are indistinguishable from the real ones, then the price of diamonds is going to plummet and they just won't be considered valuable anymore. Having that happen wouldn't really be a bad thing for society. It just means people who own them have their diamonds depreciate.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sat May 29, 2010 8:28 pm

Except it's not possible to determine where a diamond came from, hence the lawsuits of counterfeit diamonds I pointed at.

De Beers and their agents keep putting forward the assertion that 'diamond' means 'our diamonds' not 'their diamonds'. For awhile their diamonds were bigger, then they were shinier, now they're mined by slave labor instead of fair trade or in a lab.

-Crissa

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sat May 29, 2010 11:14 pm

Surgo wrote:
Maj wrote:They have to say exactly that. As per my response to K, it's illegal not to. But on that note...
Except...they don't have to say that.

They have to say something that indicates their stones aren't natural (last line of the quote). But that doesn't really address my point. The selling point of these diamonds isn't the fact that they're man-made. It's that they're eco-friendly, conflict-free, more inexpensive, and supported by real designers. By law, companies have to announce to the world that they are not natural diamonds, but that's not the selling point of their diamonds. Lab-made doesn't sell. Environmental awareness does. Value does. The whole blood diamond thing does. Designer does.

Crissa wrote:Except it's not possible to determine where a diamond came from

Didn't read that second pdf I linked to, did you?

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sat May 29, 2010 11:50 pm

Another thing that makes them sell: their clarity.

In the article I read that basically discusses the sales of the four American companies, their associated sales arms mention that while a sizable minority of their sales are due to, basically, their diamonds not being blood diamonds and being substantially more eco-friendly, a lot of their sales come from their stuff just plain looking better.

I'm not saying it's inevitable or that it would be a smashing success, but I can see some clever marketing team spinning that into "lab-made: a positive", if they haven't already.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun May 30, 2010 3:48 am

Maj wrote:Didn't read that second pdf I linked to, did you?

It's irrelevant. They can't figure out which mine a natural diamond came from; and if you make a diamond like that, they'll just sue you for doing so.

The whole point of 'being able to tell' is something baked in, or a side-effect of a process. Technology is to the point that you could, if you were willing to be sued.

Sure, you can tell which process made a diamond, if they left enough clues.

-Crissa

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sun May 30, 2010 4:09 am

Surgo wrote:Another thing that makes them sell: their clarity.

[opinion]

Right now, clarity is a double-edged sword. Superb clarity - if you're not in the money - screams created. But I think as created diamonds get more popular and more common, that it will become a positive selling point.

[/opinion]

Crissa wrote:Sure, you can tell which process made a diamond, if they left enough clues.

There are two types of diamond creation processes. One is a chemical reaction that does, in fact, leave traces in the gemstone. The other is an artificial compression setup that mimics the pressure and heat of the earth. It creates a stone with a slightly different crystalline structure than a natural diamond.

Your jeweler might not be able to tell the difference between the two because your jeweler doesn't have a pile of expensive lab equipment sitting around that is capable of detecting these differences. But the difference between natural diamonds and created diamonds does exist, as does the equipment that can detect it.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun May 30, 2010 5:23 am

If that were true, you could tell which source of natural diamonds a diamond came from.

But you can't. So I don't believe them, honestly.

-Crissa

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sun May 30, 2010 5:43 am

Since diamonds are not valued the same way as other gemstones, the source has not been a real issue - until 2001 when the whole conflict diamond became big. Since then, scientists have been working on various ways to be able to identify a diamond's source. There are two major drawbacks: a relatively simple chemical structure and value placed on perfection, and a source database.

Promising new methods of identification such as infrared beams that reveal signatures of hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen within the stones are up against the wall of ignorance. There is no comprehensive reference collection of diamonds from specific mines, let alone collections from conflict areas. And since collecting conflict diamonds is illegal, making a large enough collection to be able to figure out a mine's signature - and thus create the database to identify other diamonds - is pretty much impossible.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun May 30, 2010 8:29 am

No, it's not illegal to go buy a diamond from a mine.

The only reason it is illegal, is that it's illegal to buy from mines not in the cartel.

So basically, you've just said that it's possible, but only not so because they made it that way.

Like i said, you could totally mimic someone else's diamonds - in fact, the basic ways to do so take a diamond fragment and then grow from that.

They'd sue you, of course, but that has been my point the entire time. It's only possible to detect artificial diamonds because they want to be able to detect them, not because there's any reason they couldn't be identical.

It's just a crystal.

-Crissa

PS, Blood diamonds have been a problem since the 60s, it was only in the 90s that it became a problem for the cartel who could no longer hide that they were buying and selling diamonds from terrorists.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sun May 30, 2010 9:33 pm

Crissa wrote:The only reason it is illegal, is that it's illegal to buy from mines not in the cartel.

If I point to a law passed in the US with the intention of making the purchase of blood diamonds illegal (Clean Diamond Trade Act of 2003), you're going to come back at me with your opinion about how the diamond cartels are just making things so that money goes their way - despite the fact that I've actually linked to information about DeBeers giving up their gotta-own-them-all approach.

Just like how I pointed at a really good article with real science and real information in it, and you've replied with nothing but your own opinion.

Crissa wrote:It's just a crystal.

I can't keep up with your imbecilic drivel. Everytime I post a resource or information, you respond with hot air. And it is so much easier to post hot air than real information. I mean, you seriously put out gems like this:

Crissa wrote:hence the lawsuits of counterfeit diamonds I pointed at.

...When the only thing you've pointed to is a genuine case of fraud regarding sapphires and rubies - corundum.

I quit. No one gives a damn about this subject anymore, and you're just posting to get in the last word. So, you can have it. At the end of the day, I'd rather spend my time with this...

...than with this: