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joeblau
washadjeffmad
I went through this not that many years ago buying a ring for my SO. My biggest mistake was including her in the decision.
She described what she wanted exactly– nothing gaudy or ostentatious, just a singular, tasteful stone on a plain band. Couldn't be simpler, could it?
Finding stones that met her criteria was easy. Some were natural diamonds, some lab grown, many moissanite. From the outset, she said the meaning of the ring was what was most important and that she didn't want to pick it out herself (after effectively picking it out herself). We'd talked about moissanite a lot over the years, and she'd approved of the idea, and the same with lab grown diamonds. We're college educated adults with backgrounds in the sciences, so we weren't on uneven footing with comprehension.
When I showed her what I'd picked out, it quickly devolved into a lot of uncharacteristic tears and shouting. It took a few more tries, and then she explained. Apparently a lab grown diamond meant my love for her was also artificial, a budgeted ersatz stand-in for the real thing, and me saying we could spend more on a larger stone or matching set further belied my ignorance. No, she wanted me to have picked out an allegory for our love: a "perfect" diamond. She then sent me the details of the stone she actually wanted.
After a little "wait, where's this coming from and why did you let me spend weeks searching if there was only one right answer", I ended up spending twice our decided budget on a "natural" diamond with the same characteristics as the lab grown (except the diamond's clarity was lower, because lab grown clarity is always perfect), which wasn't any object, but now the ring is marred by the memories of arguments, and she doesn't really love it. Lesson learned.
I don't know what kind of spell the diamond people cast on otherwise reasonable women to make them able to reduce the totality of a life and experiences shared together into a single crystalline bet, but they need to package it and sell it to the military.
Frost1x
>I don't know what kind of spell the diamond people cast on otherwise reasonable women to make them able to reduce the totality of a life and experiences shared together into a single crystalline bet, but they need to package it and sell it to the military.
The militaries of the world invented it, it's business that bought it. Much of this diamond/marriage symbolism stems back to the late 1940s post WWII with DaBeer's engagement ring ad campaigns.
WWII involved a lot of R&D in psyops and effects of propoganda. Sure, these strategies always existed but it became part of scientific research, was refined and weaponized to manipulate perceptions of people using non-kinetic approaches to try and avoid or minimize kinetic warfare. After the war in the mid 40s ended, where do you think all that expertise in propoganda from military went? Business marketing and advertising sprouted from much of this expertise. Marketing and advertising always existed before then but there was a dramatic shift in how things were sold creating armies of refined snake oil salesmen.
In the late 40s, DaBeers ran a massive ad campaign employing such propoganda that shifted culture into associating diamond rings with marriage. There had been dowries and other exchanges of wealth and power in marriages before (it's often been a basis for marriage) that but DaBeers managed to shift that in culture in the west to the diamond ring. It's now so deeply ingrained in culture and people's perceptions that it can make otherwise rational people irrational.
Do not ever underestimate the power of propoganda in its various forms. Pyschogical manipulation runs rampant in business marketing and these are the effects. We've culturally accepted it for a variety of reasons. I question if we should continue to accept these practices in business.
nickik
This is partly a myth. More important was the non legal enforcement of engagements. Many couples in the past would start to have sex when engaged. If the engagement is not legally secure, the diamond basically serves as signal. That why 3-month salary make sense.
If I buy a 3-month salary worth diamond I'm probably not gone leave you after a month.
Its an easily portable high value item that also serves as signaling for the person wearing it. It makes more sense then livestock in the modern world.
Marketing had something to do with it, but its more complex then that.
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biofox
Correct story, but arguably the wrong war. The allies in WWI really invented much of modern propaganda, paving the way for Berneys, Lippmann et al. to refine those methods for marketing use. Hitler and Goebbels both wrote about the manipulative and underhanded use of propaganda by the allies as being the cause of Germany's defeat in WWI and seemingly carried a lot of resentment about it (while simultaneously trying to outdo them)
amalcon
I brought my now-spouse along for ring shopping, on her own theory that she'd be wearing the thing and should therefore have some input. She was actually more opposed to mined diamonds than I was at the time. We talked about this extensively, and considered both lab gems and corundum gems (ruby/sapphire).
We went through over a dozen jewelry stores, each of them pushing mined diamonds so hard that it angered us. The eventual solution wasn't even that we found an amenable jewelry store. We ended up obtaining a ring via a private transfer from a family member. While the ring contains a mined diamond, it has quite a bit of sentimental value and didn't really put price pressure on the public market. It was a good solution for us, but obviously not scalable!
throwaway_isms
>While the ring contains a mined diamond, it has quite a bit of sentimental value
If I said it once, I have said it a million times, if your SO insists on a diamond from the ground as opposed to a lab, say fine, but I am getting my shots flying to Africa and will mine it myself. It won't matter if you bring back a opaque brown rock, with 0 marketing your SO would wear it with pride and most others would be jealous when they hear the story behind it.
It goes hand in hand with your obtaining a stone from family and the sentiment of it. My Mom has 5 boys and my Dad gave her a ring with 5 diamonds, and she has made 1 available to each of us for an engagement ring, which she would replace with the birthstone of each son. As you say its not scalable, and no one ever marketed the idea, but the sentiment is extremely powerful.
inetsee
I was fortunate in this regard. My wife inherited her mother's wedding ring. When it came time for us to get married, we took that ring to a jeweler who mounted the diamond in a setting that my wife picked out. The ring has great sentimental value for my wife at a modest cost. We never had to have the conversation about a mined diamond vs a synthetic diamond.
jschwartzi
My experience was different. I ended up going to one of the Shane Company stores on the west coast and the salesperson didn't push diamonds at all. She showed me damn near every red/pink sapphire in the store until I found one I wanted to present. And when it turned out my wife didn't like the color as much as I thought they bought the old stone back at full-price and sold us a new one in a color she loves.
dec0dedab0de
I would have immediately ended it right there, but that's probably why I'm single. Every time I was in a relationship long enough to discuss marriage, I made it clear that there is no way I would ever buy a diamond. Only one was actively on board with it, because she liked the idea of picking out an alternative gem.
danbruc
Take the money and have a nice honeymoon, buy two $5 seashell necklace at the beach. There are so many ways to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars that are way better than investing them into small chunks of metal.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK
Look at it as a proof of work. What matters is you burned a certain chunk of your life for her.
steelframe
It's proof of capability. Sort of like peacock feathers. "Look, I can carry around this obscene tail and still not get eaten! How's them genetics?"
For humans, it's, "I have excess resources I can afford to burn according to the socially-accepted ritual or test, so when you bear my offspring, you can be sure I will also have excess capacity to provide for both you and your offspring."
A female may have second thoughts about choosing you as a mate if you appear to cheat at the test or don't do the test right.
chaostheory
This is the best and most succinct explanation.
Dylan16807
That makes it worse.
lupire
But why wouldn't she want a larger fancier diamond for the same work?
akomtu
The spell is called herd mentality. People don't like to be losers, so women wear shiny stones and men drive cool cars. Both want to send the message "I'm not a loser". Appeal to science has no bearing on the herd opinion. Your gf was basically terrified that her friends would laugh at her lab grown diamond and her weak scientific arguments won't raise her ingroup status. Edit: I'd add a snarky observation that a diamond is essentially a notarized letter of "love" where the shop gets paid as the notary and your gf gets the proof of your deposit. The stone itself isn't worth much.
graycat
IMHO that she is looking really hard for allegories, symbols, representations, of your love is a really good sign for a successful marriage, one that will hopefully really, without doubt or question, last "for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, 'tell death do you part". So when the two of you get old and wrinkled, not see or hear so well, have joint pains, the children have moved away and you don't see the grandchildren often enough, you will still have your love for each other that you celebrate with the diamond, the accomplishments of your lifetime together, the stability of your marriage, your home, big times at Thanksgiving, the Holidays, your wedding anniversary, your birthdays, the birthdays of the kids and their graduations, accomplishments, marriages, births and children, the friends you have made all along, the memories in your home, etc.
Again, IMHO, one of the biggest problems in life is solving the problem of being alone, and for nearly everyone the best solution is a really good marriage.
Here is a secret scorecard:
You give knowledge of yourselves to each other, that is, keep your spouse well informed on your thoughts and feelings.
You really care about each other.
You respect and respond to each other.
Neither of you tries to manipulate, fool, or exploit your spouse.
You can trust each other.
IMHO, it is good to do well on this scorecard.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK
You generalize and project your own life preferences on others. Please don't tell what is best for me. There is no problem to solve whatever.
Consultant32452
I avoided this by discussing the size of the diamonds in dead slaves rather than carets. Once I realized it didn't bother her to consider the dead slaves, I knew the "natural" diamond was what she wanted, so that's what she got. She may have genuinely believed it when she said the size of the stones didn't matter, but you can't deny how good she felt when other women fawned over it and were jealous that her stones were bigger/shinier.
It's all about status signaling. The whole concept of the ring is a literal status symbol, signaling you're off the market. We can get upset about this particular status signal all we want, but it's not as if it's any less moral than any other status signal we participate in. That new phone was made by slaves. The car was built by raw materials mined in awful ways, possibly with slave labor. We can't go down this rabbit hole with everything in our life. I recommend making small nudges when we can in our own lives, but try not to get too worked up over any of them, it's not good for your mental health.
rhacker
Married about 12 years (together 16). I bought my then future-wife a ring for $200. She didn't care it was small or that it was a tiny fraction of my salary - we both wore our rings for everyone else for a year or so... My personal do-over would be to have purchased an even cheaper ring (or none at all) so we could buy more useful things, and she would agree.
In any case, the spell doesn't work on everyone.
qw
It's mostly about the emotional attachment. If you find two identical pens, and one of them was used by a famous writer, you would expect a price difference.
There is no difference in the quality of those pens. They both work the same, and using the writer's pen will not make you a better writer by itself.
I personally would not buy a natural diamond because of the ethical issues, but I do understand the students who feel there is a difference.
vagrantJin
"Okay class, child labour, a few thousand poor people dead, terrorist groups starving hundreds of thousands, destroying schools and libraries. That is where diamonds come from. How many would still want a natural diamond because diamonds are forever?"
The elephant in that lecture hall was probably the hypocrisy.
I think if you still raise a hand after hearing all that, the issue isn't branding at all. It's narcissim, that people have to die so you can maintain the illusion of...of what?
That's the difference.
GordonS
I personally fully agree, but unfortunately not everyone thinks as logically as you or I.
I talked about this with my wife recently, and even though she had a vague idea of the horrors that mined diamonds bring, she'd still continue to buy/want mined diamonds. She sees mined diamonds as more "real", and finds it difficult to believe that her diamonds in particular would be part of the problem - as if it somehow would only affect diamonds purchased in dodgy, back-room deals. She seems to think it's OK because "everyone else does it". No amount of discussion of verifiable facts seems to change that view; indeed, she got quite annoyed with me, and didn't want to discuss it any further.
A large part of the problem is conditioning, through both advertising and tradition. In the west, we are conditioned from an early age to believe that "diamonds are a girl's best friend", that women should accept nothing less that a "real" diamond, and that men should spend some silly multiple of their salary when buying such a diamond. Diamonds are synonymous with luxury.
What we really need is a big, sustained campaign against mined diamonds, really putting the horrors in the faces of potential customers, so they have to accept the damage mined diamonds cause,and accept that they are part of the problem. Such a campaign probably needs to be fronted by celebrities - inspirational figures that people will listen to.
I whole-heartedly applaud Pandora for making the first move here - hopefully this will help to break the stalemate and be the start of a much bigger movement.
offtop5
It also factors into how someone grew up.
I'd rather toss 10k into a couple emergency fund then waste it on a ring. Most marriages collapse due to money. I recall in my younger days I was with a girl and she dragged me to Brooks Brothers. As a child of poverty and evictions I couldn't understand why anyone who need to spend this much money on a shirt.
Even making well into the 6 figures I shop at Old Navy. Hell, my favorite partner thus far was making 200k or so, and she still used an IPhone 6.
Maybe whenever I meet someone new I'll ask on the first date, would you rather have 10k saved in an emergency fund or a shinny conflict rock ? Her response will tell me everything I need to know.
sandworm101
Don't apply logic to fashion choices. Why do some sneakers sell for thousands? It is all about the attached backstory. Two identical shoes, but one was owned by a celeb. The backstory, the notoriety of owning the embodiment of that backstory, is the value. Some people want to own something 'from the earth'. Some would even pay more for an object that people suffered to produce. Lots of people certainly pay more for objects that come from animals suffering. Blood diamonds are no different than ivory or tiger parts, the backstories of which are so valuable that we enact laws to destroy their market.
arein3
It's not that simple.
Almost everyone buys clothes, electronics made with child labor.
I think you might have clothes made with child labor as well.
Why do you draw the line at diamonds?
whatever1
People value (perceived) scarcity. They are not willing to pay for a reprint of painting (that might have better quality compared to the original), but they are willing to bid on the original.
Does it make sense? No, but humans are emotional animals that seek for differentiation.
bluedevil2k
Your comment shows your understanding of the diamond industry comes from a few articles you read on the internet, like an anti-vaxx person crying foul about vaccines. The facts, about 50% of the diamonds in the world come from Western countries like Australia, Canada and Russia. Another very large percentage come from stable African countries like Botswana and South Africa. There's no child labor in any of these countries, no terrorists, not thousands of dead people, not the terrible working conditions you read 1 article about a few years ago by a writer in the Congo or the Blood Diamond movie with Leo.
Botswana has used the opportunity of being so diamond-rich to require that diamonds be cut/polished in the country, enabling hundreds of their citizens to learn a new high-paying trade. Many countries require the sale of their stones happen inside the country rather than having all the stones immediately shipped off to European trading floors.
The real hypocrisy is people complaining about an industry they really know nothing about.
kingsuper20
I'd say it's more like:
"Okay class, a very small percentage of diamonds are made via child labour, a few poor people dead, terrorist groups etc while most are made via modern mining practice. That is where diamonds come from. On the other hand, a successful marketing campaign has occurred declaring that all natural diamonds are made by torturing children. It may well be that your iPhone's supply chain causes more misery. How many would still want a natural diamond because diamonds are forever?"
Nursie
That's a good point, the difference doesn't have to be in the item itself, BUT -
Does anyone, other than geologists of course, really care about the back-story of the diamond, how it was created and how it was mined? Or are they just hanging on to an idea that some of them are "real" and some "not real" for the purposes of social signalling?
If the latter, I would consider this much more changeable over time.
coddle-hark
> Does anyone, other than geologists of course, really care about the back-story of the diamond, how it was created and how it was mined?
Yes, very much so, as is the case with all lifestyle products. People want to believe that they’re buying something special.
throwaway0a5e
I think the white collar internet kind of distorts the picture because it tends to heavily reward things that signal compliance with rule of law.
There are a lot of people who would consider a car, diamond, piece of art, etc that has "a decently long chain of people had to stick their neck out doing criminal things" in its provenance to be a more interesting than an equivalent "produced in a high tech factory".
I think even with synthetic diamonds being 100% on par in every way there will still be a market for ethically and legally gray diamonds because people want to know they're buying something that someone toiled and/or took risks for.
I'd say price will probably be the determining factor but luxury status symbol markets don't work that way.
hrktb
The people in these stories don’t buy diamond for their mechanical properties or bore tunnels, so everything surrounding the diamond itself is what matters.
How it was mined, where it came from, which company sells it and how all of that is marketed to the world (not even really to the owner) is the value of all of this.
It’s like sending a unicef postcard, what matters the most would be the effect on the receiver and how the sender feels about it. The object itself isn’t on the front stage.
Haemm0r
"Does anyone, other than geologists of course, really care about the back-story of the diamond, how it was created and how it was mined?" Yes of course. Everybody can buy a ring with a diamond, but if they sell you a story with it you can tell, it is even better :)
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WhompingWindows
I don't think your metaphor of a famous writer's pen is apt. For that to work, we'd have to be able to reproduce writer's pens in a lab for less money and less ethical violation. Probably a better analogy would be using some rare squid ink vs. using manufactured chemical ink.
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MereInterest
That an emotional attachment exists explains why a difference can exist, but doesn't explain why the attachment points in the direction that it does. Lab-grown diamonds could just as easily be the ones with emotional attachment, perhaps emphasizing how much hard work, research, ingenuity, and dedication went into making that diamond as a symbol of the hard work and dedication one is willing to put into a relationship. That the emotional attachment is specifically toward mined diamonds shows the strength of marketing.
xenocratus
I think the question might be a bit misleading. "Would you rather have X?" isn't the same as "Would you rather your spouse buys you X?". I'd prefer having a natural diamond too, for the same reason I'd prefer having a piece of ember with an insect that was trapped there naturally millions of years ago as opposed to a man-made one that was produced last month. By no means would I buy a natural diamond or support the mining system behind it, but there's no denying that I'd find it more interesting and somehow awe-inspiring.
heliodor
The current narrative is more along the lines of, "How much work should your fiancee spend on declaring his commitment to you?" The societal answer is at least two months. Salary is the convenient measure for this. The ring is the communication medium.
HideousKojima
Which is super stupid, especially since there is a negative correlation between amount spent on rings and weddings and the success rate of a marriage: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/wedding-co...
I got my wife a custom designed ring with a fairly large moissanite stone for ~$1,200 all in, and we spent about $2,000-$3,000 on the wedding itself. My wife actually would have been upset with me if I had gotten her a real diamond. Not so much because of concerns over conflict (though she did care about that) but because she felt that spending that much on a useless stone was outright stupid.
rndgermandude
>The societal answer is at least two months.
Might be an American thing? My parents spent about 1 month worth of my dad's salary on two wedding rings a long time ago. My dad actually wanted to buy a far more expensive ring for my mom, but she insisted to keep it simple and "cheap" and "unproblematic" to wear. Same story in the rest of the family.
Friends (usually a lot younger than my parents) spend even less on rings, I'd estimate 400-600 EUR per ring from what I keep hearing.
I've heard about that two months rule before, in American TV shows and movies, never thought about it. Now I wonder if it's really an American thing, or if people around me are just cheapskates :P
Kalium
I find it helps to remember that diamonds are a status symbol and a form of conspicuous consumption. People often want as much of that expensive, visible status and commitment signal as they can get.
Part of the significance of the gesture is the level of painful expense involved. So making the item much cheaper also cheapens the gesture.
mNovak
The amusing factor to all of this, is that 99% of people can't visually tell the difference between a $100 and $10,000 ring. As a status symbol, it effectively works on the honor code, or based on someone directly reporting its cost! Sort of like fancy wine or art.
e.g. people will make a judgment on the 'realness' of your ring and it's validity as a status symbol, based if it's inflated value is perceived to be within budget, and if challenged you would have to stand ground by declaring it's cost.
Kalium
I suspect - but obviously cannot prove - that this is an arena where being challenged means you've already lost because your claim is not credible. You're right, it's odd that something that's supposedly a clear signal is so murky to others.
Obviously this suggests that the status symbol hypothesis is kinda weak.
notyourday
> Part of the significance of the gesture is the level of painful expense involved. So making the item much cheaper also cheapens the gesture.
Call it what it is: diamonds are a down payment from a man to a woman for access to sex. The higher the price, the higher the value he assigns to it.
dang
If you post egregious flamebait to HN again we will ban you. You did it repeatedly today (not cool), and we've had to warn you about this before.
Kalium
Nope. Nope nope nope nope.
grw_
The economics behind diamonds are better explained by an sociologist, not a geologist- the high cost and useless-ness of the gift are a feature not a bug! The burning of significant amount of wealth is a costly signal of commitment to the receiver. I heard from a friend who worked at a diamond company (and as such could purchase stones with significant discount to market price) that his fiancée had specifically rejected the idea of receiving a stone from his company on the grounds that it being 'discounted' devalued the gesture.
gruez
>the high cost and useless-ness of the gift are a feature not a bug! The burning of significant amount of wealth is a costly signal of commitment to the receiver.
So basically... proof of work?
xeromal
I love this
988747
More like "sunk cost fallacy".
jogjayr
> The burning of significant amount of wealth is a costly signal of commitment to the receiver.
So why not buy something practical and expensive? Like a house or a car?
astura
Because houses and cars are useful, the GP pointed out that being uselessness is the entire point
>the high cost and useless-ness of the gift are a feature not a bug
The other thing is the marketing says diamonds are "forever," presumably like your love, but houses and cars require expensive maintenance and are easily damaged. Not good if you're buying something symbolic.
Not that I personally agree, far from it, we didn't make any jewelery purchases when we got married.
grw_
For houses it's completely plausible that the motivation is for the asset to appreciate in value and even if the marriage ends in divorce, both parties end up being able to extract some value from it. For a retail diamond the purchaser is likely to see zero value recovered from it whether divorce happens or not.
For cars, I suppose my hypothesis would say cars likely to depreciate very quickly (such as high-end SUV) are more suitable as engagement gifts than practical (prius or such), which fits roughly with my observations in real world
andrewzah
You're thinking in terms of real people, not what weird things rich people do with their money. The uselessness is part of the point.
faeyanpiraat
This might have been the wrong way to run this experiment.
The fact that the participants publicly shared their opinion, and then they would also publicly had to signal that they were wrong could simply be such a big psychological factor, that the topic at hand did not matter.
It would’ve been better to vote anonymously, or even better ask one class at the beginning and a different class at the end of the lecture, then share the statistics with both classes at the next lecture.
chimeracoder
On the other hand (pun not intended) diamonds are primarily used this way in engagement/wedding rings, which is a social signifier, so asking this question in the context of social pressure is arguably a better estimate of how people would behave for a form of conspicuous consumption.
lhorie
> That was the point where I realized the strength of diamonds product branding.
Here's another interesting twist that further shows how powerful branding and marketing really are: Spence Diamonds is a diamond retailer in Canada that advertises extremely aggressively via radio ads. A few years ago, it started a huge campaign for lab grown diamonds, portraying them with adjectives such as "artisan-made" (going as far as comparing them to Michelangelo art). And what do you know:
> While still offering mined diamonds, Spence has found that when its customers are given a choice, 80% of them choose lab-growns over mined diamonds[0]
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2019/05/12/spence-d...
evrydayhustling
Diamond branding taps into a much more fundamental obsession with scarcity, which manufactured objects cannot provide. Scott Galloway explores this really well in a recent post comparing NFTs to long-standing art world practices: "Scarcity has always been a function of bits, not atoms." [1]
I wonder if synthetic diamonds that were organized into specifically limited editions would hold more value...
Nursie
Potentially synthetic diamonds could destroy the scarcity appeal of natural diamonds.
evrydayhustling
Right or wrong, Galloway's thesis would specifically reject that idea. Synthetic diamonds are equivalent (or superior!) on an atoms level. But on a bits level they lack the history of being formed in the Earth's crust, which stays scarce.
Diamond marketing exploits that to good effect -- most diamonds are marked and registered in a database that traces its unique history. Doing so makes it possible to value the history as unique, and also leads by example in investing in the value of that history (they make a big deal out of the tech used to confirm authenticity). Since the final purpose of the diamond is to demonstrate stored value rather than produce it, the target buyer is focused on whether others recognize the value, not whether it is justified.
On a personal level, I think the history of "real" diamonds is almost always horrific and a negative asset! I hope companies like Pandora can put marketing power into creating scarcity stories for synthetic diamonds.
Nursie
Good for them. It's literally the same material, and we can now use scientific and engineering advances to remove the need for people to toil and die underground to get them.
Hopefully the process is more environmentally friendly too.
They are real diamonds.
I find it hi-goddamned-larious that the moment these became viable, the industry switched from "Diamond purity is the be-all and end-all and you must have the clearest, most pure" to "Oh, well of course it's all about having the right impurities to increase sparkle and character, lab-grown diamonds don't have character"
Just like with sapphires, if we're not there already I'm sure it won't be long before exactly the right type and number of impurities or faults can be introduced to mimic any natural diamond.
rlv-dan
Why do people pay insane amount for a box copy of Super Mario Bros, a game you can play one pretty much any device. ROM dumps are literary the same data.
I guess rarity is hard to set a price on. And people like being rare and unique.
ashtonkem
Original Super Mario Bros carts are rare, diamonds are not. Natural diamonds have an artificially reduced supply thanks to a cartel, if their market actually functioned they’d be very cheap.
chongli
The original Super Mario Bros sold ~40 million copies, excluding all the re-releases. It’s not a rare game at all. You can buy the cartridges on eBay for less than $10. Complete in box versions for a few hundred at most.
The only thing rare about this big sale is that it’s sealed in the box in perfect condition. All that extra money just for packaging material. Collectors are truly weird.
Spivak
Natural diamonds are really cheap. You can go online right now and buy rough diamonds for $3.50/carat. Diamonds that you would want to put into a ring are much rarer and diamonds have all the qualities that jewelry enthusiasts want are rarer than that.
We need to start thinking about jewelry like hi-fi audio. If you just want to listen to good music then lord knows you don't need a $10k setup. You hit diminishing returns really fast and your untrained eye isn't gonna be able to tell the difference between a $500, $2,000, and $10,000 diamond -- they will all be pretty. But that doesn't mean that there aren't people who do notice and do care.
Nursie
It's not exactly the same thing though, there's a difference there, you get the physical object.
I agree that some people value rarity and uniqueness, but it doesn't look to me like diamonds (natural or otherwise) provide that.
thom
You can make or buy your own custom SNES cartridges with whatever ROM you like. They’re about $20 so clearly there’s more at work here.
bongobingo
They do. Actual diamonds have occlusions, slight color shifts, unique sparkle patterns, and other characteristics.
Grown diamonds are too perfect, and it’s trivially easy to tell the difference. You don’t need a loupe at all.
I don’t own any diamonds, but I like rocks and minerals. Hank from breaking bad would be proud.
username90
A large majority of people don't pay insane amounts for collection items. A large majority of people pay insane amounts for jewellery though.
sneak
> And people like being rare and unique.
It's amazing how powerful the marketing narrative must be for something extremely normie and prescribed to be viewed instead as "rare and unique".
jonnydubowsky
Would the lab grown process tolerate adding in some super-fine particulate matter, added using a random number generator to control the amount? "Natural" imperfections on-demand?
Nursie
Most likely yes, this has already happened with other synthetic gems - look up star sapphires, once exotic and sometimes mounted on engagement rings alongside diamonds, the process to create carborundum was figured out, and then another to insert the right inclusion, and hey-presto, you can buy them in bulk for around $1 per carat. They can create bi-colour sapphires now too.
A quick search of the internet turns up various articles about inclusions in diamonds deliberately introduced to control the properties of the resulting material. So if we're not there yet with synthetic jewellery diamonds, we will be.
The sapphire market is interesting in some ways, 'natural' sapphires still fetch a few hundred dollars per carat. It genuinely fascinates me that someone would pay (as an example I just found) over £7000 for a ring with a 4.98 carat "natural" bi-colour sapphire set with six small 0.1 carat diamonds, when you can get a synthetic stone chemically and physically the same for around £12.
boatsie
Last I checked, lab grown diamonds had no fluorescence. If that is still the case, it might make fluorescent diamonds more valuable than non, as a sign they are more “natural”. Though in the past fluorescence in diamonds was considered a negative trait.
rodgerd
See also: the return of vinyl. Tube amplifiers. Yellow lighting. All from people arguing that poor reproduction of audio and natural light is superior!
shatnersbassoon
Tube amplifiers are still where it's at for guitars. Still not beaten despite the attempts of digital signal processing. The reason is that the same thing that makes it a bad general amplifier makes it an excellent guitar amp.
y2kenny
Can you elaborate more? What are the things that are bad for general amp but good for guitar amp? Is the amplification non-linear in some specific ways and how does it help with guitar music? (I know nothing about guitar except what it looks like.)
Kye
The vinyl thing is ironic because the reason it sounds better is that it's such a horrible medium that only highly skilled production sounds right on it. Your half hour bedroom mix won't cut it.
goldcd
The flip side though, is that you're making diamond miners unemployed. I suspect if they had alternate employment opportunities available that were more pleasant/better-paying, they'd have already taken them.
So losers are the poor folks digging in the ground and winners are the companies who've just built themselves a lab.
Maybe a way out of this, would be price up the grown diamonds to include a charitable donation to help create alternate employment for the miners. Would be quite nice to have that representation included in the shiny thing on a finger.
rakoo
This argument is as old as time. There even was a satirical text on the matter 2 centuries ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Bastiat#Eco...: The Sun, being an infinite source of free light, is unfair competition to candlemakers and should be blocked to allow the economy to grow and people to make a wage.
fullshark
And yet we still don't have a good solution for the societal problems it causes.
Nursie
This is the case with any advance, and could be said about all sorts of exploitative, dangerous forms of employment. In general we seek to remove these and consider it a good thing and an advance for humanity.
Should I feel sad we no longer send kids up chimneys to sweep them?
I agree that social programs are needed to help these folks, but I think even without them, undermining this industry is a win.
himinlomax
> The flip side though, is that you're making diamond miners unemployed
I'm responsible for many unemployed miners as I've never bought a diamond. Also you're responsible for unemployment in smiths by not buying horsehoes.
Swenrekcah
I've seen vidoes from some of those mines and I don't think the miners browse job openings with their morning coffee before heading off to work. I think they probably just do whatever the man with the (literal or figurative) gun tells them to.
me_me_me
If we let them slaves free how are they going to feed themselves?
See how similar that sound to what you are saying?
rodgerd
> I suspect if they had alternate employment opportunities available that were more pleasant/better-paying, they'd have already taken them.
Spoken like someone who thinks that mining is conducted by volunteers.
goldcd
erm in the vast, vast majority of cases they are..
Most of the world's diamonds are coming out of open-cast mines and most of those are in Russia.
canadianfella
Employees.
simonh
If the best option available to people was diamond mining, by taking that away from them we’re by definition pushing them into an even worse option. That’s a big problem I have with a lot of the do-good commentary on developing world labour. Taking away options from people, even bad ones from our point of view, isn’t necessarily doing them any favours. None of these peoples options are going to look good to us. Actually helping these people means improving their existing options, or giving them new better ones.
Having said that, I think given the other pretty grievous activities associated with the diamond trade, this is probably a good move. They’re not called blood diamonds for nothing.
dijit
> If the best option available to people was diamond mining, by taking that away from them we’re by definition pushing them into an even worse option.
If your business is to force people into slavery, then it is part of your business to remove other avenues for them to get out of slavery.
simonh
Who said anything about slavery? The vast majority of third world workers mining diamonds do so in the regulated commercial sector. These are largely technical engineering jobs that bring investment in infrastructure into the country, certainly much more so than many other local opportunities. A single mine like those in Botswana can employ thousands of people, and be the core of the local economy. I'm not saying there are no slaves in diamond mines, but if so it's a marginal source.
Oh my good grief. What on earth did you think I was advocating?
slightwinder
But then the best option would be to fix the business, not take it away and put more pressure on people, forcing them into another slavery.
wccrawford
>If your business is to force people into slavery, then it is part of your business to remove other avenues for them to get out of slavery.
I suspect your sentence got a little mangled. It sounds like you're saying that businesses should try to prevent people from getting out of slavery by removing other avenues by which they could free themselves.
I suspect you mean that they should create those avenues for freedom, instead.
ivanhoe
So far these diamonds were both the primary cause of conflicts, as well as the main way of financing and prolonging them. Wars are expensive, so if you take money out of the game many militias/ fractions/ criminals will simply loose interest in those territories, and that should reduce the corruption and make things more stable for people there. In theory, that's way more important for progress than outside help, although it will also be needed.
bitL
Imagine the next war will be financed with NFTs.
myfavoritedog
If it isn't diamonds, it will be land, water rights, drug distribution, religious purity, and on and on.
Diamonds are just another means of gaining power and wealth. They're only a problem in societies that don't have the mechanisms for dealing with inevitable power and wealth disparities.
adwn
> If the best option available to people was diamond mining
The best option available to a person in the short term is not necessarily the best option for a society in the long term. In this case, it almost certainly isn't. Compare "resource curse" [1].
Nursie
I think that we shouldn't keep funding exploitative companies that treat people badly, and industries that are dangerous for workers and environmentally damaging. I think that's a win anyway.
Here's another take - able bodied workers are less likely to be sucked into an industry which digs up shiny rocks to send overseas, and may be able to take up something of more benefit to the local economy.
crocsarecool
I’m worried that it takes a certain amount of poverty/desperation in the local workforce to be exploited heinously. For them, an exploitative job is probably the difference between eating a little or not eating at all. Yes, it’s good that they won’t be exploited once the mined diamond industry goes away, but I think they’re still getting the rug pulled out from under them. Their income is replaced with nothing, and in a country with a weak economy, there’s probably very little there to help these people in the interim. It’s a desperate situation, even if it’s for their benefit.
eru
> If the best option available to people was diamond mining, by taking that away from them we’re by definition pushing them into an even worse option.
Couldn't you say that about any and all technological advances?
tom_mellior
> Actually helping these people means improving their existing options, or giving them new better ones.
Yes. A basic income for which one doesn't need to go into the diamond mines, for example.
pentae
Or how about a functioning government with minimal corruption for starters? clean water? a functional banking system? access to education? UBI is putting the cart before the horse
simonh
Well of course, that's what I'm saying, just taking away jobs for miners doesn't do that.
frockington1
How do you implement UBI without any centralized government and in some cases a functioning currency?
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andromeduck
It's a resource curse.
cmod
If you want to read about the insanity of manipulation in the diamond industry, this Atlantic article on de Beers from 1982 is a … gem.
Of the many shocking moments, one that stood out to me was the way they went after post-war Japan to convert their "backwards" desires to ones of a more "forward-thinking" diamond friendly impulse:
"J. Walter Thompson began its campaign by suggesting that diamonds were a visible sign of modern Western values. It created a series of color advertisements in Japanese magazines showing beautiful women displaying their diamond rings. All the women had Western facial features and wore European clothes. Moreover, the women in most of the advertisements were involved in some activity -- such as bicycling, camping, yachting, ocean swimming, or mountain climbing -- that defied Japanese traditions. In the background, there usually stood a Japanese man, also attired in fashionable European clothes. In addition, almost all of the automobiles, sporting equipment, and other artifacts in the picture were conspicuous foreign imports. The message was clear: diamonds represent a sharp break with the Oriental past and a sign of entry into modern life."
"The campaign was remarkably successful. Until 1959, the importation of diamonds had not even been permitted by the postwar Japanese government. When the campaign began, in 1967, not quite 5 percent of engaged Japanese women received a diamond engagement ring. By 1972, the proportion had risen to 27 percent. By 1978, half of all Japanese women who were married wore a diamond; by 1981, some 60 percent of Japanese brides wore diamonds. In a mere fourteen years, the 1,500-year Japanese tradition had been radically revised. Diamonds became a staple of the Japanese marriage. Japan became the second largest market, after the United States, for the sale of diamond engagement rings."
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo...
adamhp
Damn. This is one of those cases where you have to be slightly impressed even when the act is nefarious or the result negative...
webinvest
This has for a long time now been the best article I’ve ever read from The Atlantic and I used to be a magazine subscriber. If you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend it!
Anyone care to share their own favorite articles?
logshipper
I am operating under the assumption here that said articles can pertain to any topic, and not just diamonds. If that is not the case, I do apologize.
I am a huge fan of William Langewiesche's work (some of which, incidentally, has been for The Atlantic). He writes crisp, longform articles on a variety of topics, including but not limited to aviation [1], shipping [2], nuclear proliferation [3], the dark net [4], and private military contractors [5].
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/mh370-m...
[2] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/inside-el-faro-the-w...
[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/12/how-to-...
[4] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/welcome-to-the-dark-...
[5] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/04/g4s-global-...
intsunny
I wonder how well this Reddit-famous commentary about the diamond industry has aged:
https://reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/8pb8d5/i_grow_diamonds_i_...
tda
There was an article the other day that talked about the resale value of diamonds. Basically jewelers refuse to buy back diamonds at any reasonable price (compared to original retail value. And refuse to make new rings with old diamond etc. So there is very little market for second hand diamonds.
Sounds like a business ready to be disrupted
Edit: Found the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/15/fashion/jewelry-diamond-s...
faet
Diamond prices are fairly stable, the issue is jewelers mark prices way up and most people don't know what a good price is. If a diamond goes for $5k wholesale, chances are they're looking to sell it for $10-20k. Since most people only buy 1-2 engagement rings in their lifetime they don't know what is a reasonable price. They "shop around" at three stores that are all owned by the same company. So they end up paying $15k for a ring. Then if they need to return it they only get $5k for it. They overpaid due to the emotion of the moment and expect to get something close.
Even in the article you listed there were a number of offers all close to each other. ~8-10k is a 'reasonable price' for that ring.
Most jewelers I've interacted with are more than happy to buy your diamond for a bit under wholesale cost. They're also happy to make rings with old diamonds. They make money selling settings too.
One issue is the public. There are a number of people who don't want a "Used Ring". But, there are a large number of diamonds being sold that have been owned previously.
_fat_santa
I feel like if you took and old diamond ring, reset it and refinished it, there would be no way to tell that it was "used". Maybe resetting it will introduce some flaws that weren't there before.
Kind of crazy when people say they want a "new" diamond, uh....well all of them are literally millions of years old unless it's lab grown.
bluedevil2k
This is all correct! I've worked in the diamond business for almost a decade now and see people complain on HN and Reddit constantly about diamonds all while barely understanding the industry at all. The common complaint of "you can't sell them for what you paid" is a dumb complaint because they don't understand the HUGE markup the stones receive at retail.
Here's the profit margins that the stones receive along the way: - Miners selling to cutters - 10-15% profit - Cutters selling to wholesalers - 3-5% profit - Wholesalers selling to retail - 10-20% profit - Retail to consumers - 100-200% profit
Everyone on these threads is always mad at the miners and I never see any anger placed on the Jared's, Kay's, Zale's of the world (all owned by the same company btw).
clajiness
> Basically jewelers refuse to buy back diamonds at any reasonable price (compared to original retail value. And refuse to make new rings with old diamond etc.
I bought my wife's diamond out of an ugly ring I found at a pawn shop. I brought it to a jeweler at a mall and had him pop it in one of his bands.
I saved a TON of money, my wife got a modern design with a really high quality stone, and the jeweler still got some business and his ring on another finger.
Win/Win
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JoshuaEddy
The comment predicts a precipitous fall in price. A gem-quality diamond price index [1] shows fluctuation but nothing precipitous:
Jun 7 2018: 124.79 (day of Reddit comment)
May 4 2021: 124.27 (today)
The reddit comment ignores obvious macroeconomic trends. Growth of middle class in China and India are adding to the diamond demand (a lot), in addition to general global population growth and greater purchasing power.
throwawayosiu1
I'm at the marriage age right now and I see tons of my friends getting married.
A friend got proposed a couple of months ago and her ring is ~40k USD. In my opinion, that's crazy since they're spending ~30k CAD on their wedding.
My partner also mentioned that she'd like a wedding ring of the same calibre since according to her - diamond ring is how much love / value / worth I hold for her. Furthermore, a significant group of middle/upper-middle class want naturally occurring diamonds (because they're "real") over lab produced ones (not because of the quality, but because of the tag associated with and the societal group pressure). Furthermore, the same group also hate moissanite because it's not diamond.
It's irrational, marketing and conditioning all they way down.
Hopefully, stuff like this forces lab grown diamonds to the mainstream culture so that we can finally get rid of that mentality.
klmadfejno
> My partner also mentioned that she'd like a wedding ring of the same calibre since according to her - diamond ring is how much love / value / worth I hold for her.
I don't really understand situations where peoples' partners say things like this and it comes as a surprise. This feels like an extremely aggressive statement on how they view your relationship, and the level of trust and mutual understanding you have.
I just can't imagine getting to the point of considering marrying someone and not knowing well in advance that they will hold an opinion like this. And if they seemed like the kind of person who would have this opinion... I probably wouldn't be staying with them, because it seems like it would flag a variety of other uncomfortable personality traits.
How did you react? Was it a surprise to hear this?
sangnoir
Social signaling and innate competitiveness is a hell of a drug. A former all-Linux employer had standardized on issuing Dell laptops, and everything was fine. Until some joiner in middle/lower management petitioned for a Macbook Pro and got it, and a couple more popped up in the Excel-jockey stratum, and the floodgates were opened. PMs and team leads all started to report all sorts of "problems" with their old laptops (too slow, gets too hot) to motivate for replacements - thought they had to run Linux VMs to get any work done. The Dell/Apple laptops weren't just tools anymore - they were now a social signal/status symbol to say "I am an important person" in every meeting room. It was fascinating to observe, because getting a Macbook made their lives worse (having to develop in a VM with slow disk I/O - this was before docker took over the world). Computers became the visible representation of your place on the totem pole; the same thing happens with engagement rings within social circles when going for drinks/brunch. You don't want to be caught dead with the Dell of engagement rings in a room full of Macs.
> I probably wouldn't be staying with them, because it seems like it would flag a variety of other uncomfortable personality traits.
I wouldn't go that far - we all have hobbies/interests we are passionate about that we're not utilitarian about and are willing to go all-out on. Judging a person on one axis feels like a mistake to me.
klmadfejno
Cocaine is also a drug, and yet, one doesn't need to date someone addicted to either.
> I wouldn't go that far - we all have hobbies/interests we are passionate about that we're not utilitarian about and are willing to go all-out on. Judging a person on one axis feels like a mistake to me.
I don't this is a hobby so much as a world view, or as you stated, an addiction. To me it indicates a very materialistic, shallow worldview. If 40k rings are required to show love, what do they think of people who aren't as wealthy? What would they think of you if you lost your job? Heck if someone's marrying you, why do you need to show your love at all, shouldn't that be established to them?
I think you should be incredibly judgy about who you choose to marry.
saiya-jin
Do an experiment - ask your partner if she wouldn't marry you if you don't give her precious stone. If she won't, I can't see how such a relationship is based on love, rather than various calculations. The idea that money express love is plain stupid from any point of view I can imagine.
One big warning sign right there.
FYI I didn't give my wife any diamond, in fact when I proposed to her on top of Mont Blanc after grueling dangerous skitour I didn't even have a ring since she never wore any before, so I couldn't get correct size.
It didn't matter a bit and still doesn't - everybody we talked about considers my proposal way cooler than usual big money being thrown around. I bought her a ring of her choice afterwards (cheap stuff), and no surprise - she lost it / got stolen when working at tomography lab few months afterwards. Not a problem, imagine losing a ring worth 40k (upon sale, resale maybe 50% of it if lucky).
CapmCrackaWaka
Some people have just been conditioned, by friends/family/marketing, that 'if he doesn't buy you a diamond, he doesn't love you'. There is _some_ logical thought to it. Putting money down on a marriage can be seen as a sign of commitment, and that's the way it's usually portrayed. If he won't spend money on the symbol of your marriage, then he hasn't committed.
I, personally, decided I would not marry someone who thought this way. I know it is a weird hill to die on, but if someone won't change their mind even after seeing all of the pertinent information about the diamond mining industry and the marketing, then that is not the type of person I want to marry. I luckily found an amazing woman who thinks the same way I do.
sneak
> My partner also mentioned that she'd like a wedding ring of the same calibre since according to her - diamond ring is how much love / value / worth I hold for her.
Do not marry this person. At the very least, they're bad with money (presuming you/they are not a multimillionaire presently where $40k is just pocket money).
HDMI_Cable
Wow, you might want to talk with your partner about buying a ~40k ring. That seems like it could be a big sticking point in a marriage, especially considering it could pay for an entire university degree.
brap
And it's probably not going to be a one-off thing...
lioeters
> diamond ring is how much love / value / worth I hold for her
Wow.. I find it hard to believe how someone can say/repeat such a statement about the size and authenticity of a shiny rock to equal the love you have for the person. It sounds so materialistic - but, I can't blame her either, it's part of the value system of the surrounding society she grew up in. It's impressive how effective the diamond industry's marketing has been over the last century or so.
bruceb
Don't want to get too personal but why not date in a different circle?
Almost no matter how financially well off you are, why have $40K on your finger. Not worth the danger (unless maybe you are $100m+, have 24/7 security, rich).
irrational
Years ago the natural diamond in my wife's wedding ring fell out somewhere, so she stopped wearing the ring. When our 25th anniversary was coming up I asked her if she wanted to get a new ring. Our 20-something year old daughters got wind of this and said under no circumstances could we get a natural diamond. I'd never paid much attention to the issue since I hadn't been in the market for a diamond in the 26 since years since I purchased one for the first ring (a ring that only cost $600 since I was a poor college student, no wonder the diamond eventually fell out).
I did some looking around and learned about Moissanite. The women on r/moissanite were especially enthused about it. From there I learned that you could design and purchase Moissanite jewelry directly from China. I had my wife look through the rings of one of the stores on Alibaba and choose one that she liked, except the color was wrong (she wanted rose gold instead of platinum). So I reached out to the company and asked about the possibility of getting it made in rose gold. I was assured it was no problem. I told them I wanted solid rose gold and not plated. They said the price would be higher, but no problem. I sent my wife's ring size and a few days later they sent back CAD mockups of what the ring would look like with measurements. I had them enlarge the bottom of the band and we came to an agreement on what cut/color/clarity/etc. all of the side moissanite stones would be. Then we started working on the main stone. We came to an agreement on size (2 Carat), color, clarity, style, etc. We could specify everything about the stone from the height of the crown to the width of the edge to the way the stone was cut to the bottom point - frankly we had to read up a lot of how stones are cut and what the different options are to know how to appropriately respond. About a week later they had finished cutting the stone and sent us videos of it under different light conditions so that we could approve it. Then they manufactured the ring and sent us videos of it to approve. After approval and final payment we received it in the mail about 3 days later.
Frankly my wife loves the ring. It really is gorgeous and everyone thinks the Moissanite is a real diamond.
My favorite part is that the entire thing only cost me $700. 10 out of 10 I'd definitely do it that way again.
detaro
Very cool, and nice to see the customization worked out.
cyberpunk
Married members of HN, what did you do if you think diamonds are utterly ridiclious however due to societal constraints some kind of ring is required for your SO?
kop316
Paraphrased from a previous comment of mine (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26699188):
I did not get a dianmond, but a Moissanite ring. A couple of things I learned along the way:
- I bought the ring and the Moissenite seperately. I bought the ring at a regular jewelry store (my spouse found one she liked). It is a very HARD sell when you buy the ring to also get the diamond. I ended up buying the ring online to pick it up, and I have wondered since then if they would have refused to sell me the ring if I tried to buy it in store without a diamond.
- I bought the moissanite online. It was nice seeing a linear increase in price on size versus an exponential price difference (I got it from here: https://www.charlesandcolvard.com/ )
- When I took the moissanite to a jewelry store to get it mounted, the "fake" diamond detector actually said the moissanite was a diamond! I was actually very surprised to see that, and I was candid in the fact that I brought them a moissanite.
- As soon as the jewelry store found out I bought them a moissanite, they said they cannot do anything with it. I ended up bringing the ring and moissanite to a store that deals in moissanites.
My spouse likes her ring, and absolutely no one has been able to tell the difference. I have seen is commenting on how "flawless" the "diamond" looks, and the "diamond" must have cost a lot due to it looking flawless.
andjd
Interesting. When I went in to a jeweler to get my Wife's ring appraised for insurance purposes, the tester they pulled out said that one of the (3) diamonds was moissenite. Not surprised that those testers are nearly worthless.
neilwilson
Always remember the whole diamond ring thing was a marketing putsh by DeBeers in the first place.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...
So arguably buying a diamond ring has always been a symbol of wage oppression and terrible mining conditions in Africa, and any right thinking person should boycott it.
Fortunately my SO isn't that struck by sparkly rocks. She prefers antique jewellery with character and history. Her wedding ring is 150 years old.
JoshuaEddy
Diamond engagement rings date back to 1477, and diamond jewelry dates back much further. It was viewed as very exclusive/rare. Diamond engagement rings for the masses was from DeBeers advertising starting in 1938.
The growth in diamond mine production in the late 1800s tremendously increased diamond supply. DeBeers took advantage of historical perception of rarity and actual lower cost of materials to create a new market.
Clewza313
No, diamonds were actually kind of second-rate for a long time, medieval jewelry tended to favor flashier colored stones like rubies, emeralds, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_jewelry
Although to be fair, this was in part because diamonds are hard to cut and they don't look good without faceted cuts. Diamonds only started becoming popular in the late 1800s when South African mines started producing them in bulk and modern cuts were developed, and they went mainstream once the De Beers marketing engine kicked in after WW2.
jfk13
Likewise. My wife now wears my late mother's wedding ring, after we had it remade to fit her. (Resizing was non-trivial, as it is not a simple circle.) It's not hugely valuable, but it has a unique character and history.
(Added twist: the jeweller couldn't have it ready in time for the ceremony, so we made do with a dime-store trinket, and swapped it later.)
positr0n
The most compliments I ever got on my spouses ring is in the couple months after our first child was born and her fingers were too swollen to wear the original wedding rings. She switched to a $10 Target ring with a huge fake diamond.
hiharryhere
Likewise. There are some beautiful rings in antique stores that are unlike anything really being made today. Different craft.
It's also nice to think that the ring has had a life of its own already and you get to be another chapter in it.
enriquto
If you are on the same page as your partner, you'll have no trouble sorting this thing out. In my case I bought a joke ring that cost me about 2$ in a toy store.
If you are not on the same page as your partner, you have more important concerns than a stupid ring of metal.
shakna
> In my case I bought a joke ring that cost me about 2$ in a toy store.
I love it.
My ring was a spinner, which people find far more interesting than some pretty stones in it. It cost about $10.
Hers was one with a fingernail-sized stone the colour of her eyes, that cost a few hundred.
The metals matched on eyesight, which was good enough for us.
The rings represented what we expected from our marriage - to join us, the way we were, rather than some showy way of expressing our love. We're no longer in the age of selling a ring to get by if a marriage falls apart or something else happens.
dotancohen
There are many considerations and compromises to be made when finding a partner. Compromising on her stance regarding blood diamonds might be necessary when finding a partner who shares your other values.
paholg
I think it's safe to say that if I were marrying someone who required a blood diamond, we'd be on different enough pages that we should not get married.
lief79
I proposed with a ring-pop (after going with her to order a custom engagement ring (with an inherited diamond).
Now, I do have to keep a stock of ring pops around to surprise her with on occasion.
tda
I did exactly the same, engagement ring was made of plastic with some fake shiny stone! Though for our wedding rings we did get real gold with no stones.
lewisflude
Not married, but engaged! I ended up buying a diamond on James Allen (they allow you to select earth created or lab created).
They allege their mined diamonds are "conflict free" https://www.jamesallen.com/education/diamonds/grading-confli....
However, my feeling is I don't trust this 100%, and for my SO having a "real diamond" meant a lot. For me, in this case, the need to get a "real diamond" for my SO trumped my ethical stance on where the diamond was sourced.
I think if you are going for 100% ethical purity, then you should either get no diamond (many other beautiful, precious gemstones if you still want one) or just go for it to make your SO happy.
simias
Did your SO explain why it's so important for them to get a "real diamond"? While I understand wanting a valuable piece of jewelry as a token of the value of your relationship, I must admit that the extreme fixations on specifically diamonds always seemed rather odd given that there are so many other beautiful gemstones to chose from. Of course it's also cultural thing, I think diamond engagement rings are especially popular in America?
This might well be the most successful marketing campaign in history.
lewisflude
I'm not in America, but she studied jewellery and has a deep interest in gemstones. The story of it being formed in the earth over a long period of time is what gives earth diamonds something that lab diamonds just don't have, purely the story. I think this is largely down to the marketing of diamonds which has really embedded itself in the culture of jewellery and the rituals around getting engaged.
We did discuss the ethical concerns of earth vs lab diamonds beforehand, and the decision to go with an earth diamond was intentional.
The diamond was a yellow, cushion cut diamond. I agree, there are other gemstones that are often overlooked and have beautiful qualities.
sharken
As long as the concept "real diamond", as in mined the traditional way exists, then real change will be slow.
It will be interesting to see if companies will try to market "real diamonds" and how the market will respond.
lewisflude
When you buy a mined diamond, you are paying for the story, of it being a finite thing, formed in the earth over a very long period of time. Lab grown diamonds don't have that story.
Separately, the work that goes into cutting/finishing diamonds is incredible and there is a huge amount of variety between individual diamonds. They are very fascinating things.
sneak
> However, my feeling is I don't trust this 100%, and for my SO having a "real diamond" meant a lot. For me, in this case, the need to get a "real diamond" for my SO trumped my ethical stance on where the diamond was sourced.
Lab grown diamonds are real diamonds. There is a simple, easy, and cost-effective solution to the problem you seem to have skipped over here.
lewisflude
I agree with you, which is why I put real diamond in quotes here. Lab or earth grown, both are real. Sadly, not everyone sees lab grown as having as much desirability as earth grown diamonds. While I would be open to receiving a lab diamond, I've met many people for whom it would be seen as a budget option.
Although through an objective lens they are the same, for a lot of people there is an emotional difference between buying (or receiving) a lab grown vs earth grown diamond which means they can't be treated like-for-like in every situation.
KennethPT
Alternate view: Almost everything in life is ridiculous when you view it with cold logic. It's utterly ridiculous to put golden balls on a fake tree in your house every year, but due to societal constraints most people in Western societies do it.
Your SO probably doesn't want a logical gift, she wants something sentimental that makes her feel that you care about her. For some people, that's an expensive rock with no utility, for others it might be something different. But applying logic to what's ultimately an emotional, illogical affair isn't always productive.
pydry
Rituals do make a lot of sense even if the content of them makes no intrinsic sense:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-rituals-work/
tialaramex
You should where possible create rituals which do have a direct purpose anyway.
Big example of real rituals which have purpose, Key Signing Ceremonies. Small example, when I leave somewhere I always pat both pockets twice, everything I absolutely need is always in those pockets, keys, wallet, phone. And so I won't leave them behind.
The weird thing about the diamond engagement ring is that it isn't a powerful symbol of anything. The wedding ring is the powerful symbol, and that would conventionally just be a metal band. You see those everywhere which is of course made more practical by their being a simple metal band.
pessimizer
I'm entirely against this sentiment, because logic isn't cold, it's a way to maximize your comfort and happiness. However, useless, expensive gifts are more effective than purposeful gifts from a mating perspective - wasting money is a sign of wealth, and that's cold logic.
The ring is basically a sacrifice, which goes with the "blood diamond" thing pretty neatly.
twobitshifter
Exactly. The ring is not for you and your wife will be wearing this for the rest of her life if all goes well. If you are unwilling to give her something extravagant because you value paper money so much more, then you’re not ready to go through with the sacrifices that come with a marriage. If your wife wants a diamond, but you want to control your wife and bend her to your will of not having a diamond, you can try and you might succeed, but there will be some resentment every time she sees it on her finger and this will not be an issue that just fades away. Expect to hear it echoing for a long time. Do you want your marriage proposal to be associated with an argument, disagreement, or even a compromise?
On the other hand, a loving relationship and marriage is worth much more than a diamond ring ever could be. When you have a caring wife and you both love and help each other you’ll get an immeasurable improvement in your life.
To conclude, yes it’s overpriced, yes there are problems with diamond mining, yes DeBeers artificially controls the supply, and yes you can find a rarer stone for less, or something more exotic, but your wife wants a diamond, so you buy a diamond and hopefully live a happy life.
username90
Christmas would be insane if you put actual gold in them instead of plastics.
gtirloni
Just bought it and moved on. I'm happy that she's happy. I couldn't care less.
lifeisstillgood
Just to say, thats a great attitude - and that I am happy to hear is an option amoungst a sea of 'if you are not on the same page your marriage is in trouble' comments
woofcat
Yeah, I'm not understanding a lot of the sentiment here. I suppose if you're a fresh grad, or not making a ton of money. However if an engagement ring's cost is some barrier to getting married... perhaps you're too young to get married?
Life is expensive, and between cars, house, the actual wedding, kids, etc. The money I spent on my wives engagement ring seems like child's play.
Also I feel like most women want it, because it's what everyone asks of them. 100% it's societal pressure. If you tell someone you got engaged, question #1 will be "Ohh let me see the ring!"
float4
> Also I feel like most women want it, because it's what everyone asks of them.
To me it feels more like a classic case of mimetism: all beautiful / successful / happy / rich people have a diamond ring, so most women naturally want one too. It's not really about fear, but more about a strong desire to have the same object as your role models.
sneak
> Life is expensive, and between cars, house, the actual wedding, kids, etc. The money I spent on my wives engagement ring seems like child's play.
I wonder if your literal children would feel like that if you'd taken the same money for a ring that will (presuming you proceed with marriage) pretty much never get worn, and invested it in an index fund until their 21st birthday.
"child's play" indeed is what I would call this level of financial misplanning.
fsflover
"Just used the slaves; I couldn't care less." - I hope such general attitude will change as soon as possible...
username90
You are the ideal consumer. Hope you realize why it would be bad if everyone was like you.
zhobbs
Can you elaborate? As far as I can tell, effectively everyone is like this...
Jiejeing
I am curious, is the diamond thing a US-centric trope? I do not know anyone here who genuinely cares about that sort of thing, generally people want some discreet metal ring. It may be a precious ore to symbolize the commitment but otherwise I have not seen anything outlandish among my friends or family members who got married.
q3k
Pretty much, the US makes up ~50% of the global diamond jewelry consumer market.
It seems the US-focused De Beers marketing campaign from half a century ago is still holding strong.
nottorp
Eastern Europe. We didn't bother with the engagement stuff and the wedding rings were plain gold bands. Which we don't bother with any more after 20 years.
I've almost never heard of anyone buying engagement rings, diamonds or no diamonds.
I do know a nouveau riche (or aspirational nouveau riche) couple whose wedding bands have tiny diamonds on them.
Draken93
In Germany it is not a thing either. Discreet gold/silver rings are much more common. I like it, it is less decadent and you can wear the ring every day.
cyberpunk
That's weird, all my SO's friends who are engaged/married here in .de got diamond engagement rings. They also wear a wedding band, and tend to only wear the engagement ring on special occasions..
bluedevil2k
Not US-centric - they're popular in the US and Canada, Japan, China and SE Asia.
kungito
in the balkans it's definitely a thing
lordnacho
Caved in and bought an expensive diamond. What really counts here is social ideas of what is necessary. You can push against but most people will do what's socially the done thing. I shudder to think what horrible things we might be able to get people to do as a gateway to getting married. Eg the Spartans had to murder a Helot to graduate IIRC. What if you had to beat up a random person to get married? People would still do it I think.
Not long after I got married, I read about Moissanite.
nailer
Quick reminder of options for men looking to get married and looking to avoid getting exploited by De Beers:
1. Man made diamonds. Better clarity and color and larger gems for the same price. Or the same gem for a smaller price.
2. Second hand mined diamonds. Better jewelers, deceased estates, auction houses like Sotheby's and Christie's etc.
3. Other precious stones which are not diamonds.
4. Not buying a stone or a ring (eg if she doesn't take your surname and you don't wish to have traditional gender roles it would be unreasonable to expect a gem to be provided).
vonwoodson
We just got out first “fake” diamond. It is not perfect, it does have bubbles in it (s1), so the idea that lab grown diamonds are all flawless is just not true. The price was what reeled us in. My wife in inherited two diamond earrings from her mother that were fairly large, also my wife has three piercings in each ear. Buying a property sized natural diamond was way, way, too expensive. We tried to look for a zirconia or crystal that would match the set, but nothing sparkles like a diamond; well the lab grown diamond just fist right into the set like a long lost sibling. What made my wife finally be ok with the lab grown diamond, in her mind, was that the gems and the gold were not what made the jewelry valuable to her. They are valuable because they were her mother’s. When my son, or his kids, eventually get our jewelry I hope that the value is the same for them for their sentiment and not their spot price. The lab grown diamond will be just as durable and beautiful as the natural ones. And, I would not be unhappy if the price of diamonds drops to be as cheap as a pebble.
MattGaiser
I think this is a lot less significant than it seems at first glance:
> Although diamonds have traditionally only been a very small share of the 100 million pieces Pandora sells worldwide each year, Mr Lacik believes that will be boosted by lower prices.
Nursie
I think it's significant in that diamonds may now make up a lot more of the lower end of the market. This has the possibility to change their image from one of remote inaccessibility to one of availability to the masses.
What the eventual fallout will be, who knows.
nailer
> Laboratory-made diamonds are today all but indistinguishable from the real thing
They are the real thing. A better way of wording this would be:
> Man-made diamonds are today all but indistinguishable from their mined counterparts.
Clewza313
While this is a great step forward, let's not ascribe too much to it just yet. Pandora's niche is cheap, impulse-buy jewelry, a lot of it under $100, so diamonds rarely feature anyway and few people would buy their engagement rings there. It'll take Tiffany switching to synthetics to make De Beers really start crapping their trousers.
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Random diamond story! As a freshman in college, I took a geology class and our teacher asked all of the women in our class to raise their hand if they would rather have natural or human-made diamonds. Most of the women (over 80%) raised their hands for natural. The reasons they gave all seemed to tie back to branding and natural diamonds being “real.”
Then our teacher gave another analogy. He asked if people would rather have natural ice or human-made ice in their water. He broke down that the human-made ice could be frozen in a freezer to a custom size/shape, be a lot cleaner, consistent in how you make it, and chemically no different than H20 than naturally occurring frozen water. As you looked around the lecture hall, you started to see people’s brains unlock. He went on to explain cost efficiencies, ethics, challenges with conflict diamonds, and how you could make a perfect diamond at a fraction of the coast.
After a 30 minute lecture, he asked the question again. Surprisingly, the majority of the women still wanted natural diamonds although the number was less than the original amount that raised their hand. That was the point where I realized the strength of diamonds product branding.