De Beers and their minions have found a way to sell ugly diamonds

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The discussion centers around the marketing and perception of diamonds, particularly brown diamonds, which were historically deemed unattractive and unsellable but have been rebranded as "fancy" by the industry. Participants express skepticism about the value of diamonds, highlighting that they are not rare and are heavily controlled by companies like De Beers, which stockpile them to maintain high prices. The conversation also touches on the cultural significance of shiny objects, suggesting that the attraction to them may stem from primal instincts. There is a strong preference for cultured or man-made diamonds as ethical alternatives, with participants noting that many natural diamonds are flawed and overpriced. The thread critiques the gem market in the U.S. for its dishonesty and the prevalence of overgraded stones, contrasting this with the higher standards in Asian markets. Overall, the dialogue reflects a growing awareness of ethical consumerism and a questioning of traditional values associated with diamond purchasing.
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You may have seen TV ads for "chocolate diamonds" - brown, unattractive stones that were unsellable. Now, the industry has managed to convince a lot of loons that brown diamonds are worthy of being considered "fancy" diamonds like the pinks, blues, canary yellows... Just like the "inky" sapphires that have been foisted on US women for decades. Decent sapphires and rubies never make it to the US. The Asian market sucks them up, with good reason. They are rare, and far more valuable than diamonds.
 
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diamonds aren't even rare. De Beers just has a monopoly on the market and stockpiles them.

but if you want a pretty diamond, and want to make sure it isn't tainted by blood, just get one of the cultured ones.
 
Proton Soup said:
diamonds aren't even rare. De Beers just has a monopoly on the market and stockpiles them.

but if you want a pretty diamond, and want to make sure it isn't tainted by blood, just get one of the cultured ones.
You can buy an old "mine-cut" diamond, but remember that your diamond was mined by someone whose life was probably just as crappy and miserable than people who have produced the modern blood diamonds.
 
Diamond engagement rings were invented by De Beers to maintain profits during the Depression. I'm glad that we discovered the rocks up in the Yukon, to at last break their monopoly.
 
[PLAIN]http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/9881/ironyc.png [/PLAIN]​

Oh, the Irony.
 
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Cyrus said:
Oh, the Irony.

Nice!
 
When I was shopping for a diamond for my wife's engagement ring, a guy at a "large jewelry chain" tried to convince me a "rare black" diamond was the way to go. I laughed joking "you want me to buy an industrial grade diamond?!" and left.
 
If buying a brown diamond makes some people happy, why care? It wouldn't make me happy, but so what?
 
Vanadium 50 said:
If buying a brown diamond makes some people happy, why care?

For one thing, it supports De Beers.
 
  • #10
Someone please explain this insane attraction for shiny objects.
 
  • #11
Phrak said:
Someone please explain this insane attraction for shiny objects.

If I had to take a guess, it is probably a left over natural instinct from our prehistoric, nomadic days. If you had to move from place to place looking for food, it would help you tremendously if you were able to spot light reflecting off some water source in the distance. So, you see shiny in the distance, you do not dehydrate.
 
  • #12
Vanadium 50 said:
If buying a brown diamond makes some people happy...

My first EW officer had the unique ability of...

Let's just say that in today's market, his quirky pasttimes would make him a mint.
 
  • #13
mugaliens said:
My first EW officer had the unique ability of...

Let's just say that in today's market, his quirky pasttimes would make him a mint.

I shudder to think...
 
  • #14
Diamond is just high(excessively)-priced carbon. :rolleyes:
 
  • #15
Apparently, this has been going on since 1986 and not so much by De Beers and its minions as by Rio Tinto and its minions.
Another example of successful diamond marketing is brown Australian diamonds. Brown-colored diamonds have always constituted a significant part of the diamond production, but were considered worthless for jewelry; they were not even assessed on the diamond color scale, and were predominantly used for industrial purposes. The attitude has changed drastically after the development of Argyle diamond mine in Australia in 1986. As a result of an aggressive marketing campaign, brown diamonds have become acceptable gems. The change was mostly due to the numbers: the Argyle mine, with its 35,000,000 carats (7,000 kg) of diamonds per year, makes about one-third of global production of natural diamonds; 80% of Argyle diamonds are brown.
Elsewhere in the article it says that the Argyle mine is owned by Rio Tinto.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond"
 
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  • #16
Phrak said:
Someone please explain this insane attraction for shiny objects.

What Phrak said.
 
  • #17
Mathnomalous said:
If I had to take a guess, it is probably a left over natural instinct from our prehistoric, nomadic days. If you had to move from place to place looking for food, it would help you tremendously if you were able to spot light reflecting off some water source in the distance. So, you see shiny in the distance, you do not dehydrate.

So, women are still living in the stone age?
 
  • #18
Sigh.
Demonizing the De Beers company today is just silly.

It is due to De Beers, for example, that Botswana is just about the only non-dysfunctional country in subsaharan Africa.
 
  • #19
chaoseverlasting said:
So, women are still living in the stone age?

Yeah, most of them anyway.
 
  • #20
Topher925 said:
Yeah, most of them anyway.

I'm just waiting for evo to pick up on this.
 
  • #21
chaoseverlasting said:
I'm just waiting for evo to pick up on this.
Anticipating Doomsday? :biggrin:
 
  • #22
chaoseverlasting said:
So, women are still living in the stone age?

And so do men: shiny sports cars.
 
  • #23
chaoseverlasting said:
I'm just waiting for evo to pick up on this.

Danger said:
Anticipating Doomsday? :biggrin:
I saw it.

chaos, I had a 2 year gold membership to give away, why didn't you tell me you expired? The person I gave it to was worthy though. Maybe Greg would split it into 2 one years?
 
  • #24
Evo said:
I saw it.

chaos, I had a 2 year gold membership to give away, why didn't you tell me you expired? The person I gave it to was worthy though. Maybe Greg would split it into 2 one years?

My membership has expired, and I don't relish transmitting my credit card number into the internet. Can I have a gold membership, seeing as we're such good buddies and all...
 
  • #25
chaoseverlasting said:
I'm just waiting for evo to pick up on this.

I'm not saying all woman in general are fascinated by shiny objects, I'm just saying that the majority of them are. Even worse, the majority of men are willing to spend insane amounts of cash to obtain those shiny objects.

[URL]http://www.diamondboycott.com/images/truelove.jpg[/URL]
 
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  • #26
Phrak said:
Someone please explain this insane attraction for shiny objects.
How can someone interested in physics not like light-reflecting crystals?
 
  • #27
Monique said:
How can someone interested in physics not like light-reflecting crystals?
I love crystals. I have mined my own tourmalines and beryls right here in Maine and have bartered and bought materials from all over the world. Every female relative that I have (down to the 2nd cousin level and more distant in some cases) has at least one piece of jewelry featuring gemstones that I have faceted. My faceting machine is really not equipped to facet diamonds, but that's OK because the market is pretty much throttled by entities that want to keep diamonds as expensive as possible.

I have faceted and given away stones that are much, much rarer than diamonds, including beautiful pastel sapphires from Yogo Gulch, tsavorite mined in Tsavo national park in Kenya, Tanzanite, emerald, rubies, etc, etc.

A few years ago, a nice young lady (who has 2 of my stones) asked my opinion of her diamond engagement ring, and I said "it's very nice." to which she answered "No, I want you to look at it and tell me what you think". I went back in the house and got a 10X loupe and a lump of modeling clay to hold the ring steady while I examined the stone. The diamond had several voids and hair-thin "tunnels" leading to them. She had a stone that was perhaps a bit over 1/2 carat that looked a little "soft" because the refraction was broken up by those uneven voids left after inclusions had been vaporized with a laser. Diamonds are a scam backed by one of the most effective marketing campaigns in history.

Crappy worked-over diamonds are all over the US market, as are inky sapphires, and pink sapphires being marketed as "rubies". The gem market in the US is very dishonest, with jewelers over-grading stones that would not warrant a second glance on the Asian market.

At a dinner after a business meeting, I was seated next to my company's VP of sales (international company), and I said to him "What a beautiful sapphire!" He had a heavy gold ring with an irregular cabochon sapphire that must have been close to 10 carats. He smiled and immediately took off the ring and handed it to me so I could look at it more closely. The stone was a beautiful rich blue with no visible inclusions or silk. He explained that his parents escaped China in advance of the revolution, and carried as much wealth as possible with them in the form of precious stones. The guy was carrying a fortune around on his finger, and he seemed genuinely surprised and pleased that an American would recognize that.
 
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  • #28
I'm generally not for spending large amounts of money on things that don't have a practical use, but just for the sake of completion, here's to anyone who may want info from the interested party:

http://www.debeersgroup.com/en/Inside-De-Beers/Governance/
 
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  • #29
turbo-1 said:
The guy was carrying a fortune around on his finger, and he seemed genuinely surprised and pleased that an American would recognize that.

This seems to capture the psychological angle.
We can even scape among ourselves over what constitutes legitimate verses illegitimate vanity.
 
  • #30
Phrak said:
This seems to capture the psychological angle.
We can even scape among ourselves over what constitutes legitimate verses illegitimate vanity.
I wouldn't characterize his wearing that ring as vanity as much as pride in his parents' resourcefulness and his family history. Our company was headquartered in Scotland, and he was a first-generation US immigrant of Chinese descent. He's a pretty low-key guy, and sharp as a tack.

BTW, the $$$$$ value of that ring would have been of no consequence to him. That stone stays in the family. He was just pleased that I recognized the sapphire for what it was. Most Americans have no clue. If a stone is not the color and opacity of Carter's ink, they don't recognize it as a sapphire, because that's the kind of junk that is sold here.
 
  • #31
Topher925 said:
I'm not saying all woman in general are fascinated by shiny objects, I'm just saying that the majority of them are. Even worse, the majority of men are willing to spend insane amounts of cash to obtain those shiny objects.

Shiny objects (diamonds, gold, or other traditional gifts) are the woman's insurance policy to account for the possibility of her future husband's death or for the possibility of divorce, not to mention that having enough cash to buy shiny objects is an indication of the future husband's ability to accumulate money. And managing to keep shiny objects in the family, passed down from one generation to the next, speaks to the overall stability and prosperity of that family.

Those traditions may not be quite as important in a society where you can purchase life insurance policies for a monthly fee and in a society where economic mobility is fairly common.

The fact that you can buy the shiny objects on credit kind of dilutes the significance of the objects, as well. In fact, buying the shiny objects on credit can accomplish exactly the opposite of what the shiny objects are supposed to represent.

Not to mention that, in a society where both the man and woman commonly have their own careers, they may not be very relevant at all in a practical sense.

The willingness to fork out that much money is at least an indication that the husband doesn't intend to take off with the first floozy to come along, though, as the engagement ring and her wedding ring belongs to the wife as soon the the wedding's official - yes, even if it's a family heirloom, although the appropriate thing to do in that circumstance is to allow the ex-husband to buy the ring back so he can give it to his next fiance.

(I've always wondered about people that would buy used wedding rings from a pawn shop. People don't consider those rings cursed?)
 
  • #32
BobG said:
(I've always wondered about people that would buy used wedding rings from a pawn shop. People don't consider those rings cursed?)
I bought my wife's wedding ring from a friend who was buying and scrapping gold. It's a beautiful heavy floral band in 3-color gold. Antique for sure and probably German/Austrian in origin.
 
  • #33
BobG said:
(I've always wondered about people that would buy used wedding rings from a pawn shop. People don't consider those rings cursed?)
Here's an old joke:
A: What a lovely ring. Is it a diamond?
B: Yes, the Snyder diamond.
A: Oh how romantic, a diamond with a name. I wish I had something like that.
B: You wouldn't want it. It comes with a curse.
A: What's the curse?
B: Mr. Snyder.
 
  • #34
Jimmy Snyder said:
Here's an old joke:
A: What a lovely ring. Is it a diamond?
B: Yes, the Snyder diamond.
A: Oh how romantic, a diamond with a name. I wish I had something like that.
B: You wouldn't want it. It comes with a curse.
A: What's the curse?
B: Mr. Snyder.
Good one!
 
  • #35
None of my stones came with a curse (I hope). There are at least 50 of them floating around in the family, and at least as many out in the public, thanks to the owner of a high-end jewelry store that wouldn't let me leave his office with a single Maine tourmaline in my possession. I should have jacked up the prices and then lowered them very gradually to find his tolerance level. I kept slowly raising the prices, and he always said "OK" and bought all my faceted stones. His shop catered to old money in the state capitol, and I never saw any of my stones in the showcases. They all went into custom pieces, apparently.
 
  • #36
Monique said:
How can someone interested in physics not like light-reflecting crystals?

I like your light-reflecting crystals.

Eyes, I mean! I'm talking about your eyes...
You have beautiful eyes.
I'm getting buried here, aren't I?
 
  • #37
Danger said:
I like your light-reflecting crystals.

Eyes, I mean! I'm talking about your eyes...
You have beautiful eyes.
I'm getting buried here, aren't I?


You definitely need to read the threads giving advice on pick-up lines.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=1963199&postcount=35

Evo said:
I know I've heard that line hundreds of times. The only time I remember was sitting with my (now ex) husband on the couch. We had been married about 6 years, no special occasion. He just suddenly blurted out "you have the most incredibly beautiful eyes". It might have been the first day in 6 years my allergies weren't bothering me. Who knows? But THAT I remember. I decided to divorce him shortly after that.

Alas, I've botched the beautiful eyes line more times than I care to imagine. Somehow, I think the meaning of my compliments are sometimes lost in translation:

In the way those eyes I've always loved illuminate this place
Like a trashcan fire in a prison cell
Like the searchlights in the parking lots of hell

That works about as well as text messages about bowling.

Better to just say nothing and give diamonds.
 
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  • #38
turbo-1 said:
I wouldn't characterize his wearing that ring as vanity as much as pride in his parents' resourcefulness and his family history. Our company was headquartered in Scotland, and he was a first-generation US immigrant of Chinese descent. He's a pretty low-key guy, and sharp as a tack.

BTW, the $$$$$ value of that ring would have been of no consequence to him. That stone stays in the family. He was just pleased that I recognized the sapphire for what it was. Most Americans have no clue. If a stone is not the color and opacity of Carter's ink, they don't recognize it as a sapphire, because that's the kind of junk that is sold here.

I should never have used the word vanity. It's lost its meaning in abuse. I was lost for words. None of us are vain; only other people are vain. Why do you wear jewelry? If so, why?
 
  • #39
Topher925 said:
I'm not saying all woman in general are fascinated by shiny objects, I'm just saying that the majority of them are. Even worse, the majority of men are willing to spend insane amounts of cash to obtain those shiny objects.

[URL]http://www.diamondboycott.com/images/truelove.jpg
[/URL]Guilty, as charged.

Does anyone else get the dark humor?

This atrocity is unattractive now, at this time, to those that can't ignore it, but not in other times and other places. In example, war trophies won with death and blood are coveted treasures disjoint with their intrinsic value.The ebb and flow of cultural dictates the status of materially useless crap. In other times, in other cultural norms, even the magnitude of suffering of slave labor associated an item will increase its value. Here's a good example: The impressionable number of dead Chinese slaves accrued in the building of the so-called Great Wall of China significantly raises it tourist value. wonderful to be human, isn't it?
 
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  • #40
Phrak said:
I should never have used the word vanity. It's lost its meaning in abuse. I was lost for words. None of us are vain; only other people are vain. Why do you wear jewelry? If so, why?
I don't wear jewelry. I made myself a ring with a tsavorite stone to match the one I made for my wife, but it's tucked away somewhere.
 
  • #41
I was expecting more from you, evo! :P Maybe a ban, but I'll take the gold membership if its still possible :D.


BobG said:
You definitely need to read the threads giving advice on pick-up lines.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=1963199&postcount=35


Alas, I've botched the beautiful eyes line more times than I care to imagine.

Thank you for the thread! I will be using some of those soon.
 
  • #42
chaoseverlasting said:
Thank you for the thread! I will be using some of those soon.
They are field tested. I tried most of them out on my wife and they all worked.
 
  • #43
Jimmy Snyder said:
They are field tested. I tried most of them out on my wife and they all worked.

But isn't your wife already "picked up" (by you I'm guessing)?
 
  • #44
BobG said:
You definitely need to read the threads giving advice on pick-up lines.
:-p
Well, my old stand-by was "Excuse me, but is there any chance that your stand on meaningless recreational sex is compatible with mine?" Believe it or not, it actually worked a couple of times.
BobG said:
Alas, I've botched the beautiful eyes line more times than I care to imagine.

What I find—not ironic, exactly, but at least somewhat incongruous—is that my ex-wife's niece, who is still mine by association, is totally blind due to retinitis pigmentosa and has absolutely the most beautiful dark chestnut eyes that I've ever seen. It's a shame that they don't work.
 
  • #45
Topher925 said:
But isn't your wife already "picked up" (by you I'm guessing)?
They worked compared to "Is that another gray hair I see?" I slept on the couch that night.
 
  • #46
What's the point of buying an Earth-made diamond instead of a man-made diamond?

Man-made diamonds look better, they're a lot cheaper and you're probably not giving your money to evil people.

The only person who knows you're wearing an Earth-made diamond is you, and the value of Earth-made diamonds is bound to go down, since I'm sure people are going to wake up and realize that Earth-made diamonds are just imperfect versions of man-made diamonds.
 
  • #47
leroyjenkens said:
What's the point of buying an Earth-made diamond instead of a man-made diamond?

Man-made diamonds look better, they're a lot cheaper and you're probably not giving your money to evil people.

It's that last point that really matters to me.
 

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