That's a good article. The whole history is there.
The commercial side has made huge progress, too. Look up "diamond making machine" on Alibaba. You can buy a high-pressure, high temperature six sided press for about US$200,000. A chemical vapor deposition machine is about the same price.
De Beers, the diamond cartel, has an R&D operation, Element Six. They sell synthetic diamonds for lasers and other exotic applications. The technology is good enough to achieve flaw levels in the parts per billion range, and to make diamond windows for lasers 10cm across.[1]
This is way above jewelry grade.
Over on the natural diamond side, there's been a breakthrough. The industry used to break up some large diamonds during rock crushing. Now there's a industrial X-ray system which is used to examine rocks before crushing to find diamonds. It's working quite well. A 2500 carat diamond was found recently.[1][2] TOMRA, which makes high-volume sorters for everything from recyclables to rice, has a sorter for this job. This is working so well that there's now something of a glut of giant diamonds too big for jewelry.
The finishing processes of cutting and polishing have been automated. The machinery for that comes mostly from China and India.
Diamonds are now something you can buy by the kilo, in plastic bags.
This is certainly good news for lasers. Many people don't realize how good diamonds are for this. Transparent with a 65% higher refractive index than glass, and 8x the thermal conductivity of copper. And completely scratch-proof!
> Diamonds are now something you can buy by the kilo, in plastic bags.
I can’t wait to use diamond cookware. A pan with a thin layer of 430 stainless steel for induction, a wafer of diamond, and then another thin layer of stainless on top will be amazing. Almost perfect evenness over any cooktop.
sounds like may be soon we'll see diamond wafers for the chips (especially as the price of processed wafer from a fab increases, the cost of the source wafer itself is becoming less important) Add to that X-ray lithography, and the Moore's Law will continue for quite a while.
Over the past 10 years, there has been an explosion in cheap lab diamond and moissanite producers in China and India. 10 years ago, it was hard to find quality lab diamonds at a reasonable price, and moissanite was still reasonably expensive at $400-600/ct.
Today, given cutthroat competition and "race to the bottom" pricing strategies, lab diamonds are ubiquitous, extremely high quality, and cheap. Less than $200/ct and sometimes much less: https://detail.1688.com/offer/751071300271.html
Within 10 years of today, I expect diamonds to lose almost all of their value. Moissanites have already become as near-worthless as synthetic rubies. This is going to open up new industrial uses for those gemstones.
I have to bring this up because a lot of people are talking as if this is the entirety of the reason for their decrease. But there's diamond files, diamond cutting blades/wheels/drills, you can make glass from it (really only used in labs that absolutely need them because the price), and many more uses. Many of these don't care about size, quality, or clarity. So instead of pulling from scrap material from jewelry making or rejected diamonds you could just make your own and ensure your own supply.
One of the things I've loved about synthetic diamond prices coming down is just how cheap and available diamond cutting wheels and filing tools have become. You can now get a set of diamond files on Amazon for under $10. That's crazy
And I'd be very happy to see the demise of De Beers. It's amazing that De Beers can thrive for more than 100 years, but still, using clever marketing and tight control of supply to artificially jack up the price of diamond is counter-productive.
They never had any value, apart from specialized ie glass cutting tool. Only when DeBeers realized they could push some fictious heavy marketing 'to prove your worth to woman you are asking to marry' for those shiny stones nobody wanted to buy, people who didn't know better got manipulated into buying them. They are supposedly very common in universe, and probably in deeper Earth too.
Correction is healthy and benefits mankind long term, there was nothing good coming from ie impact on Africa. Nobody cared about that, so things are fixed from another direction.
Radio waves around me are just constant drumbeat from large jewelry stores about why its such a bad idea to buy a synthetic diamond as it wont hold its value. They already know what is coming.
> I expect diamonds to lose almost all of their value.
Artificial diamonds, you mean. The natural ones will keep their price, just as "hand-crafted" goods did (and, I suspect, as "human-produced" content in the future will); it's a matter of status and signalling that you can afford to buy an inferior, more expensive product.
I think large natural diamonds will exist as a market. Just expect large real gems to become much less common for the non-wealthy. And large gemstone jewelry to become more ubiquitous with the increasing spread of lab gems. Definitely a trend towards seeing more such gems paired with silver as the prices have gone down.
> Within 10 years of today, I expect diamonds to lose almost all of their value. Moissanites have already become as near-worthless as synthetic rubies. This is going to open up new industrial uses for those gemstones.
And for jewelry too. I bought my wife a 2ct moissanite in 2012. There was no way we could have done that ring with a real diamond back then.
When I was shopping, I happened to see a girl at a conference who had many large moissanites on her ring. It was gorgeous, and well within the price range of upper-middle-class.
You said they are legit, does that mean you have them tested by an independent lab? I know that almost all shops in China (and India) show nice certificates for such purchases. But I also know from experience that many of these certificates are worthless as rubber stamps. Maybe you live in China and know more about such things? I'm thinking about buying and would like to know more from your perspective. Thanks!
Yeah, these days when it comes to gems like diamond or moissanite meant for high quality beauty, the actual cost is in the time and skill it takes to properly cut one for optimal optical properties.
Mind you most people won’t be able to tell a difference unless you put the $5 cut next to a $500 cut.
For any aspiring inventors / engineers out there, take a good look at how Hall was treated by GE. He literally invented game-changing tech with every obstacle thrown in his way by management, and was given a 10% raise and $10 savings bond.
Had he done it on his own, he would have been extremely wealthy, being the supplier of synthetic diamonds to the world (assuming he wouldn't have faced legal challenges by former employer). He would have also been able to pursue this full time, who knows how much he could have improved the tech.
Just because the powers that be don't think its a good idea, doesn't mean it isn't (it also doesn't mean it is). And if they don't want you building it, for goodness sakes, don't just give them your amazing idea, build it so you can profit when it turns out to be a golden nugget.
I have seen lab grown diamond being quite a bit cheaper than mined ones for a while now. As in ×2 to ×3 times cheaper even.
And yes, funnily it seems that the purer a diamond is (clear, few impurities etc) the higher its price/carat, until it is so pure that it means it is a lab grown diamond and not a natural one and the price drops
I started looking into diamonds two years before I proposed to my now wife and went really down the rabbit hole of the chemistry, history, and marketing behind diamonds.
Lab-made was a no brainer, I got a flawless and huge stone for the price I would have paid for a crappy 1ct from DeBeers. My only regret is that whatever I paid for the diamond will still be way over-market in a few years but well, had to get married at some point. I guess I'll get her a golf-ball-sized diamond for our 10th anniversary.
When my fiancee and I got engaged last year, we bought our rings from a place that (in addition to having a robust process that allowed us to avoid having to go anywhere in person) uses lab-grown gemstones. Not only is the quality quite high and the color impressive (she picked a pink sapphire), the prices were much lower than we expected. I'm not really sure why anyone would want a "real" diamond at this point; you can get a better one for cheaper without any ethical qualms, and in my opinion the fact that we can basically assemble the gemstones we want at the molecular level is incredibly cool from an science nerd perspective.
There has been a massive (but slow) sell off of natural diamonds. People in the industry have known this time was coming for a while.
It is very much a bag holder problem.
In some countries, people (often families) have saved for a long time to accumulate some inventory of something that is now worth a lot less. The diamond industry varies a bit by country, but in places where individual dealers hold a lot of inventory, there is a lot of incentive to be against synthetics.
I saw this firsthand in Turkey. I gave my a fiancée a ring with a very nice moissanite stone about a year and a half ago. She showed it to some jewelers and most had to really make a show of things like, "Congratulations on your upcoming wedding, but I can only work with real stones. We are not supposed to even look at these."
And I don't blame them for at least having to act this way. A lot of these family stores have hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars worth of natural diamond inventory that they took years to accumulate, and along comes something that is superior in every way for a fraction of the price.
Yes. In some other places around the world, the resistance to lab grown stuff has been violent. But the industry of natural diamonds is much more violent, and it is great to see that the way we mine diamonds will soon be a thing of the past.
One thing to consider is sell back value of diamonds. Which is horrible. For something that really should not wear too much, it seems the price someone is willing to pay for them after some use should be the real price.
This is true with some qualifications. If you're interested in the kind of investment grade diamonds that a major auction house would deal with, then you're looking at heavy weights and/or fancy colors that synthetics can't reach yet. In the diamond trade the word "paragon" is sometimes reserved for flawless or near-flawless stones above 100 carats, of which there is a long list of famous examples, but the largest gem grade synthetic is still around 30 carats I believe. Vivid colors top out at much lighter than that. I guess we'll be able to outdo nature within a few decades though (as far as terrestrial diamonds go, anyway -- I seem to recall reading somewhere about the discovery of moon-sized space diamonds).
> A perfectly cut, flawless lab diamond costs a fraction of the price of a mined diamond of lesser quality.
When I shopped for an engagement ring in 2012, there was a clear cohort of women who significantly valued a diamond from the ground. Fortunately, my (now) wife and I saw through the marketing gimmick, and laughed all the way to the bank.
I'm genuinely curious why you bought a diamond at all then? Isn't the diamond itself a marketing gimmick, or do you and your wife honestly find them more beautiful than other stones?
On FM radio, Mervis Diamond Importers talks about how they offer both natural and lab-grown, but they make sure to mention that natural will "increase in value over time" (I assume because limited quantity + as lab becomes more common, natural becomes rarer). As cynical as I am, I'm sure they'd justify a high price for a natural diamond on those grounds, but also justify a similar high price for lab-growns because they're so environmentally conscious or something.
I'm planning on buying an engagement ring very soon and my own plan (as someone who has never done this before!) is to get a good lab grown diamond but spend more money on the metal in the ring. You can make a gem stone in a lab but until we become a Kardashev II civilization we won't be making any sufficient quantity of gold in a lab. If I buy a good loose lab grown diamond will I be able to find someone who will fit it into a high quality gold ring?
Natural diamonds have value in terms of luxury. Synthetics do not, hence why they are cheap. If you want to buy a diamond because you think they're pretty, buy a synthetic one. If you want to buy a diamond as a luxury gift, buy a natural one.
Rolex doesn't put synthetic diamonds on watches. Cartier doesn't put synthetic diamonds on bracelets. Tiffany's won't put synthetic diamonds on rings.
If you think that natural diamonds are trending towards no longer being a luxury item, then don't buy them at all (why purchase a synthetic one if you think the diamond market is just a marketing ruse anyways?)
I've never met someone that bought a synthetic diamond that didn't immediately try to justify it. I think that says a lot.
The subtle pink background, the choice of font, the minimal appearance (true to the spirit of being minimal, not just dead-ass simple), the way images are woven through, the footnotes, ...
I don't see demand for natural diamonds going anywhere. There's a reason that Rolex, Cartier, and other luxury brands don't use cheap, synthetic diamonds in their products.
I know a jeweler personally that sells synthetic and natural diamonds. He can spot the difference from a mile away between a synthetic and a natural diamond (synthetics look extremely pure and have no flaws). His wealthy clients buy natural diamonds. Not because it's a "better investment" but because they can.
If you can buy a knockoff Louis Vuitton for 5% of the cost of the real one, great, go for it! Most people won't be able to tell the difference (I certainly can't). But the market for authentic Louis Vuitton isn't going anywhere, and the people that can afford it will buy the real ones, and the people that can't will buy the fake ones.
As long as there's a distinction between natural and synthetic, synthetic diamonds will drop to a dollar a carat while naturals only become more of a status symbol.
EDIT: changed real to natural when referring to diamonds
Synthetic diamonds from "cremains" (ash from cremation) have been a thing for a while. That ash is mostly carbon with other elements. "Wear your grandma" is thankfully not a slogan. My teenager children's recent answers to "would you want this" were "ewww gross absolutely not".
They're cheaper but they're not cheap and that's part of the issue...
I remember looking at engagement rings about 5 years ago, my now wife is quite environmentally conscious. At the time it was like ~£1200 for a diamond one and £800 for a synthetic one.
[+] [-] Animats|1 year ago|reply
The commercial side has made huge progress, too. Look up "diamond making machine" on Alibaba. You can buy a high-pressure, high temperature six sided press for about US$200,000. A chemical vapor deposition machine is about the same price.
De Beers, the diamond cartel, has an R&D operation, Element Six. They sell synthetic diamonds for lasers and other exotic applications. The technology is good enough to achieve flaw levels in the parts per billion range, and to make diamond windows for lasers 10cm across.[1] This is way above jewelry grade.
Over on the natural diamond side, there's been a breakthrough. The industry used to break up some large diamonds during rock crushing. Now there's a industrial X-ray system which is used to examine rocks before crushing to find diamonds. It's working quite well. A 2500 carat diamond was found recently.[1][2] TOMRA, which makes high-volume sorters for everything from recyclables to rice, has a sorter for this job. This is working so well that there's now something of a glut of giant diamonds too big for jewelry.
The finishing processes of cutting and polishing have been automated. The machinery for that comes mostly from China and India.
Diamonds are now something you can buy by the kilo, in plastic bags.
[1] https://e6-prd-cdn-01.azureedge.net/mediacontainer/medialibr...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/amandakooser/2024/08/23/monster...
[3] https://ikcabstracts.com/index.php/ikc/article/download/4101...
[+] [-] mitthrowaway2|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] userbinator|1 year ago|reply
It's worth noting that the Chinese word for diamond is literally "drill stone", which highlights its application as an abrasive more than jewelry.
[+] [-] Xcelerate|1 year ago|reply
> Diamonds are now something you can buy by the kilo, in plastic bags.
I can’t wait to use diamond cookware. A pan with a thin layer of 430 stainless steel for induction, a wafer of diamond, and then another thin layer of stainless on top will be amazing. Almost perfect evenness over any cooktop.
[+] [-] agumonkey|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] trhway|1 year ago|reply
sounds like may be soon we'll see diamond wafers for the chips (especially as the price of processed wafer from a fab increases, the cost of the source wafer itself is becoming less important) Add to that X-ray lithography, and the Moore's Law will continue for quite a while.
[+] [-] hammock|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] newZWhoDis|1 year ago|reply
Wouldn’t a diamond skillet be incredibly non-stick, easy to clean, and totally non toxic?
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] the8472|1 year ago|reply
Time to commoditize crowns.
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] xeonmc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] A_D_E_P_T|1 year ago|reply
Today, given cutthroat competition and "race to the bottom" pricing strategies, lab diamonds are ubiquitous, extremely high quality, and cheap. Less than $200/ct and sometimes much less: https://detail.1688.com/offer/751071300271.html
Moissanites are now less than $5/carat at retail: https://detail.1688.com/offer/586468555080.html
These are legit. I've bought some.
Within 10 years of today, I expect diamonds to lose almost all of their value. Moissanites have already become as near-worthless as synthetic rubies. This is going to open up new industrial uses for those gemstones.
[+] [-] godelski|1 year ago|reply
I have to bring this up because a lot of people are talking as if this is the entirety of the reason for their decrease. But there's diamond files, diamond cutting blades/wheels/drills, you can make glass from it (really only used in labs that absolutely need them because the price), and many more uses. Many of these don't care about size, quality, or clarity. So instead of pulling from scrap material from jewelry making or rejected diamonds you could just make your own and ensure your own supply.
One of the things I've loved about synthetic diamond prices coming down is just how cheap and available diamond cutting wheels and filing tools have become. You can now get a set of diamond files on Amazon for under $10. That's crazy
[+] [-] hintymad|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jajko|1 year ago|reply
Correction is healthy and benefits mankind long term, there was nothing good coming from ie impact on Africa. Nobody cared about that, so things are fixed from another direction.
[+] [-] wonderwonder|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Joker_vD|1 year ago|reply
Artificial diamonds, you mean. The natural ones will keep their price, just as "hand-crafted" goods did (and, I suspect, as "human-produced" content in the future will); it's a matter of status and signalling that you can afford to buy an inferior, more expensive product.
[+] [-] Glyptodon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gwbas1c|1 year ago|reply
And for jewelry too. I bought my wife a 2ct moissanite in 2012. There was no way we could have done that ring with a real diamond back then.
When I was shopping, I happened to see a girl at a conference who had many large moissanites on her ring. It was gorgeous, and well within the price range of upper-middle-class.
[+] [-] sinuhe69|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] fortran77|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|1 year ago|reply
I've noticed that synthetic sapphires are (or were?) much more expensive than synthetic rubies. Do you know why?
[+] [-] IG_Semmelweiss|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dist-epoch|1 year ago|reply
Do they make olive sized ones (1-2 cm diameter)? How much would such one cost?
[+] [-] silexia|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] iamgopal|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Modified3019|1 year ago|reply
Mind you most people won’t be able to tell a difference unless you put the $5 cut next to a $500 cut.
[+] [-] program_whiz|1 year ago|reply
Had he done it on his own, he would have been extremely wealthy, being the supplier of synthetic diamonds to the world (assuming he wouldn't have faced legal challenges by former employer). He would have also been able to pursue this full time, who knows how much he could have improved the tech.
Just because the powers that be don't think its a good idea, doesn't mean it isn't (it also doesn't mean it is). And if they don't want you building it, for goodness sakes, don't just give them your amazing idea, build it so you can profit when it turns out to be a golden nugget.
[+] [-] shepherdjerred|1 year ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuji_Nakamura#Careers
[+] [-] AStrangeMorrow|1 year ago|reply
And yes, funnily it seems that the purer a diamond is (clear, few impurities etc) the higher its price/carat, until it is so pure that it means it is a lab grown diamond and not a natural one and the price drops
[+] [-] istrice|1 year ago|reply
Lab-made was a no brainer, I got a flawless and huge stone for the price I would have paid for a crappy 1ct from DeBeers. My only regret is that whatever I paid for the diamond will still be way over-market in a few years but well, had to get married at some point. I guess I'll get her a golf-ball-sized diamond for our 10th anniversary.
[+] [-] saghm|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gruntledfangler|1 year ago|reply
Profound hubris in an otherwise interesting article.
[+] [-] agtech_andy|1 year ago|reply
It is very much a bag holder problem.
In some countries, people (often families) have saved for a long time to accumulate some inventory of something that is now worth a lot less. The diamond industry varies a bit by country, but in places where individual dealers hold a lot of inventory, there is a lot of incentive to be against synthetics.
I saw this firsthand in Turkey. I gave my a fiancée a ring with a very nice moissanite stone about a year and a half ago. She showed it to some jewelers and most had to really make a show of things like, "Congratulations on your upcoming wedding, but I can only work with real stones. We are not supposed to even look at these."
And I don't blame them for at least having to act this way. A lot of these family stores have hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars worth of natural diamond inventory that they took years to accumulate, and along comes something that is superior in every way for a fraction of the price.
Yes. In some other places around the world, the resistance to lab grown stuff has been violent. But the industry of natural diamonds is much more violent, and it is great to see that the way we mine diamonds will soon be a thing of the past.
[+] [-] Ekaros|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Kaijo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] failuser|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|1 year ago|reply
[0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo...
[+] [-] gwbas1c|1 year ago|reply
When I shopped for an engagement ring in 2012, there was a clear cohort of women who significantly valued a diamond from the ground. Fortunately, my (now) wife and I saw through the marketing gimmick, and laughed all the way to the bank.
[+] [-] dirtdobber|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] CatWChainsaw|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] indoordin0saur|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dirtdobber|1 year ago|reply
Rolex doesn't put synthetic diamonds on watches. Cartier doesn't put synthetic diamonds on bracelets. Tiffany's won't put synthetic diamonds on rings.
If you think that natural diamonds are trending towards no longer being a luxury item, then don't buy them at all (why purchase a synthetic one if you think the diamond market is just a marketing ruse anyways?)
I've never met someone that bought a synthetic diamond that didn't immediately try to justify it. I think that says a lot.
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|1 year ago|reply
https://www.wired.com/2003/09/diamond/
https://web.archive.org/web/20151031203903/https://www.wired...
https://archive.today/Dwa8o
[+] [-] moralestapia|1 year ago|reply
What a beautiful site.
The subtle pink background, the choice of font, the minimal appearance (true to the spirit of being minimal, not just dead-ass simple), the way images are woven through, the footnotes, ...
Excellent execution!
[+] [-] dirtdobber|1 year ago|reply
I know a jeweler personally that sells synthetic and natural diamonds. He can spot the difference from a mile away between a synthetic and a natural diamond (synthetics look extremely pure and have no flaws). His wealthy clients buy natural diamonds. Not because it's a "better investment" but because they can.
If you can buy a knockoff Louis Vuitton for 5% of the cost of the real one, great, go for it! Most people won't be able to tell the difference (I certainly can't). But the market for authentic Louis Vuitton isn't going anywhere, and the people that can afford it will buy the real ones, and the people that can't will buy the fake ones.
As long as there's a distinction between natural and synthetic, synthetic diamonds will drop to a dollar a carat while naturals only become more of a status symbol.
EDIT: changed real to natural when referring to diamonds
[+] [-] danielodievich|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] physicsguy|1 year ago|reply
I remember looking at engagement rings about 5 years ago, my now wife is quite environmentally conscious. At the time it was like ~£1200 for a diamond one and £800 for a synthetic one.