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• Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? - the classic Atlantic article about the De Beers Diamond cartel.
• Ten reasons why you should never accept a diamond ring

This may be a stupid question but did you ever think about buying another one, getting it set into a ring and then see what it would get make ebay?

Moderators are on crack, this is not a troll.

I think people need to look at how to market these things. Stop buying into DeBeers' marketing spin - stop thinking of artificially-created diamonds as cheap knock-offs of the real thing. Artificially-created diamonds are better than the real thing, not because they're technically flawless, but because they don't support human-rights abuses in Africa. Anyone who's socially conscious ought to be able to see this as a positive thing. A quick Google search turned up this list; for this purpose ignore the first three items.

Somebody needs to start marketing artificially-created diamonds as being the socially-conscious alternative to the existing cartels. Anyone who already supports fighting HIV in Africa (for example), or opposes funding child/slave labor, should prefer them.

So, when you advertise it on eBay in that way, no, you're not being fraudulent at all.

10 Reasons never to accept a diamond, published in The Economist.

And then of course, the classic Atlantic article about the DeBeers Diamond cartel, and how the manufacture need.

If diamonds are so special, how come they're 20x more common than sapphires but come at such a high premium?

It seems that De Beers is the most evil bunch on the planet. Thank you for linking to that information. I plan to take every opportunity to fuck with De Beers from this day forward.

No, it's true that their is a great monetary cost of for having someone executed as well. The reason is because of the huge legal costs of all the appeals prior to the execution.

http://www.fguide.org/Bulletin/cappun.htm

They claim that, but those imperfections can be added. Diamonds have been made that are indistinguishable from mined diamonds, even microscopically. The whole thing is hype designed to push a WWWAAAAAAYYYYYY overinflated industry. And there's a whole slew of other things going on behind the scenes to keep a small group of people rolling in the money.

We have more leisure time than ever before in history.

Not true.

But the price has been set in part because of the wars over diamonds... and the diamond cartels death grip on the diamond markets.

Diamonds were considered too worthless to give as an engagement ring until sometime in the early 1900s.

Great link with plenty of references:
http://www.fguide.org/Bulletin/conflictdiamonds.ht m

The concept that everything must have a function is indicative that you live in a capitalist society, which assigns value to objects which provide utility. That, which does not provide a function, is valued less than that, which does. I proffer, that a ring can be art for the sake of art without function and still have worth.

I assume you gravitate towards a utilitarian theme, as you are trying to avoid another vice of the capitalist middle class -- a flagrant display of wealth through the donning of ever-growing mass-produced gold rings with diamonds.

In an attempt to avoid both, my wife and I purchased our nontraditional rings at a modern-art museum. Thus finding something that didn't require the context of society to be of worth for its utilitarian appeal or it's perceived monetary value.

Good luck.