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Scientists at De Beers Fight the Growing Threat of Man-Made Diamonds (wsj.com)
"In the past few years, lab-grown diamonds have become indistinguishable from natural diamonds to the naked eye..." reports the Wall Street Journal. This creates a problem for diamond-mining company De Beers. HughPickens.com writes:
While synthetics make up just a fraction of the market, they have growing appeal to younger buyers -- a headache for mine owners, who are under pressure to cut supply and lower prices, because traders, cutters and polishers are struggling to profit amid a credit squeeze and languishing jewelry sales... "Martin Roscheisen, chief executive of Diamond Foundry Inc., a San Francisco synthetic-diamond producer with a capacity of 24,000 carats, says he believes nearly all diamonds consumers purchase will be man-made in a few decades," reports the Journal. "To counter the threat, last year De Beers helped launch a trade association with other producers to market the attraction of natural diamonds. It also started marketing a new, cheap detector called PhosView, that uses ultraviolet light to detect lab-grown stones that quickly screens tiny synthetic diamonds.
It always seemed like a waste of money to me. After all, it's literally raining diamonds on Saturn.
It always seemed like a waste of money to me. After all, it's literally raining diamonds on Saturn.
De Beers have monopoly on diamonds and have warehouses filled with mountains of diamonds !!!
Hopefully before then, the main threat will become the consumer realizing they're a massive waste of money.
That is all I have to say about this.
selling dongles for apple products might as well be
It's so much more romantic to give diamonds that were mined by people on subsistence level wages in terrible conditions and then used to make massive profits by a parasitic organization that is dedicated to preserving a monopoly through artificial scarcity. What's "real" when the end result is the same, or perhaps even purer when man-made?
Diamonds are not as rare as some other gemstones. It's only the massive market manipulation that gives them their value.
The end of DeBeers cannot come soon enough.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
....yeah, fuck DeBeers in their cartel ass
-SaNo
Synthetic diamonds could be an important semiconductor. I wish the DeBeers monopoly would end already via cheap synthetic diamonds instead of remaining and blocking important research. Nobody is going to carry around a detector. Man made diamonds are better: at least you know they're not used to fun wars in Africa or dug up by what are essentially slaves.
Diamonds aren't particularly rare, the only thing that makes them valuable is that DeBeers has been holding a very tight near-monopoly, so there's no free market.
Their operation is a reality version of the cartoon view of capitalism promoted by leftists for years. Every bad thing you can think of, they do, from the monopoly, exploitation of workers, callous disregard for humanity, and on and on. Capitalism and western society left this sort of bullcrap behind 100 years ago, but not these bastards. Anything that breaks their hold will be welcome from all sides of the spectrum,
They just need to market them as all natural organic diamonds. And for once the organic label won't be complete bullshit.
Diamond Foundry Inc., a San Francisco synthetic-diamond producer with a capacity of 24,000 carats
A day? An hour? Per year? Their office safe can't hold more than that? How does this provide any sort of perspective?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Diamonds are stupid anyway
"...a headache for mine owners, who are under pressure to cut supply and lower prices, because traders, cutters and polishers are struggling to profit...
When the retail end of this entire market reflects rather obscene profit margins, the real problem is rather glaring.
Sorry, but with the collusive pricing actions of the entire industry on the retail end of things, they are likely getting what they deserve. Pure unadulterated greed created these alternate products, and for valid reasons.
And "the attraction" would be the blood of Africans that is spilled in obtaining them? The horrible working conditions that they are mined under? The environmental destruction that is wreaked by digging them up? Please help me out here, there are so many "attractions" to choose from.
No surprises here, given that debeers et al's business model is based on one of the silliest examples of artificial scarcity. Of course they feel threatened.
But of course your access is limited by a monopolist that controls the world's supply. It's rare because DeBeers wants it that way. You pay the price just to bang a new wife? She won't stay new. Believe me.
As long as people will pay higher prices for certain versions of a gemstone it is important to be able to reliably detect whether they received what they paid for. It really doesn't matter whether the question is synthetic vs non-synthetic, carats, clarity, or irradiated vs non-irradiated (for rubies/sapphires).
Maybe you would be more understanding if this was rephrased in a computer analogy: "A concern is the risk that you buy the iPhone charger and discover its not a genuine Apple charger." Sure seemed like this place was on the side of preventing fraudulent representation a short while ago when the context was Amazon letting cheap Chinese knockoffs be sold as genuine Apple shit...
I mean, the more childrens' hands have been cut off from warlords mining these things means the love is greater.
Re: "It always seemed like a waste of money to me..."
Yeah, you tell that to your girl, who has her heart set on a diamond for romantic reasons. See how far your practical "but it's wasteful!" point of view gets you.
Now, to the substance. We've got quite a bit of experience with synthetic gemstones now. There are synthetic diamonds, rubies, beryl, I can't remember them all. And we've got cultured pearls which, while clearly not exactly the same thing, has also introduced the public to the idea of a manufactured (or encouraged) gem.
AFAIK synthetic gem technology nearly always brings down the prices of those gems. And eventually, the public accepts them (so long as the quality is good enough of course). You still see oohs and aahs at "old mine-cut diamonds" on the Antiques Roadshow, but seriously, how much of a price premium do those command? The real value is in the age, the craftsmanship, the artistry, and the memories (if they have stayed in the family).
Why would you want a dirty diamond from the ground when you could get a pure perfect synthetic diamond?
So synthetic diamonds are no good because flaws, colorings, and imperfections are what gives natural diamonds their "personality" and "value". And yet natural diamonds with the least color and fewest flaws and imperfections are the "highest quality". Fascinating. It's almost as if the entire industry is a scam a few guys just made up a century ago.
Yeah? Let's see one survive a house fire.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
believes nearly all diamonds consumers purchase will be man-made in a few decades
What, just because they're cheaper and of higher quality, and don't involve unethical and environmentally unfriendly mining operations, and as a bonus reduce the money earned by a nasty cartel?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
So a cartoon version actually describes reality?
No, the real cartoon version of capitalism and so-called free-markets is the simplistic nonsense promoted by conservatives and libertarians. One word: externalities.
Look, people suck. When they can, they corrupt the system and twist it to their advantage.
It takes powerful, collective action, money and force to counteract the power, money, and force that a-national, a-moral, and anti-human corporations wield in the service of a wealthy few. Thus - the need for large, powerful governments, unions, and the like.
To fight the reality behind your cartoon version of capitalism.
and Trump has better odds being our next 3 presidents than I do getting married but I'll say this: No way in hell would I buy a woman a diamond engagement ring. Even without the ethical quandaries (blood diamonds anyone?) I'd still feel like a chump. I remember growing up thinking a diamond engagement ring was a 1000 year old tradition and finding out it was all made up in the 20s by marketing execs to sell diamonds.
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DeBeer's behavior parallels other established interests we have read about recently such as taxi "cartels" trying to suppress upstarts Uber & Lyft, or hotel "cartels" trying to suppress VRBO & Airbnb. Jump ahead 50 years. I would wager that taxis, hotels, and natural diamonds will have lost their stranglehold to the likes of Uber, Airbnb, and synthetic diamonds. Adapt or die.
Yeah, we should be really concerned for the interests of diamond companies.
A house fire produces temperatures up to about 550C. The surface of a diamond will oxidize, necesitating polishing, between 700C and 1700C. With normal oxygen levels it's about 700C, in an oxygen-depleted environment such as a fire diamonds can be unharmed up to 1700C.
Diamonds should be next to worthless. Soon they will be. Good riddance I say.
This makes me happy. One of the dumbest things about the human race, our desire for sparkly rocks. Doubly so when it becomes ingrained societal peer pressure.
Synthetic diamonds are superior. They flawless, and eventually they'll be made much larger than any natural diamond ever found. DeBeers needs to come to grips with this fact, and either come up with a new business model or liquidate their operations.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Worked for me...of course, I made it clear from when we started dating that I was not going to be buying her a ring. I, also, explained why. Then when we did get engaged I actually went out and bought her something that DID have lasting value (and was useful in the meantime).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I love that a good synthetic diamond simply can't be distinguished from the real thing without the aid of very advanced technology. Specifically, that even a trained diamond cutter with decades of experience working with diamonds can't tell without the assistance of advanced technology.
Then they try to tell the public that synthetic is somehow bad.
I am not a fan of margarine but this sounds like when the butter lobby managed to do things like prevent margarine from being coloured yellow after an unsuccessful attempt to get it banned.
I am willing to bet that what is coming is one of two things, or both. First is that you must label a synthetic diamond as synthetic. Or they will try to force people to label synthetic diamonds as something else entirely(as if they weren't chemically a diamond).
The next is a campaign of "fake means he doesn't love you"
Then it will turn out that they will go after any jewelers who cut, sell, design, or anything that anything to do with synthetics. Basically the rule will be, if you sale synthetics then you don't get to sell the real thing.
But when all this is over just look at what happened to the natural pearl industry after cultured pearls took over. There was a brief orgy of resistance, and then it all fell apart.
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and everything to do with being manipulated. I'd like to think any woman I marry would be smart/cynical enough to recognize that insanity that is a 'natural' diamond. Also I'd like her to consider the conditions it was mined in (slave labor, wars, torture, etc).
Why not put the money into a nicer house if it's just a statement of how much I'm willing to spend. Something that you live with daily.
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Aluminum used to be expensive, too, up till the late 1800s, now it's cheap and we use it in pop cans and fast food wrappers. Someday, with improved technology, we might take diamond for granted too...
...This is what you'll get This is what you'll get This is what you'll get When you mess with us Karma Police! You can't create a monopoly on something, pretend it's rare by creating scarcity due to owning 80% of the world's whatever it is, and expect no one to ever find a way around your bullshit. The fact is that Diamonds are not that rare; in fact Sapphires and Rubies are much rarer than Diamonds. The De beers duped everyone into thinking that diamonds are rare, and then fed the diamond fever with advertising and Hollywood fanned the fire with movies like "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" So, Fuck the De Beers and Hollywood! If you want to get someone a nice really rare gemstone get them a sapphire or ruby, and don't believe the diamond hype!
De Beers and jewelers try to convince us that diamonds are an investment and that they hold their value. Completely and utterly false. I remember this great article from years ago:
http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...
(turn off javascript to view the article so the anti-ad blocker won't pop up... it's just not safe to disable ad blocking).
The entire demand for diamonds was created by De Beers. It's a marketing scam.
I've been saying for years (probably could find my posts saying as much on Slashdot, were I less lard-assed) that there are two things that are going to screw DeBeers utterly and completely.
1. Diamond is a really quite nice semiconductor. Lots of good things about it.
2. The semiconductor industry produces single crystal ingots that dwarf a typical natural stone by, what, three orders of magnitude, at five to seven nines of purity. They know how to make big, ultra-pure crystals in vast quantities much, much better than Mother Nature. And they do it at low prices, too.
Once the semiconductor industry kens on to the idea of using diamond rather than silicon, it is game over for DeBeers.
Heck, there's already a huge market in industrial diamonds. I've noticed some jewellery designers starting to use them, too. Just a question of time until the death knell for DeBeers, and they know it.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
I know it sounds weird, but there is a lot of marketing that can be done to people concerned about greenhouse gases.
There is also a prior interest, as we can already turn a departed loved one's remains into a diamond. http://lifegem.com/
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
As well, the artificial limitingg will also become a problem, since many of the largest diamonds don't exist in large neough numbers, but imagine now a person can have a Cullinan class, Hope or Millenium Star made up for them. Still expensive, and no doubt, but most of the most famous large diamonds are simply not available at all.
But one of the issues I have is that "natural" diamonds have a price based on artificial rarity. An example of that is that many of the positive attributes of diamond are well satisfied by the much less expensive Cubic Zirconia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... Beautiful - to my eyes, the higher index of refraction is an improvement. But of course, it doesn't have that artificial rarity thing going for it, so it is presumably inferior.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"Have you ever thought of it from her point of view?"
That's what men are always told to do. Think about everything to woo and romance her. Women are pigs with perfume - let them grow out their leg and arm hair (and more areas, with some of them) like they are naturally and see if you want to put $1,000 or more on one of their fingers. Probably just for the convenience of owning a wet flap of warm skin to poke every so often.
Shove the flowers and buy her perfume instead, that way at least part of the illusion remains in place.
If everyone sold the diamonds that grandma gave them, the price of diamonds would be about the same as cubic zirconia. De Beers uses their monopoly and a massive global marketing campaign to prop up diamond prices.
I'd like to see natural diamonds outlawed. No, I take that back. That'd just create another black market. They should just be labelled with a warning like cigarettes. If most people knew the history of the DeBeers cartel they'd never buy anything but synthetic.
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yippee
I hope natural diamonds are abandoned by most consumers and the only people who buy them are people who believe in crystal magic.
Diamond cutting has existed for (at least) hundreds of years. Diamonds have always been plentiful but the skill to cut them was not. It was one of the trades that allowed the Jewish people to survive through centuries of persecution. It was really DeBeers that took an ancient craft and turned it into something horrible.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
I expected the Russians to have man-made diamonds out that were indistinguishable from naturally formed ones by, well... now. At about 25% of the current cost of diamonds. One thing is for certain: diamonds are a sucker's bet for investors!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Not only is De Beers continuing to rip off consumers, now they are selling a $4500 box that does essentially the same thing that my UV flashlight can do. Even a high end short wave UV mineral light goes for a couple of hundred dollars.
Have gnu, will travel.
Lobby for a law that force fake diamond makers to register each diamond made so that the blood diamonds will always be more expensive. The US government will pass anything with enough money.
De Boers is missing the point. Of course De Boers wants to defend the cost of their diamonds, but they are wrong to equate cost with worth. Something is worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
If the average person cannot tell at glance whether a diamond is manufactured or mined, then the difference doesn't matter. Well it matters only to the mining companies and jewelers. The typical diamond-wearer is not going to carry around a detector machine so they can validate their diamond to anyone.
Or is De Boers implying you won't be able to have a social party or workplace or any place where people with wedding rings show up and NOT have one of these scanners present, you know, just to make sure only people with real diamonds are allowed in? Fuck you De Boers. Your own stupidity is your certain doom.
Maybe what needs to happen is that people stop regarding diamonds as important and desired. After all, diamonds have only been a "thing" for about a hundred years mainly thanks to marketing. Nobody really cared about diamonds at all until marketing turned them into a big deal. But like all things created by marketing, they can also be UNcreated as tastes change and people want other things.
If people still desire to judge their own place against others, and diamonds are no longer a simple and easy way to measure that (i.e. who has the bigger diamond ring means they spent a lot), then people will find other ways to compare themselves. They already do this with who has the bigger/more expensive house or car, or at the other end, who has the best electric car and tiny house. Or they compare kids or pets or gadgets or macaroni salad.
Sig for hire.
In the past few years, lab-grown diamonds have become indistinguishable from natural diamonds to the naked eye...
This looks suspiciously like a story I read in Wired magazine 13 years ago. Lab grown diamonds have been indistinguishable from natural diamonds for a long time now. The price of diamond should be a lot lower than it is, even without the competition from artificial diamonds, but De Beers has been allowed to abuse their monopoly position to stockpile the output of their mines and control the flow into the market to maintain artificial scarcity, and threaten not to supply jewellers who work with artificial diamonds.
The diamond age will be here soon, and mined diamonds will be worthless. And that's great.
The amount of misery that has been caused by our want of shiny rocks is deplorable.
I want to see those that have profited on this misery to languish.
I've sullied diamonds to a dozen women, who decided to go a different way. This makes me happy.
I know a bit about artificial diamonds with the CVD process. De Beers has been fighting this hard for a while, even buying out CVD companies to help regulate (look up synthetic diamond companies and see who owns them). I'm hopeful De Beers loses not because I care about jewelry, but due to how useful cheap diamond would be. Diamond really is the superlative substance - highest hardness (save for a few theoreticals and nano-sized stuff) and highest thermal conductivity at room temperature. Resistant to chemical attack, and can be doped to form semiconductors, superconductors, electron emitting materials, etc. If we could buy 10 cm^3 cubes of the stuff for $150 the number of engineering applications would be limitless. Looks like things could go this way eventually. It wouldn't be without historical precedent; aluminum and sapphire used to be exorbitantly expensive. The latter is now used occasionally as a window for barcode swipers at grocery stores.
Also a fantastic and underrated book about the history of diamond and the artificial high pressure synthesis of it is "the diamond makers" by Robert Hazen. All his books are pretty good (no affiliation).
It is a great article. You will surely like this also because it is a great stuff, yeah it’s give us lots of interest and pleasure. fotorus Their opportunities are so fantastic and working style so speedy.
A bong?
"You will eventually get old and be unable to obtain dates if you do not take the plunge."
Fuck it - life is quick - better to keep my money and wack my own stick!
Company that breaks the law a lot and whose prime product is a not-very-rare substance made rare purely by their own greediness tries to cope with people making identical, but not at all rare, products that are functionally identical.
Why they haven't been sued into oblivion for monopolistic practices, I can't fathom. Why I should ever buy a "real" diamond over one made - in this day and age - when both are heavily crafted to become a tiny, tiny, expensive final product, I can't fathom. Literally, no-one would *wear* a rough diamond. So they have to be cut anyway. At that point, you're really then arguing about the difference between two products - both made in the same way from a bunch of ore that comes from difference techniques (I'm sure we really care whether the gold in a gold ring was dug up in some mine, or melted down from someone else's misfortune, don't we?).
Never understood it. Never get why they aren't up before a court. And don't buy that shit on moral, and financial, grounds.
What would enlighten the human race to shit like this? If we had armageddon, would we REALLY trade in gold watches and diamonds, or - as I think - would we be much more likely to fight over oil and practical products (maybe even working computers)?
Lets hope that soon 'real' diamonds are considered the same way as real fur.
Let industry use the real diamonds, because they need the properties.
People who want to look good can use the fakes, don't see a problem.
If they change their name to Free Beers, then everyone will support them! Anyhoo, the issue is that crystal growing processes for diamond, sapphire and zircon are all industrialized now, and can create enormous crystals, so the high clarity jewellery market will be taken by synthetics and mined diamonds will be for industrial use.
I think diamonds for decoration are a waste of time anyway, but if I had to buy one, I'd actually be willing to pay more for a diamond that has no blood on it.
Rectum that is.
When i left a research lab making diamond 20 years ago, man men diamond were *better* than the natural one : they were perfect and more or less in which ever shape you wanted (want a Donald duck shaped diamond?). In fact the advance of the industry was to add imperfection to make them look more like natural one, so that they have them same light play as natural one. De Beer can't die soon enough for me.
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visit randi.org
More or less the same "de Beers worried about synthetics" has been popping up in the media every few years since maybe the early 1980s. Given the regularity with which it reappears, I've always assumed it was planted by de Beers' marketing department, as are about 95% of the rest of the diamond "facts" we hear about. However with this one I've never been able to figure out what they gain from it. Anyone have any ideas?
Diamonds should already be worthless.
Their market price comes from enforced scarcity and price fixing.
...how well does that escalate? Can you create a big (big like in fingernail-sized) artificial diamond? Would the 25% cheaper rule hold?
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Isn't De Beers like the oldest scam?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I love Adam Ruins Everything and I'm happy to see somebody linked this episode!
Definitely one of the top "industries" that deserves to be relegated to the annals of history. They've never provided a worthwhile product, only conned the populace into believing that their tiny pieces of compressed carbon somehow symbolized love.
I've only been waiting thirteen years for this to happen.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The way man made diamonds are differentiated from mined diamonds is through the structure. Man made diamonds atomic structure has significantly less irregularities in it then mined diamonds.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
If you're a ball-less, dickless beta chump who follows every order a women gives you, said woman secretly loathes you, without exception. Doubly so if she knows that by following orders, you're betraying your own principles.
The French are more similar to the English in this respect. There was little mixing in Haiti or French Africa.
The Spanish were more into mixing, while keeping "castas", except in the 19th/20th-centuries colonization of Spanish Africa..
The Portuguese had this thing for little outposts everywhere except for Brazil. I don't know about Portuguese Africa.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Total hit-piece. De Beers bought this article.
There is no such thing as a "synthetic diamond". Period. A diamond is a crystal of carbon atoms organized in a particular way – Fd3–m, to be precise. Your car doesn't put out "synthetic water" and "synthetic CO2", does it? Silicon wafers are cut from a big boule of single-crystal silicon, which was 'pulled' from a melt. No one says their computer chips are built on "synthetic silicon"
There is no way that selling a factory-grown diamond is illegal. Re-read the paragraph, and you will see the sleight-of-hand.
Lab-grown diamonds used to have little globs of metal trapped inside them, and were easy to spot. The DeBeers line at that time was something like, "REAL natural diamonds have more sparkle and shine." Oh but, once a different process for making large diamond crystals was perfected, De Beers changed their tune to, "Synthetic diamonds have a harsh look. Only REAL diamonds have the color and clarity that you have come to expect from De Beers."
FTA: De Beers lackey says, "...the aim is to create new gems that can fool the detection machines..."
Bullshit. There is no technique that can distinguish the provenance of a diamond. The only quantitative method might be comparison of isotopic ratios, but carbon-dating is not useful at the millions-of-years scale, and any test would far exceed the value of an individual diamond crystal.
FTA: De Beers lackey says, “When you polish a gemstone, there is a memory of how it grew,” said Philip Martineau, head of physics at the De Beers Research Centre. “They’re not mimicking nature. It’s the differences that give us the clues.”
Utter horse-shit. Wishy-washy and meaningless language. I, myself, am expert at polishing single crystals. A diamond is a diamond is a diamond.
FTA: "The effort companies such as De Beers and the GIA are making..." said Daniel Rosen ... a jewelery seller... “It’s an industry that’s built on trust,” he said. “If you break that trust you are out. You only have to do it once.”
Trust eh? De Beers is a monopoly, and found by US Courts to be one, which is why they were forbidden from operating in the US until about 10 or so years ago. They have warehouses of diamonds because diamonds are actually not all that scarce in the Earth's crust. De Beers promotes an artificial, or "synthetic", sense of scarcity to keep the prices up.
FTA: "... De Beers has no intention of selling synthetics. “De Beers’ focus is on natural diamonds,” Lawson said. “We would not do anything that would cannibalize that industry.”
What he means is that they have huge warehouses of mined diamonds, and therefore will not stop bashing factory-grown diamond single crystals until their stocks start to run out. . . which will be never.
When the Iron Curtain fell, De Beers was in a panic because Russia was known to have a huge cache of diamonds, in a warehouse or similar. More diamonds than De Beers had. They feared a crash in the market for gem-quality diamonds. I don't recall how they worked that one out.
Diamonds are not forever – they burn just as well as coal.
And finally, if you aren't stuffed already, search for the article, "Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?" that was published in The Atlantic Monthly about 18 years ago. It is a long and fascinating read.
Oh, I can't resist. Look up "moissanite" on Wikipedia. It's cubic silicon carbide, and actually has optical properties that are superior to those of diamonds. Dispersion is one of them––that is what creates the rainbow-like 'brilliance' of a well-cut gemstone. So, if you are choosing
they'll get over it. Or they won't. But again, I'd like to think her parents would get mad as hell when they found out how they'd been had.
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