Hacker News Reader

Comment by galangalalgol | Hacker News Reader

Synthetic diamond will eventually become so easy the industry won't be able to supress it anymore. The collapse will be interesting, in the bloddy sense of the term I suspect.

View on HN

Synthetic rubies and sapphires have been around for over 100 years and are dirt cheap ($10 for a 15mm one on eBay). However, the market for natural rubies and sapphires is still going strong. A high quality natural Ruby costs about the same as a similar sized diamond. There's no reason to believe the diamond industry is going to crash any time soon.

> Synthetic rubies and sapphires have been around for over 100 years and are dirt cheap ($10 for a 15mm one on eBay).

Rubies are much cheaper than that.

At least, I used to order them from Pehnec Gems at prices more like $3 per (in lots of 10+). I haven't bought them in years and pehnec.com currently resolves to 10.0.0.1; not sure what's going on.

"Synthetic" diamonds are better in all objective criteria that "natural" diamonds. Before they were a thing they would even be considered top quality diamonds.

Once they were mass produced the criteria changed and now the "natural" with higher degree of impurities (a previously undesirable trait) are considered better.

It's not about the rock. The rock is a placeholder. It's about how much you spent on the rock (commitment) and the fact that it's not available to everyone (social proof).

Yeah, one of my physics teachers did a job for a diamond company where the goal was to ADD impurities to a diamond, because diamonds with (the right?) impurities are colored, more rare (?), and fetch a higher price.

It is extremely difficult to create large, colorless, flawless synthetic diamonds. Currently synthetics are primarily used for industrial applications like drill bits.

"synthetic" diamonds with far fewer impurities are far cheaper than "natural" diamonds of the same size.

The goalpost will always move because the things used to justify it are excuses and not real reasons.

Even De Beers announced they would start selling synthetics.

de beers is doing it as a pr move, selling them as 'budget' diamonds as an attempt to devalue them

Nice try. Manufacturing them also has non negligible costs. I'd only buy synthetics anyway. Not very keen on 18th century slavery, which is pretty close to what happens in diamond mines. In addition to that synthetics are more pure, so better quality if the cut and polishing is done right.

The above comment is correct. De Beers bought Lightbox to position synthetic diamonds as for “everyday jewelry” rather than special occasion jewelry such as engagement rings. So it essentially is to help protect diamond price levels and the allure or scarcity.

i think you misread my comment

Synthetic diamonds are not easy to produce and they take time and energy (literally). The only reason synthetics are made is because the price of real diamonds help prop up the price of artificial ones. If the market collapses, as you predict, than artificial diamonds don’t become economical to create any more. My prediction: new mines will continue to be found and real diamonds will have the same market hold they have now in 20 years.

That doesn't make much sense. The ratio of the mining cost manufacturing cost is the same regardless of the demand.

Research on bulk synthesis of diamond will continue for the foreseeable future, it's just too important a manufacturing material. It will be a massive win for thermal engineering when semiconductor chips can easily be embedded in a diamond matrix.

I think we're close if not already there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com