I, as a European, cannot fathom how anyone would spend a significant amount of money on an engagement ring! The engagement rings we got ourselves cost 18$ and were made from wood. After all, they only need to last a few months, or maybe 1-2 years, until the wedding.
Regarding the wedding ring, I can understand slightly better how someone would put a bit more money into that, considering that you wear it for life. But there are so much better options than buying a shiny rock. Why not go to a goldsmith and pay 1000$ for a workshop where you forge your own rings? That will result in a lasting memory of a nice event, for a fraction of the cost, instead of throwing thousands of dollars out the window for a shiny rock that you simply buy at the store. Or maybe you don't even need gold? In my opinion, silver, titanium or maybe something like steel combined with carbon fibers looks better anyways.
In the US, it's common for a woman to wear both the engagement ring and wedding ring after the wedding, they are often sold as a set.
Although one tip I'd give to anyone getting married, get a pair of $18 rings for travel and what not. If one slips off while swimming in the ocean, it's ok.
> I, as a European, cannot fathom how anyone would spend a significant amount of money on an engagement ring
It's all thanks to more than 100 years of marketing campaign and tight control of supply of diamond by De Beers. People did not buy diamond rings before De Beers' "A diamond is forever", and the supply of natural diamond is practically unlimited. I have to give it to the ingenuity of De Beers - they got Soviet Union to agreed to a supply deal after Soviet Union found huge diamond mine that could have supplied the market with dirt cheap diamonds for hundreds of years! So, I'm very happy that Chinese entrepreneurs do not give a shit about De Beers and managed to figure out how to mass produce lab-made diamonds cheaply (yes, the process was invented and greatly improved by the west, but it was China, specifically the manufacturers in Henan Province, that didn't succumb to De Beers' heinous control, and gave De Beers a huge middle finger).
It's funny that the traditional diamond industry started to argue that these lab-grown diamonds were too pure and lacked the impurities that natural diamonds have. And what is the response of the Chinese manufacturers? They laughed, as adding impurity to a lab-made diamond can be easy and precise.
Personality, I hate the kind of consumerism and irrationality driven by De Beers. I'm very happy to see De Beers destroyed.
Agreed. My wife did not care about getting a fancy diamond ring for our wedding (US) but I ended up getting the standard expensive diamond ring out of tradition. One thing I noticed was how many of her female friends and relatives wanted to inspect and complement her ring. Even MY female relatives were saying things like, "Oh, I am glad he chose well, I was worried he was going to cheap out on the ring." So, we have a ways to go in the US. Maybe gen Z will save us.
> It's funny that the traditional diamond industry started to argue that these lab-grown diamonds were too pure and lacked the impurities that natural diamonds have.
I guess they're doing that because humans have a long history of idolising old times and old imperfections. We praise analog photo grain, or analog audio noise. Industries from clothing brands to guitar manufacturers release artificially aged products.
Then again, adding imperfections in "post production" seems to be the status quo.
I would assume so too, except that initially De Beers was arguing that natural diamonds were more pure than the lab-made. When lab-made beat every criteria, 3C and whatnot, created by the diamond cartel, the cartel started to argue for impurity.
> After all, [engagement rings] only need to last a few months, or maybe 1-2 years, until the wedding.
I think this is the cultural distinction you're missing -- married American women typically wear both their engagement and wedding ring their entire lives, and the engagement ring is usually the more ornate/expensive one (which might be due to the De Beers marketing throughout the 20th century this article discusses).
At what point does something become part of a tradition or culture? Why does "it started as an ad campaign" preclude something from becoming part of culture?
But surely doing whatever works for you is OK? Some people love "creating memories", some people love to have more "social status", some love $4 wooden rings, some love $40K diamond rings; everyone is different, let all the flowers bloom.
Social status is positional and follows arms race dynamics. Everyone would have more money and nobody would suffer worse ring-positional-status if everyone spent proportionately less.
Also, there is a deep body of economics and psychology literature describing how individual spending decisions are sometimes suboptimal in predictable ways, particularly that we under-value experiential purchases.
It doesn't contradict general "live and let live" principles to think that cultural emphasis on positional goods is bad, nor that individuals might be better off if they made different consumption choices.
If you have lots of money and like fancy rings, sure, go for it!
If you just finished your college, sit on a big pile of student loans, work in your first job and then spend several months of income on a shiny rock, then that is a bad financial decision, no matter whether you love diamond rings or not. (And from what I hear, this situation happens a lot, due to social pressure and "desired social status".)
I personally would never even think of denying a poor graduate from trying, however clumsily, to impress the girl he fancies with some unaffordable ring. Bad financial decision? Maybe. Story of beautiful romance? Absolutely.
As someone who bought a pair of matching silver rings for us, I agree with on the inexpensive option. I never wear mine because I'm getting old and my knuckles don't like to maintain a constant size.
When women hit on me, I hold my hand in a way where my ring is very, very prominent.
If they don't "get the message" I start casually discussing my children.
That being said: I love the tradition of engagement and wedding rings. It's not just about preventing cheating. I bought my wife a moissanite engagement ring because we both wanted to follow the tradition, and we both understood that diamonds are a marketing gimmick to convince suckers to part with large sums of money.
I spent a sum of money that we were both comfortable spending, and we're both very happy with our purchase. My wedding band is made out of precious metal, and I love it. Other people I know wear cheap bands from Amazon and are happy with them.
If you want to be in a lifelong relationship with someone, it's important that you're both on the same page about these kinds of traditions. You don't have to follow them, but if your partner wants to, or values them, it might be worth it to play along to keep them happy. (As long as you're spending money that you're both comfortable spending.)
It's not about stopping someone from cheating, it's about a social display of a big part of your life. For the same reason people get married - it's just a social display. For women it can have the added bonus of stopping men from approaching them so much
The diamond tradition became a ridiculous cultural trait, buy lab-grown diamonds can help greatly mitigate the wastefulness of regular natural diamonds. I don't think Moissanite is the right replacement - they have too much of the so-called "fire", almost too sparkly as the article shows. I think Moissanites are inferior to diamonds in appearance in my personal, subjective opinion.
Lab-grown diamonds, however, can be had for as low as 20% of the price of natural diamonds (for large sizes), often less than Moissanite, and absolutely look the part. You simply can't tell the difference between a lab-grown diamond and a natural diamond without highly specialized equipment because they are, well, the same thing and differ only in minute growth "marks" in their fine structure. If I'm not mistaken, there is regulation preventing companies from calling competitors' lab-grown diamonds "fake diamonds", and retailers can call them "real diamonds" (but NOT "natural diamonds").
I got my wife of 15 years a large lab-grown diamond ring from Ritani for ~2K and she loves it. She won't take it out. Everybody is blown away by it because an equivalent natural diamond ring would go for ~10-15K.
This is really quite new. China and India, just over the past few years, have turned synthetic diamond production into a serious industry, and the fact that there are so many small producers is leading to a "race to the bottom" on pricing. A race we're now right in the middle of. Within just a few years, synthetic diamond might be nearly as cheap as synthetic ruby. (The raw materials are equally cheap, but making diamond is a more laborious and energy-intensive process, so it'll always be somewhat more expensive.)
The margin is in cutting and faceting. The Swiss make a CNC diamond cutting machine that can cut and facet a diamond in about an hour vs days for manual cutting.
> I don't think Moissanite is the right replacement - they have too much of the so-called "fire", almost too sparkly as the article shows. I think Moissanites are inferior to diamonds in appearance in my personal, subjective opinion.
I feel the same way. Moissanites are basically TOO good. They reflect light in so many carnival colors, and they shine so brightly, that they frequently look like fake carnival jewelry.
I find people usually like a specific amount, and that often there is such a thing as excess, even with desirable things, traits. This also changes over time, and from culture to culture. Another example is the coloring of clothes. In ye olde times, a vibrantly bright colored article is a rarity, because dying it, and then keeping it clean are not trivial tasks. Nowadays, bright basic colors such as royal blue can easily seem cheap, like something from a bazaar. And many subtle tones, such as colors resembling what you'd find in nature, are popular.
Right. There's also the fact that cubic zirconia has, like moissanite, a refractive index higher than diamond's. So a lot of poverty-tier CZ costume jewelry is, like moissanite, extremely shiny. That moissanite is basically indistinguishable from CZ -- but highly distinguishable from diamond -- is not a point in its favor.
> In ye olde times, a vibrantly bright colored article is a rarity
I had heard that medieval nobility was very fond of brightly-colored clothes. Blues, reds, yellows, etc. It stands to reason that this was to exhibit their wealth in an immediate and obvious way.
Shininess is one property people appreciate in gems, but not the only one. Many so-called fine things are loved exactly because their quality can’t be pinned down on a simple scale, but rather is a blend of subjective evaluations whose weightings are constantly evolving as tastes change.
Is the best wine the one with the highest alcohol content? The best chocolate the one with the most cocoa or the most sugar? The best painting the one with the most contrast? Etc.
>I think Moissanites are inferior to diamonds in appearance in my personal, subjective opinion.
Yeah, same. They have too much bling and look exactly like something the nouveau riche would parade around. To make things worse, moissanite jewellery usually has too many gems, something you couldn't afford with diamond.
Yes, you are misreading. Diamond jewellery has one or very few stones which makes for a clean look. Moissanites are cheap so pieces featuring them usually look like pimped out rides.
Me, personally, I would give my GF the amount in stocks but I wouldn't buy either pearls or diamonds. Both are a total rip-off.
I have an even cheaper solution: just don't buy a ring.
It all depends on what your partner wants obviously. If it's important for your partner to get a diamond ring and you value your partnership more than the cost of a diamond, then buy a diamond. If your partner wants a "I'm married" sign (as my wife did), just buy a simple wedding ring without a stone. If it's not that important for her, don't buy a ring.
This of course is true and makes sense, but you could also say the same thing about eating dinner in a restaurant: you could save money by skipping a meal, or by getting a frozen meal at the supermarket. A restaurant meal at a decent restaurant isn't that expensive (though it is pretty bad in the US these days; other countries are much better).
A ring doesn't have to be expensive: you can get a nice titanium ring for under $100. And unlike some other rings, it has some major benefits: 1) it's super-lightweight, so you can barely feel it (gold is heavy), 2) it's hypo-allergenic, in case you might have a sensitivity to anything in other rings, and best of all, 3) if you're stuck in an undersea oil rig that's flooding and one of the automatic flood doors is closing and about to trap you inside, you can stick your hand with the ring in the door and prevent it from closing, so you can escape.
The decent restaurant is a good example: For the price of a 9000$ diamond ring, you can eat a fancy dinner at a 300$ restaurant every year for the next 30 years of your marriage. And the money is probably spent much better that way. You'll build up memories of shared experiences.
For her engagement ring, we got a ring with some kinds of slightly bigger green stones (don’t ask me) on Etsy for maybe 100€, for the wedding bands we went with titanium, 3 small colorless stones (again, don’t ask me which) for her, no stones for me, that came in at slightly over $100 for both. Can recommend titanium.
I forgot to add the reason why there's a moral imperative to wearing a titanium ring instead of a diamond one: after saving yourself from drowning with the titanium ring, you can then descend to the ocean floor in an experimental diving suit, disarm a nuclear bomb dropped there by some nutcase that threatens a bunch of ocean-dwelling aliens, and impress them with your intended sacrifice (since your suit only has enough oxygen for a one-way trip) that they decide not to wipe out much of humanity with simultaneous tsunamis.
Madison Avenue created a cultural Hobson choice ritual that equated the size and value of a particular precious stone with the dominant partner's love and economic suitability for marriage. The pressures on Western individuals to follow this script varies, but is still significant.
Another interesting approach is to reframe it as a Hobson choice with opportunity cost: Would you prefer a modest ring that's exciting for all of a week and is easy to lose, or a lifetime of memories of 3 weeks on a languid, secluded tropical island with surreal, warm white sand and ocean-to-plate candlelight dinners?
> Very few advantages, if any, for most people (only big exception I'm aware of is for citizenship status).
Residency as well, not just citizenship. Other benefits (here in Germany) include: Better adoption rights, no visiting issues when your SO is suddenly in the hospital, tax benefits, and a bunch of other small benefits that you have a decent chance of encountering in your life.
While we mainly got married for her residency, it’s worthwhile to get married for a multitude of reasons. My sister and her husband also decided to get married for the 2nd child, as they also encountered issues being unmarried.
Its actually a good indicator of a character. Not everybody fits you or me, or even can actually sustain long term cca happy relationship. You want an expensive ring? Why? Just because herd mentality obviously isn't good enough response when drawbacks are numerous and often pretty sinister.
When I was still in the dating game, I wasn't one of the desperate ones who needed to f*k desperately at all costs. Rather I was every single time looking for potentially working relationship, so evaluating compatibility and if I found obvious or already-known showstopper I finished it quickly. But how do you evaluate that when initially people automatically wear layers of politeness masks? Some of them even after years.
Well just wait for first conflict and misunderstanding to happen, and how the other side reacts when emotions are high. Masks are off, raw personality comes forward in bad situation. You just have to be realistic and also think how it would look like if tables turned.
Or don't, but I prefer to at least try to bring some smart into this highly emotional game, I mean divorce rates hanging uncomfortably around 50% come from something (my wife doesn't have any natural bloody diamond on her ring, we talked about it like mature people beforehand and both agreed we won't go that way)..
My partner and I specifically avoided diamonds (and ultimately all gemstones) for our engagement rings. We went for unobtrusive silver rings, then shelled out for good quality gold wedding rings from a craftsperson we both knew. I think we spent about $1500 on rings in total and, can you believe it, our marriage has not fallen apart because we didn't spend thousands of dollars getting shiny rocks for our fingers.
To an engineer's eye this might make sense, but the significant cost of a diamond is actually the very point of buying it. And it's hardly an odd thing - the history of human civilisation is littered with examples of spending for the sole purpose of being able parade the purchase.
I'm reminded of this tweet: "it's actually crazy we figured out how to grow real diamonds that are cheaper and better quality than the real thing and so many people are still like, no thanks the suffering is what makes it special."
I don’t love that tweet because it’s not the suffering, but the fact the diamonds were naturally grown in the Earth. Put another way: why would anyone buy sea salt when can we produce pure NaCl?
(This is not to say you can or should ignore the suffering caused by the diamond industry)
Sea salt is NOT pure NaCl; that's the whole point of eating sea salt! It has significant quantities of other minerals, such as calcium chloride and potassium sulphate. That's why sea salt tastes so different from regular table salt.
The reason people buy sea salt (made by evaporating seawater) or table salt (made by mining deposits left from prehistoric seas), is because no one produces these things artificially. There's no good economic reason to do so when you can just dig it up or dry out some seawater: making it artificially would be more expensive.
The same economics don't work for diamonds, for various reasons.
What about lux watches? A 3 dollars Quarz Casio can beat any hand made Rolex in precision… but still some buy it. And in between there are all kinds of possibilities.
The point of the tweet is slightly different from what you're making though. Your comparison would be valid if the artificial diamonds were somehow cheaper-looking while otherwise performing as good if not better than natural diamonds for use-cases where aesthetics don't matter (drill bit tips, or what have you). But that's not the case, the artificial ones look exactly the same - maybe a jeweller could inspect them and say "ah this one is artificial, I think".
They also mention suffering, which seems kind of hard to measure but I think it's relatively well known that natural diamonds are saddled with a fair bit of baggage in that regard (slave labour, conflict diamonds, things of that nature).
You can't easily map this onto luxury watches, but it'd be like if you could buy a watch that was indisputably a Rolex, was "equal" in aesthetic appeal to its equivalent Rolex while being cheaper and didn't involve whipping the watchmaker who built it or something. And maybe a few watch afficionados with special knowledge of serial numbers could inspect it and go "ah this one was made without whipping the watchmaker"
A high quality mechanical watch, aside from being a beautiful object from an artistic and engineering perspective, tends to be a significantly better store of value than diamonds (vs natural diamonds especially)
The original purpose of such gifts was exchanging something of actual value like land not supporting a massive marketing campaign pushing a tradition as fake as Happy Honda Days.
Synthetic diamonds have already destroyed the big shiny rock as a display of wealth, but the marketing continues.
I don't think that's news to the author, but even on those terms it's not a great purchase to "parade" if its visually indistinguishable from something with a fraction of the price.
Some people buy expensive watches, even though there are visually indistinguishable clones on the market. I still don't think that a fake Rolex makes for a great gift.
I don't really want to advocate for diamonds here. I hate that it's mined at the expense of human welfare. I just want to point out that this article is 17 years old and not much has changed since it was written. Maybe it's not a compelling take?
> I still don't think that a fake Rolex makes for a great gift.
Arguably moissanite is not analogous to a fake Rolex. Rather, it is analogous to an elegant and good quality watch of a non-luxury brand. To that extent, I think that a good Swatch, Seiko or Casio wristwatch can make for a great gift.
I wear a Seiko watch. Never, ever was it mistaken by anyone for a Rolex or any other luxury brand. Meanwhile, the whole discussion around moissanite, including the linked article, is centred around how it makes a better diamond than an actual diamond.
In that case I think the root of the disagreement is our understanding of the role of a diamond as a gem on an engagement ring versus the role of a Rolex as an elegant and good quality wristwatch.
If the diamond's function is to be long-lasting, beautiful, and satisfy the expectations in certain cultures of a gemstone to symbolise one has committed to marry a certain person, then moissanite is a cheaper alternative to an actual diamond which is just as good (or arguably better, in terms of beauty). The same goes for a Rolex. If its function is to look good and be a dependable timekeeping instrument, then many other watchmakers can be a perfectly valid and less expensive option.
However, if a diamond's only function in an engagement ring is to prove that one's partner has spent a large amount of money to commit to marriage, then of course moissanite would indeed be analogous to a "fake Rolex". But then the whole idea of finding an alternative to diamond engagement rings due to the disproportionate price of diamonds would be to beg the question — there cannot be an alternative, for the very purpose of an engagement ring would be to spend a stupid amount of money.
It took the diamond industry several decades (and huge investments) to build their carefully crafted public image that translates into diamond purchases nowadays. These efforts are still in progress today. I am not sure if there are similar powers and interests behind the moissanite industry to match that.
There appears to be some cultural change happening around smoking. It is very slow despite the proven causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer. The tobacco industry is working hard to ensure they can continue to operate and transition to products that are (at least perceived to be) less harmful to people. However, the speed of this change does not appear to be driven by the severity of lung cancer threat, but by the lobbying power of the tobacco industry that ensures they don't go out of business while the transition is happening.
It is probably true as far as retail engagement rings and certain smaller jewelry etc. is concerned, but rich and powerful people liked and valued diamonds way before that long marketing campaign.
I think watches can be a bit different... At least expensive watches retain more of their value, or even go way up in the case of Rolex.
It's true that for some, a big appeal of a good watch is the "implementation" or the mechanics or electronics that go inside, or the craft on creating it. And others use watches more as jewellery.
But there's always somebody that use them to "show off": while some people will buy a "neat" Seiko, Tudor, or even Rolex, there's always one Cristiano Ronaldo that will buy the 2 million dollar gem covered version, or the tourbillon whatever.
BTW, today there is people commercializing fake Rolex (and others) of a quality so high that even experts have difficulty distinguishing them from the originals. Apparently they're sold under the excuse of protecting your assets: keep your very expensive Rolex on the bank, bring this replica to the party. And they're not cheap, I think I've seen them for around 2k or 3k euro.
"I think watches can be a bit different... At least expensive watches retain more of their value, or even go way up in the case of Rolex."
Buying old Rolex watches is cult activity a bit like buying Elvis's shoes or such at auction for many thousands of dollars—although the latter is likely rarer and ultimately might be of historical interest in centuries to come. Same goes for other engineered products such as old Leicaflex cameras that have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars when equally engineered high quality products from the same era are simply junked as these days they are perceived to have no value.
It mystifies me why people are so enamored with this stuff. There's nothing special about an old Rolex except they were likely near the best of breed when manufactured, but they have little intrinsic historical value nowadays in that they were very unlikely to contain new technology that altered the course of mechanical engineering at the time they were made. They have never had the historical or technical importance of Harrison's remarkable chronometers which did alter the course of history.
This is truly an historical device that altered history and changed technology—it made centimeter RADAR possible when desperately needed in WWII and it's the forerunner of the device in every microwave oven around the world—yet they're not worth a pinch of shit when compared with an old Rolex—even though there are precious few used ones still in existence (let alone brand new ones in original packaging).
Seems to me, like diamonds, the outrageous values of an old Rolex come from cleaver marketing to the gullible and to those with more money than sense.
Edit: years ago I bought a fake Rolex in Bangkok for about $20 as a joke, it actually kept reasonably good time and looked reasonably genuine—at least it did from a few feet away.
Oh, that of course. I'm not in the "showing off jewelry" nor the "speculating with Rolex" business. I was talking more to the "but diamonds are also an investment" side. I'm more into technique and curiosity and I'm more than delighted by my Casio, Seiko, Vostok... I even have a fake Omega too :)
I find devices as your magnetron quite interesting, BTW.
Re magnetrons, there's a bit of a story behind how I acquired them. Those devices would hardly ring a bell with many electronics people, even those who recognized them as such likely wouldn't think they were important from an historical stance.
When I was a kid I used to rat old WWII surplus radio/radar gear for parts and whilst I never came across any of that first generation of magnetrons I'd seen photos of them in books on radar.
Many decades later I was helping someone move an old aircraft engineering works of WWII vintage that manufactured parts to a new location. It was not only crammed full of machine tools, lathes, milling machines, metrology equipment etc. but just about everything under the sun. For example Singer sewing machines of about 1880s vintage, uranium glass wine glasses, Arts and Crafts Movement lamp shades, oil lamps, old glasses, tons of old magazines, old chemical lab equipment and bottles of partly-used reagents, half-used cans of aircraft paint, wooden aircraft propellers from 1930s etc., etc., including dead rats were among the many thousands of different items—all piled up to the gunnels. One could hardly move and it was dangerous as one could be injured on junk, sheet metal offcuts, piles of sharp swarf and such—if you've ever seen those TV programs on hoarders you'd get the picture.
Anyway, those magnetrons were amongst literally tons of junk destined for the tip and it's just a very lucky fluke that I spotted them. I'd never seen one for real before but I instantly recognized them for what they were. It was a most fortuitous find.
The owner of the factory couldn't have cared less about them and they'd almost certainly have ended up in landfill if I hadn't spotted them. How these magnetrons originally ended up there was that his father who originally owned the factory was a compulsive auction goer and bought huge loads of military disposals at auction after the War.
I'd argue that signalling honed by eons of evolution is significantly different to signaling dictated by fashion, it has evolutionary purpose, and it may be costly.
Fashion is fickle and can change quickly. Diamonds weren't really fashionable until De Beers started its Diamonds are Forever campaign decades ago; same with jeans, they didn't become a fashion statement until the 1950s when James Dean, Marlon Brando et al appeared in them in movies.
That type of signalling is only effective after marketing and often—but not always—has little beneficial outcome other than to benefit those who started the fashion or craze, and it's usually the gullible and or susceptible who pick up and run with such signals. In, say, the 1950s, unless you were a manual laborer or a gang member, it wasn't respectable to wear jeans. Back then, those who wished to become gang members—a la the 1950s Rebel Without a Cause — would follow the jeans/leather jacket dress code of the gangs, others would consider those who did as 'greasers' and or possible criminal elements.
In many instances signalling can be missed altogether especially so those who are not its intended recipients, and when it's recognized its effects aren't always positive. Whenever I see someone wearing a Rolex I think 'pretentious bastard, clearly you aren't sophisticated enough to wear another classy watch that would equally signal your intent but not show you up to be a dork'.
You're right, clearly I'm not the intended recipient. Leaving my fashion comments aside, my other principal objection is paying for something that likely has a 1000%+ markup on its manufacturing costs, one pays for the Rolex name-not the product.
I'm not saying the watch isn't engineered with precision as clearly it is, but one knows something is wrong when Rolex guards its manufacturing processes the way of state secrets (no one outside the company can gain access to its plant). Of course, Rolex claims this is to protect it from industrial espionage, I'd equally argue that its highly automated precision numerical control equipment can turn watches out like sausages and the company's ongoing worry is that the world will discover how cheap they are to make. That would be a marketing and PR stuff-up par excellence.
I would not buy a Rolex because I know I'd been ripped off. BTW, my grandfather was a watchmaker and jeweler and he taught me to be aware that much of the trade was build on illusion and mirrors. He didn't just repair watches, he had a precision watchmaker's lathe and similar equipment and could make parts, gears, subsections of Incabloc shock protection systems, etc. for watches and clocks that weren't available in suppliers' spares catalogs. He not only repaired jewellery but also made it. I have a gold and platinum tie pin with a black opal made by him (mind you, I wouldn't be seen dead wearing it).
Right, not only have the rich and powerful always valued diamonds but also most who've come in contact with them and other precious stones have always done so. But it was only in the 20th Century, and then mainly in anglophone countries, that diamond ownership took off among us commoners as a result of cleaver marketing.
There are many things with huge mark-ups but some people really hate that and that is OK (whether or not Rolex has a 90%+ profit margin I wouldn't know).
Yes, the retail marketing campaign for diamonds was quite successful (so where others btw., for example, for retail stock ownership after WWII).
Even the act of parading in general is questionable in its effectiveness. What is the intended goal? That somebody has a more favorable view of you? I don't think it does that, at all.
That's true. Just like people by Gucci, LV, D&G etc. I was in a Prada store once and they were selling an acrylic keychain for $800. There was nothing making the chain better than any other chain except you could show off your Prada chain and I guess hope other people would know you had money to blow.
A synthetic diamond for the price of a natural one and the rest goes to
a good cause would be great. Some kind of certificate of authenticity to go with it.
> 3. A diamond is an illiquid asset, not an "investment". Don't believe me? Try to sell a second-hand diamond ring on eBay or at a pawn shop. Do you really think you'll get anything close to what you paid for it?
Yes you'll get close to what you paid for it if you buy it the same way jewelers buy it. There's an ultra liquid market for diamonds: a friend jeweler showed it to me. He needs a diamond to make a ring? He goes on a website where diamonds are sorted by their four Cs (clarity/cut/color/carat) and their price and all guaranteed legit. And he buys it at market price.
Of course if you overpay 3x the price by buying the diamond as part of a complete ring, you're sorry out of luck.
Now the diamond market may crash too, but that is another topic.
If your wife/fiance really insists on having a diamond: find a reputable jeweler and tell him you want to pick the stone with him, on such a site. And that you're willing willing to pay for the ring and his craftmanship but that you don't want to pay the stone 3x the price for what is actually two clicks for him.
Heck, you can even bring your own stone to the jeweler (I did it, with a family heirloom diamond). You can even bring a picture of a famous brand and say you want the same shape of ring: they're not supposed to do it but they'll gladly copy the famous ring (I didn't do that but I know someone who did).
BTW while you're at it buy a diamond that comes with a certificate.
And if you want to pay 1/5th of the price: then buy a lab-grown diamond instead of moissanite for 1/10th of the price. To me moissanite is a bit too shiny.
While a lab-grown diamond or a "real" diamond are the exact same thing.
Well, I'm seemingly able to tell these two high quality diamonds apart from only pictures thanks to the minute differences in the Ideal Scope / ASET pictures coming from slightly different cuts, so better also invest in these tools (a tiny fraction of the price of even these diamonds) ?
Also, jewelery is a luxury, an indulgence ideally bought to feel good and enjoy. If you treat luxury goods as investment, unless your job is buying and selling luxury goods, you are already out of luck from the very start.
One of the extremely frustrating things that I experienced when purchasing my wife's engagement was the pressure from my family to buy diamonds:
When I was a teenager in the 1990s, and moissanite came out, I listened to my older cousin go off on how she would dump any man who tried to pass off a moissanite to her.
Then my mother kept confusing moissanite with cubic zirconia, and kept telling me stories about cheap men who bought their fiancées rings that broke.
I bought my wife a moissanite, but I was so afraid that she was just saying that she wanted a moissanite to merely humor me. What I did was give her matching
moissanite earrings a month before I proposed to her. She loved the earrings, so I knew she'd love the ring.
Some thoughts from a mineral collector. There is considerable variety in naturally occurring diamonds. Colors, such as yellow, green, brown, black and famously a few blue and pink ones. Plus many crystal forms (Cubic, Octahedral, Dodecahedral, Tetrahedral, Trapezohedral, Tetrahexahedral,Trisoctahedral, Hexoctahedral, and some triangular Macle forms). An appeal of natural diamonds to some mineral collectors is the interest their unique crystal forms. These are expensive and tiny: a niche that I don't have in my collection. However, I did purchase a large cluster of what I think consists Moissanite crystals, not transparent; it looks like some failed industrial experiment.
Not to hijack the thread, but weddings are significantly suckier. The cost is several multiples more than a diamond (natural or lab), only lasts one night, and is typically a large source of stress. Just have a party at a restaurant and use the $50k-$100k saved for student debt or rent or kids school.
Yeah I never understood people spending crazy amounts of money, especially when they could use that to much better use that would make greater the chances of the mariage to last long.
It is not supposed to be the best day of your life. It would means all goes downhill from there which is the opposite of what you want your marriage/life partnership to be.
This is a socially engineered marketing racket. The earth diamond peddlers came out with a laser mark/blemish visible under a microscope to create a non fakeable brand for earth diamonds and are trying to hold those as a premium 'natural' product. A desperate rear guard action to preserve their racket - that is what it is, - a racket
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeering
Before diamonds were the go-to for engagement rings, color stones like ruby, sapphire, and emerald were the thing. So why should it be mossianite and not going back to other gem stones?
Here in France a single diamond ring is quite rare. Sapphire, emerald, ruby, etc rings are very very common. They are usually lined with tiny diamonds around to add a bit of sparkle around a large gem. However due to Americanization of the cultures, people start to do it the american way (we call it a "solitaire", solitary diamond).
Three couples in my friend group got engaged recently, all three had colored gems on their rings. Diamonds were in support of the main gem to enhance it, not the star of the show. That's a sample of N=3, but very much part of the French culture.
Even as a kid I'd always thought diamonds were bland and didn't understand why so many people wanted them. Any other gemstone looked better to me, and I think still would.
This person either doesn't get laid, has an atypical understanding partner, or no partner at all.
While DeBeers and Madison Ave. crafted a tradition to artificially inflate the value of this specific gem, create a monopoly cartel around it, and established it as a material standard of love and "suitability" for marriage, it's been subsumed by culture as much as children demand Christmas such that the odds of escaping this manufactured foolishness are scant. For example, what % of women would date a man if they heard he was a Cornell grad vs. a self-employed electrician?
The individual has a Hobson choice to either follow a convention, pretend to follow it, or ignore it altogether. Without being subject to these peer pressures, I would prefer to allocate to coin to investments and reducing debt, and instead carve a ring from a wax blank to be cast in a metal like platinum or silver.
The non-salaried working man trying to enter marriage with the demands of a large wedding party and an expensive diamond ring bought on credit would be economically foot-gunning themselves. It still happens everyday and keeps the diamond business in business.
Diamonds suck indeed. They are easily reproduced and are artificially kept at a high price by big business
Gold on the other side, is impossible to reproduce and is a very rare metal that will have many fine uses. You can do anything to it and it won't lose its value. I will never understand why some women require worthless diamonds. It's a crystal, it reflects and will lose its value if broken.
"I will never understand why some women require worthless diamonds."
Marketing, it's a cleverly crafted fashion statement long-ingrained in culture by monopolistic cartel member De Beers.
The artificially high prices maintained by the diamond cartel must end, diamonds are too valuable to industry for industrial purposes than to let these bastards run the show.
>> it's actually crazy we figured out how to grow real diamonds that are cheaper and better quality than the real thing and so many people are still like, no thanks the suffering is what makes it special.
Me and my fiance read this some years back. I ended up getting her a massionite ring and she absolutely wows everyone with it. And it was less than a grand. Even people wealthier than me get impressed because the diamond industry is indeed a cartel with vastly over-priced costs.
In any case. She's extremely happy. I'm happy. My wallet is happy. It's honestly the best decision.
The [artificial] scarcity and [unjustifiably] high price are properties of almost all luxury goods. And those are exactly what makes them (watches, handbags, diamonds etc.) so desirable to many.
I fully agree that spending two months' gross salary on an engagement ring is way too much though, and I would never ever get into debt for that. But, similarly as I enjoy wearing a relatively useless but expensive watch daily, I didn't mind dropping approx. 2/3 of a month's net salary on my fiancé's diamond engagement ring, which she got to choose and now cherishes and admires every day.
There is a bit of a cultural signaling to your future wife to say you are financially competent/stable that you were able to buy a diamond ring. Now you need to switch the narrative to say actually I didn't spend so we could buy an index fund instead.
I don't buy the flawless argument in the article. I think people look for some flaws in diamonds. A perfect rock would look "fake".
The big change since 2006 when the article was written is that there are manufactured diamonds now.
> There is a bit of a cultural signaling to your future wife to say you are financially competent/stable that you were able to buy a diamond ring
In modern cultures I would assume the couple already knows each other and their financial situation before marrying. So why waste money on richness signaling especially if you are not rich?
Why not buy her a gold bar instead? They can be as expensive/ valuable as you like and she can see it as an investment. It can't be worn on a finger of course, but where I'm from, people only wear the engagement ring before their wedding.
lol, I forwarded this article to my girlfriend, and she immediately responded: absolutely not!
I guess some things are not meant to be optimised.
She mentioned that you can buy a lab-grown diamond for much cheaper, and keep the same shine as a "real" diamond.
Orrrr you can do what my wife and I did: just get those silicone rings. They come in lots of styles, you can wear them while working out or diving or any other physical activity, and they're much cheaper than actual jewelry.
My wife and I tried that, while we were living on a sailboat, but I was disappointed by the lack of durability; my silicone ring only lasted six months.
Perhaps, but it's pretty sad that we buy things just because they're expensive. In most cases it's just a waste, and you're only hurting your own bank account, but when it comes to diamonds, it actually causes harm.
And yes, I did buy my partner a diamond engagement ring. I wish I'd tried harder to see if she could be happy (or happier, even) with something else, or at least a lab-grown diamond.
its just a marketing stunt that became a culture icon in a society weak to commercial propaganda last century. Its basically a tacky display of status or a modern bride price, something socially incompetent nerds find funny outside the blood part
I completely agree. My point is that, even though buying a diamond is stupid, buying a cheap knock-off is even stupider. The only point of a diamond is to show wealth, since it's a rock - a knock-off can't even show wealth, so why buy it?
If you want to buy something useful instead, that's much better.
Regarding the wedding ring, I can understand slightly better how someone would put a bit more money into that, considering that you wear it for life. But there are so much better options than buying a shiny rock. Why not go to a goldsmith and pay 1000$ for a workshop where you forge your own rings? That will result in a lasting memory of a nice event, for a fraction of the cost, instead of throwing thousands of dollars out the window for a shiny rock that you simply buy at the store. Or maybe you don't even need gold? In my opinion, silver, titanium or maybe something like steel combined with carbon fibers looks better anyways.