10 Reasons not to accept a diamond

January 9, 2006 11:27 PM

10 reasons not to accept a diamond. Something to think about if you are tieing the knot. I'm sure this list doesn't make these folks very happy - more reason to spread the word.
posted by Dag Maggot (250 comments total)

And gold isn't so hot either.
posted by gunthersghost at 11:42 PM on January 9, 2006

wow--incredible picture.
posted by ori at 11:45 PM on January 9, 2006

I was actually planning to post a question to AskMe at some point about how to go about buying a diamond that isn't blood-drenched. This post doesn't help me with that question, though, so I guess I'll keep it on deck....
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:47 PM on January 9, 2006

2. Diamonds are Priced Well Above Their Value
3. Diamonds Have No Resale or Investment Value

Is this stuff really true?

The rest of the stuff I already knew about.

Can't wait until synthetic diamonds are cheap as salt.
posted by Afroblanco at 11:47 PM on January 9, 2006

Is this stuff really true?

I've certainly heard at least the former very many times, from respectable sources.
posted by flaterik at 11:54 PM on January 9, 2006

Is it still okay for me to give them to Nevada prostitutes?
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:58 PM on January 9, 2006

Edward Jay Epstein's book The Diamond Invention (which is free and online) is a great resource on this topic.
posted by Staggering Jack at 12:01 AM on January 10, 2006

I gave my wife an heirloom diamond taken from my great unkle's 32'nd degree mason ring. I wouldn't have bought one of my own accord. I think we had it appraised for 11k or something. But, really, it's not worth anything unless it's on my wife's finger.
posted by Balisong at 12:02 AM on January 10, 2006

Is this stuff really true?

From the above book:

Retail jewelers generally prefer not to buy back diamonds from customers because the offer they would make most likely would be considered ridiculously low. The "keystone," or markup, on a diamond and setting may range from 100 to 200 percent, depending on the policy of the store. If they bought diamonds back from customers, they would have to buy them back at the wholesale price. Most jewelers would prefer not make a customer an offer that not only might be deemed insulting but would also undercut the widely-held notion that diamonds hold their value. Moreover, since retailers generally receive their diamonds from wholesalers on consignment and need not pay for them until they are sold, they would not readily risk their own cash to buy diamonds from customers. Rather than offer customers a fraction of what they paid for diamonds, retail jewelers usually recommend their clients to other firms

posted by Staggering Jack at 12:08 AM on January 10, 2006

Wow. That's insane. I'm going to have to look into this some more.

The question remains, then - how come nobody seems to know about this?

Could it really just be very effective advertising?
posted by Afroblanco at 12:10 AM on January 10, 2006

stavros, there are companies who document the entire diamond mining process and provide a certificate that indicates where the diamond is from. All totalled, I think less than 5% of diamonds are conflict diamonds. Check out The Kimberly Process for more information.
posted by panoptican at 12:17 AM on January 10, 2006

See also.
posted by duende at 12:19 AM on January 10, 2006

Canadian diamonds at least assure you that you aren't supporting a bloody civil war, but that doesn't make them any less stupid a purchase from a financial point of view.
posted by Space Coyote at 12:19 AM on January 10, 2006

Ok, apparently this has some credibility.
posted by Afroblanco at 12:22 AM on January 10, 2006

Link from the FPP , "Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?"

(behind an Atlantic Monthly regwall in the FPP)
posted by Afroblanco at 12:26 AM on January 10, 2006

If its any consolation, only 3 or 4 out of the 10 actually apply to Canadian diamonds (The world's 3rd largest producer). Canadian producers are subject to a Diamond Code of Conduct and while participation is voluntary - the two producers are members.

Canadian Diamond producers negotiated deals with the local First Nations and also with the territorial government (1mb pdf). They are subject to strict standards including a 30% first nations employment target, and they must offer english literacy training.

One of the camps features "a gymnasium, squash/racquetball courts, full workout facilities, games room, TV lounges, golf-putting green, golf-simulators and a simulated golf driving range." I've heard they even get Atlantic Lobster dinners on occasion.

Oh - and universal health care.

But, diamonds are still a waste of money!
posted by SSinVan at 12:31 AM on January 10, 2006

Reason number 11? They're not that pretty.

Seriously, though... the fact that DeBeers wasn't even able to sell directly in the US until 2004 due to their nifty price-fixing shenanigans is enough for me.
posted by snickerdoodle at 12:37 AM on January 10, 2006

I thought / wished more people knew about this. I was taught this 15 years ago in high school. Diamonds are largely overrated, and there are many more jewels that are more attractive in appearance.

It totally infuriates me that people think that there is some sort of long-standing tradition of giving diamonds, when it's really only been a couple of generations.

What better way to say, "I want to start a life together with you" than to demonstrate good judgement by blowing 20% of your annual income on a near-worthless symbol of your partner's lack of criticality / intelligence in the face of corporate advertising? Get something useful, like a down payment on a home or maybe a car.

[girlfriend walks in room]





Man, Ima get my wooman the biggest, blingin'est piece of ice-rock inna citty!
posted by Extopalopaketle at 12:46 AM on January 10, 2006

All diamonds not already under its control are bought by the cartel, and then the De Beers cartel carefully managed world diamond supply in order to keep prices steadily high.


When I was an undergrad, I had a geology professor who told the class that he'd toured diamond wharehouses in South Africa. He said they contained a hell of a lot of diamonds. Indeed, there were so many that if they were dumped on the market, the price of the stones would plummet to almost nothing.
posted by Clay201 at 12:50 AM on January 10, 2006

Uh huh. Is there anything Americans are not conditioned to want?

If depreciating economic value, the environment, and the suffering of people in the third world were compelling reasons to temper American consumerism, people wouldn't be buying SUVs by the millions.

Consider: 9/11, 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed, 2100 US soldiers dead, and $400 billion spent on the war in Iraq... and people are still buying 8mpg SUVs.

As for HIV, people in this country have trouble using condoms consistently even when their own health is at stake, so it's hard to imagine they would care about higher rates of infection among diamond miners in Africa.

Hell, Bush supporters are okay with shredding the constitution, the end of the separation of church and state, wars based on lies, spying on Americans, wholesale political corruption, outting CIA agents for political retribution, borrowing trillions of dollars from our kids and giving that money to the wealthiest 1%, and even torture that includes crushing the testicles of a suspect's child. Diamonds are going to be far down on a long list of socially acceptable "evils".

Gas isn't going anywhere even though there's a much stronger argument against using oil than diamonds. And unlike diamonds, a tank of gas won't get you laid. End of story.
posted by Davenhill at 12:55 AM on January 10, 2006

The diamond market is unique in economics. Supply makes absolutely no difference to the price - and the supply of diamonds is plentiful. Turns out, if people want to buy diamonds, they want to spend a lot of money on it. That's also why resale doesn't work.
posted by Protocols of the Elders of Awesome at 1:00 AM on January 10, 2006

whoah ... kind of derailish there Davenhill - and a bit unfair to single out the US. You could substitute "The Western World" for your arguement there quite credibly.
posted by Dag Maggot at 1:01 AM on January 10, 2006

Can't wait until synthetic diamonds are cheap as salt.

I expect it will make little difference. Diamonds are an old-school status symbol and people don't want synthetics.
posted by Protocols of the Elders of Awesome at 1:02 AM on January 10, 2006

True, but synthetics are approaching the point of being bona fide diamonds -- same physical composition, same sparkle, same hardness, but more purity and much, much cheaper. Once synthetics are indistinguishable from "real" diamonds, the marketplace will probably change dramatically, regardless of the prestige value of a diamond from a mine.
posted by brain_drain at 1:08 AM on January 10, 2006

Is there a word for seeing something written down for the first time that you’ve always suspected? Well, I just had that feeling then.

Plus what snickerdoodle said. I reckon there are dozens and dozens of prettier rocks out there. Tiger eye is my favourite for some reason. Opals are real purdy too. Even polished freakin’ iron ore looks nicer.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 1:12 AM on January 10, 2006

I expect it will make little difference. Diamonds are an old-school status symbol and people don't want synthetics.

From Afroblanco's 2nd link:

"Synthetic diamonds have been available since the 1950s and are commonly used in industrial abrasives, but till now have made little headway in the gem market due to prohibitive manufacturing expense. Supposedly the new artificial diamonds, particularly those made by chemical vapor deposition (CVD), are both cheap to produce and, unlike knockoffs such as cubic zirconium, virtually indistinguishable from natural diamonds even in the lab."
posted by uncanny hengeman at 1:20 AM on January 10, 2006

A slight derail: how can something be universally priced above its value? This is not a snark; I don't have a good grasp on economics. How can value be determined without regard to average price? I always took them to be more-or-less synonymous, but I'd be happily corrected. Doesn't "priced above their value" mean "available for much cheaper elsewhere"? How can this apply to a product across the board?
posted by ori at 1:35 AM on January 10, 2006

Doesn't "priced above their value" mean "available for much cheaper elsewhere"?

It could also mean "collusion" and "monopoly". If there's no-one out there who wants to play proper market economics and sell them cheaper than the next guy, then the price remains artificially high.
posted by Jimbob at 1:40 AM on January 10, 2006

I want the market for diamonds to crash. They should be as cheap as silicon.

There's a secretive company in Florida that's starting to grow big ones. They've already started targeting the jewelry market.

But the big goal is electronics and semiconducters. You can build and run a chip on diamond wafer instead of silicon, and you can run it smaller, faster, and with more power.

Clockcycles and bandwidth are the new bling, baby.
posted by loquacious at 2:07 AM on January 10, 2006

When synthetic diamonds come out, deBeers et al, will start laser etching "Genuine diamond" marks on the mined diamonds. People will then be conditioned to only buy "Genuine Diamonds".

What most people don't realise is that people don't buy diamonds because of how they look, they buy them because they cost so much.

If the synthetic diamond market wants to take off, it should start charging more then deBeers. If the synthetic diamond companies have ethical problems with this, then they should just syphon off the profits into charities which are designed to stabilise/feed/medicine third world countries.
posted by seanyboy at 2:11 AM on January 10, 2006

When synthetic diamonds come out, deBeers et al, will start laser etching "Genuine diamond" marks on the mined diamonds. People will then be conditioned to only buy "Genuine Diamonds".

I wonder if you can laser etch on a diamond?
posted by Dag Maggot at 2:15 AM on January 10, 2006

OK, one down. Now who's gonna take on the other sacred cow pillar of Western relationships, that orgy of consumption that is the modern wedding?
posted by rob511 at 2:18 AM on January 10, 2006

When synthetic diamonds come out, deBeers et al, will start laser etching "Genuine diamond" marks on the mined diamonds. People will then be conditioned to only buy "Genuine Diamonds".

And then scammers (like me, heh he!) will simply do the same to synthetic diamonds. After all, the Straight Dope says the latest ones are "virtually indistinguishable from natural diamonds even in the lab."

Dead fucking easy.

(Pssst. Wanna buy a watch, seanyboy?!)
posted by uncanny hengeman at 2:30 AM on January 10, 2006

Veblen goods.
posted by youarenothere at 2:35 AM on January 10, 2006

That's interesting youarenothere - I've learned a new word. And I'm sure it's a real phenomenon
posted by Dag Maggot at 2:58 AM on January 10, 2006

Uh huh. Is there anything Americans are not conditioned to want?

Universal health care? Rational cars? Public transit? Tax equity? Undercrowded prisons? The concept of Enough?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:06 AM on January 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

A slight derail: how can something be universally priced above its value? This is not a snark; I don't have a good grasp on economics. How can value be determined without regard to average price?

Because value isn't determined exclusively by price AT ALL, unless you want it to be.

For instance, say that a number of different markets offer potato at price between $1/lb to $1.5/lb , you'd conclude that the average value of 1lb of potato is probably around $1.25/lb.

Let's say you eat the potato : after three straight days of eating potatoes and only potatoes I bet you'll not buy an additional lb of potato not even if I offered you at $0.50/lb
so the value of potato FOR you is now close to $0/lb. Yet if you think you can sell the potato you'll buy it at $0.50 offer and sell at somebody else for a profit.

Evidently if you eat the potato has a value X that isn't the same as the resale value Y . Therefore at the same time you have more then one value for potato. depending on who evalutes the good :)


Imagine the following : markets start selling food not at the quantity-produced and expected return values, but at the value measure in dollars you're willing to pay to NOT starve ; a.k.a you let food market freely fluctuate.

Given that demand for food is almost constant in time and I bet my family jewels you don't want to starve, I can ask you for any price, you'll pay it or die ; that , obviously, if the food producers decide to extract profit from you regardless of consequences (short term thinking approach to profit)
posted by elpapacito at 3:07 AM on January 10, 2006

I've always thought it was strange to give drill bit tips to prospective wives. You're giving them the tools to escape.
posted by srboisvert at 3:14 AM on January 10, 2006

Well, of course they're priced above their value--they're tiny little rocks. You can't eat them, drink them, live in them, or have sex with them, so from a position of strictly inherent value, they're worth nothing.

Diamonds have value the same way a Rolex watch does. It's a seven thousand dollar hunk of metal that sits on your wrist and tells time (poorly). But it's a status symbol. Same thing with the diamond. That's why synthetic stones will never really catch on. The point of a diamond isn't to say "look at this little rock I wear!" It's to say "look at this incredibly expensive little rock I wear!"
posted by EarBucket at 3:23 AM on January 10, 2006

De Beers already have machines that can tell the difference between natural and synthetic diamonds, and it is in their interest to ensure that they can continue to tell the difference, no matter how advanced syntetic fabrication become,s in order to maintain the allure of natural diamonds.
posted by doozer_ex_machina at 3:32 AM on January 10, 2006

The difference might be, I think, when practical uses (beyond the tiny diamonds used in industrial equipment) are found for large, artificial diamonds. As other have said - computer chips, for instance. Or unscratchable camera lenses. Once people realise there's a few carats worth of diamond in their new consumer device, they'll start wondering why they pay thousands of dollars for the same thing on a ring.
posted by Jimbob at 3:44 AM on January 10, 2006

My wife loves the diamond ring I had made for her.
That's good enough for me.
posted by Frasermoo at 3:44 AM on January 10, 2006

My wife loves the diamond ring I had made for her.

Can I suggest it would look even better if accompanied by a nice fur coat?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:58 AM on January 10, 2006

My wife loves the diamond ring I had made for her.
That's good enough for me.
posted by Frasermoo at 3:44 AM PST on January 10 [!]

I don't care that:

4. Diamond Miners are Disproportionately Exposed to HIV/AIDS
Many diamond mining camps enforce all-male, no-family rules. Men contract HIV/AIDS from camp sex-workers, while women married to miners have no access to employment, no income outside of their husbands and no bargaining power for negotiating safe sex, and thus are at extremely high risk of contracting HIV.

5. Open-Pit Diamond Mines Pose Environmental Threats
Diamond mines are open pits where salts, heavy minerals, organisms, oil, and chemicals from mining equipment freely leach into ground-water, endangering people in nearby mining camps and villages, as well as downstream plants and animals.

6. Diamond Mine-Owners Violate Indigenous People's Rights
Diamond mines in Australia, Canada, India and many countries in Africa are situated on lands traditionally associated with indigenous peoples. Many of these communities have been displaced, while others remain, often at great cost to their health, livelihoods and traditional cultures.

7. Slave Laborers Cut and Polish Diamonds
More than one-half of the world's diamonds are processed in India where many of the cutters and polishers are bonded child laborers. Bonded children work to pay off the debts of their relatives, often unsuccessfully. When they reach adulthood their debt is passed on to their younger siblings or to their own children.

8. Conflict Diamonds Fund Civil Wars in Africa
There is no reliable way to insure that your diamond was not mined or stolen by government or rebel military forces in order to finance civil conflict. Conflict diamonds are traded either for guns or for cash to pay and feed soldiers.

9. Diamond Wars are Fought Using Child Warriors
Many diamond producing governments and rebel forces use children as soldiers, laborers in military camps, and sex slaves. Child soldiers are given drugs to overcome their fear and reluctance to participate in atrocities.

10. Small Arms Trade is Intimately Related to Diamond Smuggling
Illicit diamonds inflame the clandestine trade of small arms. There are 500 billion small arms in the world today which are used to kill 500,000 people annually, the vast majority of whom are non-combatants.


screw you too.
posted by sic at 4:08 AM on January 10, 2006

I don't know if they ever caught on in the US, but in the UK in the late 60's/early 70's, De Beers created the concept of the "eternity ring", typically a containing a bunch of small channel-set diamonds around its circumference. They were marketed as a way to show your love/devotion for someone without having to, you know, actually get engaged to them.

Years later I learned they were created solely to use up the large numbers of small diamonds coming on to the market from Siberia to help keep prices high.
posted by kcds at 4:18 AM on January 10, 2006

Darwin: women like diamonds because they tell others what a great catch they made to spread genes

Karl Marx: quantity drives out quality...the more there is of a thing, the less value it has.
posted by Postroad at 4:30 AM on January 10, 2006

Hmmm...another reason not to gain weight; the added fat cells would devalue my DNA.
posted by alumshubby at 4:38 AM on January 10, 2006

Actually, I think fat cells just expand, rather than multiply alumshubby.
posted by Dag Maggot at 4:53 AM on January 10, 2006

If the second-hand market for diamonds is so shabby, and you really wanted a rock for your sweetie, then it might be possible to spend a little extra time and effort tracking down another person's legacy stone. It would be (according to the arguement) significantly cheaper and, since the secondary market is largely independent of the primary market, relatively unsullied by bad things #4-10.

Is it really that hard to find a decent stone in an informal market?
posted by allan at 4:58 AM on January 10, 2006

A friend is one of the UK's largest independent jewelers. Buying diamonds wholesale is an interesting business. A few times a year, De Beers holds a diamond sale in London. Selected retailers and manufacturers - I think they're called "sightholders" - go down to buy. The whole process is rigged: you can't say: "I'll take that one, and that one, and these two" - you have to buy packages of diamonds. This is related to kcds's point above: your package will contain about 50% small diamonds, again, so they can get rid of the small ones which wouldn't otherwise sell.

The other weird thing about these sales is that you have to buy - if you don't buy at one sale, you won't get invited to the next. And yes, most of the time you don't pay for them until you've sold them. The parallels with pyramid sales or drug pushing would almost be funny if it weren't for the atrocities.
posted by blag at 5:02 AM on January 10, 2006

I do not contend that the diamond industry is not harmful & exploitative. But what would it be okay to accept as an acknowledgement of another's affection, if one were to take all of these ten reasons to heart? Almost anything advertised anywhere, or anything overpriced and not readily resaleable, or most anything mined or manufactured in the developing world or anywhere else that impinges on indigenous peoples' rights, or poses an environmental threat, or anything whose mining or manufacture or transport has exposed anyone to injury or infection, even incidentally. Until locally-grown organic vegetables obtained by barter (or the like) become the accepted currency of romance, some poor fucker somewhere will be suffering for the sake of almost any love-token imaginable.
posted by misteraitch at 5:18 AM on January 10, 2006

"I’m shocked — shocked — that gambling is going on in this establishment!” If you don't know diamonds are bad by now, where have you been?
posted by smackfu at 6:02 AM on January 10, 2006

What misteraitch said. Diamonds are pretty and natural resource extraction is ugly, but there's nothing exceptional about either how people pay for pretty diamonds or the contribution of diamond mining to the aggregate ugliness of natural resource extraction.

I also don't like the basic thesis that people are sheep. African diamond miners know the AIDS risk of consorting with prostitutes, and some of them choose to do so anyway. American women know that they could get a big plasma television for the cost of modest diamond ring, and some of them choose the diamond over the plasma screen.
posted by MattD at 6:03 AM on January 10, 2006

Luckily I have:

a) A friend who is an international gem dealer and jewellery designer &

b) My grandmother's (d) engagement ring.
posted by i_cola at 6:04 AM on January 10, 2006

Does this apply to other gemstones? I particularly think emeralds are very attractive, but I guess they would be just as unlikely to hold value, and potentially originate from 3rd world oppression, as diamonds?
posted by planetthoughtful at 6:14 AM on January 10, 2006

But what would it be okay to accept as an acknowledgement of another's affection, if one were to take all of these ten reasons to heart?

Words and deeds.
posted by shawnj at 6:16 AM on January 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

I actually didn't know most of this, and am very glad I read it. Thank you!
posted by dougunderscorenelso at 6:16 AM on January 10, 2006

misteraitch

Until locally-grown organic vegetables obtained by barter (or the like) become the accepted currency of romance, some poor fucker somewhere will be suffering for the sake of almost any love-token imaginable.

By your reasoning :

given that somehow someone is always going to suffer even the tiniest amount of exploitation in order to produce some "love-token"

then we shouldn't stop considering buying diamonds, diamons being just one of the of the "tainted" love tokens

By analogy:

given that there's always going to be something diseased
then we shouldn't bother ourselves starting removing part of the disease because we'll never completely totally removed the disease

By this reasoning we shouldn't cure unless we have a definitive complete perfect cure : but it's not going to happen as perfection is an ideal, nothing perfect exist.

Bullshit, I say.
posted by elpapacito at 6:25 AM on January 10, 2006

Regarding Canadian diamonds:

Just as Canada has been able to offer a certifiably conflict-free variety of diamonds to ethically conscious consumers – and achieve goals such as the economic development of the north co-temporally – so too does Canada stand to benefit from an extending norm of disclosure within the international economic system. To quote a Statistics Canada report:

"Diamond mining is adding a new lustre to the Canadian economy and dazzle to that of the Northwest Territories. Current projects are contributing substantially, both economically and socially, to Canada and particularly the North."

The same report highlights how Canada’s position with respect to conflict diamonds has helped to bring about this economic development. In particular, Santarossa’s report documents Canadian participation in the development and implementation of the Kimberley Process of diamond ceritification. In an in-depth report, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation stressed how Canadian stones are “not used to finance terror, war and weapons as they are in parts of the world such as Sierra Leone and Angola.” At the same time, Canada has moved in the space of a few years from being the world’s sixth largest diamond producer to occupying third place, supplying 15% of the world’s stones. While it is difficult to prove that Canada’s focus on ethics within the diamond industry have contributed to that increased market share, it can at least be said that the pursuit of such goals has created good publicity for Canadian diamonds and manifestly not harmed the profitability of Canadian diamond firms. The example indicates how good ethics need not be bad business in resource extraction.
posted by sindark at 6:27 AM on January 10, 2006

elpapacito—buying diamonds indirectly causes harm: I was trying to point out that buying other stuff does too. How one might quantify that and make informed purchasing decisions that could help mitigate or minimise the suffering is the difficult bit, and one that is not greatly helped (in my opinion) by the original list of reasons. Best of all, of course, one ought perhaps not to buy anything, and rely instead, as shawnj points out, on words and deeds, although the cynic in me would, even so, be tempted to paraphrase Al Capone, & counter that one could get more with a kind word and jewellery than with a kind word alone.
posted by misteraitch at 6:36 AM on January 10, 2006

Canadian diamonds, once extracted, are still all bought up by DeBeers, so the difference made is only slight.
posted by furtive at 6:41 AM on January 10, 2006

Another vote for Canadian (the Mrs.'s has a little maple leaf etched into the side.). Sure, it's not as good as avoiding the diamond industry altogether, but it's kind of like going out of your way to shop at Costco's when there's a Sam's Club across the street.

When you take care of global ethical considerations, the remaining arguments boil down to not wanting people to spend their money the way they see fit, which is an entirely different argument altogether.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 6:42 AM on January 10, 2006

I should add that we bought in 2003, before DeBeers started investing in Canadian mining...
posted by Saucy Intruder at 6:43 AM on January 10, 2006

Cripes... I just bought my wife diamond earrings. They weren't tha expensive, but I have hever understood why women like diamonds so much, because to my eyes, they're not as pretty as other jewelry. If I'd know about the mistreatment of diamond miners, I'd have looked into that when purchasing.

On the other hand, my wife is still very happy with my purtchase, and earring diamonds are not really that expensive.
posted by eustacescrubb at 6:49 AM on January 10, 2006

No one ever went broke overestimating the greed and gullibility of the female ego.
posted by HTuttle at 6:51 AM on January 10, 2006

African diamond miners know the AIDS risk of consorting with prostitutes

Bullshit. Miners come overwhelmingly from poor, uneducated areas. I would bet money that more of them don't know what AIDS is or believe raping a virgin will cure them than they understand the process of transmission and risk of their sexual practices.

No one ever went broke overestimating the greed and gullibility of the female ego.

I'm going to assume you're joking.
posted by schroedinger at 6:56 AM on January 10, 2006

Echoing planetthoughtful, how are other gemstones different? They're not controlled by the DeBeers cartel necessarily, but how does one know they're not mined in the same conditions?
posted by Eideteker at 6:56 AM on January 10, 2006

I've considered buying a synthetic, but then I wonder: How is it different then buying a fake fur? It still supports the idiotic notion that fur is fashionable.
posted by McBain at 6:59 AM on January 10, 2006

"Diamonds are pretty"

That's entirely a matter of tastes. I for one never understood the fascination with them. To me they're just cold, boring, colourless pieces of dead material. Ok I'm not that much into jewels in the first place, but I find some silver piece with maybe an opaque stone or enamel decorations can look a lot nicer than any diamond. I don't like the look of a diamond, the geometric shaping and yeah, I think it's insane to spend more than a couple hundreds at most for any piece of jewellery. Good for those who can afford to spend that kind of money, lucky them, all the best and many happy returns (grrr). But even if I could, I'd rather get a huge plasma tv. Or an expensive exotic holiday. Or a really nice road bike. Or a scalped ticket for the next World Cup final.

Joking about that last one.

That said, I understand others like them, whether it's actually liking the thing or more for the status symbol factor, I don't have a problem with that; you can do whatever you want with your money. But once people know all the background of the diamond trade, I just cannot even picture how they'd still want one. I'd have thought the nasty associations would kill all the appeal. And it's not like there'a a shortage of luxury items to choose from.
posted by funambulist at 7:00 AM on January 10, 2006

There was an article in a magazine within the last two years - I thought it was Wired but I can't find it there - about a new class of synthetic diamonds that are indistinguishable from mined diamonds. It's giving cartels like DeBeers fits, because they're so close to the "real" thing.

I'm glad to see that so many people posting here are learning things about diamonds they didn't know before. It has always been my understanding that diamonds are just about as common as dirt - they're compressed carbon, after all, and there's an awful lot of carbon on earth...
posted by Zinger at 7:01 AM on January 10, 2006

Whoops, Afroblanco had posted the synthetic diamonds article I was thinking of above and I missed it. So, what he said.
posted by Zinger at 7:09 AM on January 10, 2006

Bought my wife an antique diamond ring from the 1840's. I bought it in Alexandria, Virginia. Yeah, it was probably crafted by slave laborers, ut then again so were the buildings and streets where I bought it.

I also bought her a fancy bling bling ring from Armenians in Syria displaced from what is now Turkey in the genocide there.
posted by Pollomacho at 7:11 AM on January 10, 2006

On further reflection, it has to be a good thing, I think, to promote awareness of the supply-chains that lie behind the items that we purchase: the mines behind the diamonds on our fingers; the slaughterhouses behind the steaks on our plates; the sweatshops behind the shirts on our backs; & the factories and refineries and oil-wells behind the keyboards that we're typing on. In fairness to the author of the '10 reasons', I see that this is just part of a broader set of arguments being advanced. In other news, and from the same site, I see that giving flowers to ones sweetheart is another Econ-Atrocity.
posted by misteraitch at 7:12 AM on January 10, 2006

im glad this has been brought up here, i have long known that the jewelry industry.. not just the one concerning diamonds is incredibly corrupt. but then i think the idea of needing a love token at all to prove your love is bullshit. happiness should not be brought from proving to all the ladies in town who 'won the biggest rock', people need to stop flaunting everything all the time and then MAYBE more people would actually focus on true happiness and love, instead of rings and fancy weddings, and stop needing to sell all those diamond rings after they get divorced.
posted by trishthedish at 7:14 AM on January 10, 2006

Check out diamonds on ebay. The only ones to attract any bids are all priced less then $10 A 1.40 carat diamond for $6.95
posted by delmoi at 7:16 AM on January 10, 2006

The term "synthetic" is misleading - if I recall the articles I read correctly, a more apt term is "cultured." Essentially, the makers in Boston and Florida have found a method of accelerating nature's processes. (CVD) Chemically, the cultured diamonds are no different from the ones that come from mines - they're crystallized carbon - they just happen to be perfect.

That said, as I also recall, they were only making yellow diamonds at the time, (cheaper) which command a significantly lower price than white diamonds. Also, the applications were not just for jewelery - I believe they were attempting to grow a wafer large enough to build a diamond-based rather than silicon-based processor for computing applications - see this link for some details on diamond-processors.
posted by TeamBilly at 7:16 AM on January 10, 2006

What jemstones do hold their value?
posted by delmoi at 7:19 AM on January 10, 2006

TeamBilly, no one said that synthetic diamonds wern't 'real' diamonds. But they are 'synthetic' in that they are man made. They of course have all the same properties of real diamonds, aside from a lack of flaws.
posted by delmoi at 7:21 AM on January 10, 2006

The wisdom of Sarah Silverman:

The strangest and most chilling bit in her repertoire concerns a gorgeous new jewel she's just bought. The jewel, she explains, grows on the tailbone of Ethiopian babies, who obviously have to be deboned. As she's describing this process she stops cold and grins with embarrassment. "Oh God, it sounds so bad when you say it out loud." Yet she can't help herself. "It's like a diamond that smells like baby," she says, in the manner of a Valley girl describing her latest purchase. "If you guys could see it. It is so cute, so worth it."
posted by ColdChef at 7:23 AM on January 10, 2006

Not all women want or like jewelry, or feel the need to have diamonds, or a set of china, or matching flatware, or any of those trappings that everyone keeps telling us that we need. I've never had a wedding ring of any kind, because they're useless to me. My husband feels the same. I'd be kind of miffed if he gifted me with diamond earrings or something similar, just because it's a no brainer husband-bot kind of a present, like red roses on Valentine's Day.

No one ever went broke overestimating the greed and gullibility of the female ego.

Thank you for that enlightening comment.
posted by iconomy at 7:33 AM on January 10, 2006

Diamonds are treated differently here in the US. In India, jewellers do buy back diamonds all the time. The most common practice is to use the old diamonds in a new ornament.

Also I believe Diamonds from Indian mines are also non-blood diamonds. The Kohinoor, the jewel of the Queen's crown, was from an India mine too.
posted by riffola at 7:42 AM on January 10, 2006

I'm not sure if other women have posted here, but let me say that I don't give a squat about diamonds. And I admit I love jewelry a bit too much. Goofd pawn shops provide much better deals and much more interesting pieces (in many cases) for interesting colored stones and skillful gold work.

Snarky remarks here about female egos and desires suggest that you might be selecting women for all the wrong reasons.
posted by Red58 at 7:45 AM on January 10, 2006

No one ever went broke overestimating the greed and gullibility of the female ego.

Thank you for that enlightening comment.

If the same exact thing was said about the male ego, nobody here would have batted an eyelash. I'm just saying. Women are petty, venal creatures just as much as men are. They're not magic.
posted by jonmc at 7:45 AM on January 10, 2006

TeamBilly, I believe yellow diamonds are more expensive than white, not less, at least according to the first part of that Wired article.
posted by bashos_frog at 7:46 AM on January 10, 2006

The scary thing is that I personally know two women who basically said "I don't give a shit." Ugh.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 7:48 AM on January 10, 2006

My own small experience with engagement rings leads me to believe that a woman who wants a diamond ring simply doesn't care about the brainwashing that made her want it, about the vicious scam that diamonds represent, about the welfare of the miners/slaves/children who dig them up, or about the other much more worthwhile things that money could buy. She just wants the diamond. She wants someone to spend a tremendous amount of money on a useless bauble just because she's such a beautiful and unique flower - exactly like every other bride-to-be. It's as much about showing off to and fitting in with her peer group as it is about delight with sparkly things or the mawkish and stunningly effective DeBeers ads. Explaining the reasons why diamonds are bad doesn't get all the other girls at the office excited the way a diamond does, after all.

allan: Is it really that hard to find a decent stone in an informal market?

It seems to me that DeBeers and jewelers in general work to make the average person believe that he/she isn't qualified to judge gemstones without the "expert" assistance of the sort one gets at a jewelry store. Diamonds are available far below retail in pawn shops, on Ebay, etc, but I think the average Joe is afraid of getting ripped off. What's more, the women I've asked about this seem to think that "someone else's diamond" or discounted diamonds aren't worth having - the sum spent by the diamond-giver is absolutely an important part of the appeal to the diamond-receiver. Women oohing and ahhing over each other's diamond rings do seem to end up discussing the precise size of the stones, which is just slightly more genteel than discussing the cost directly.

MattD: Diamonds are pretty and natural resource extraction is ugly, but there's nothing exceptional about either how people pay for pretty diamonds or the contribution of diamond mining to the aggregate ugliness of natural resource extraction.

Look into the history of DeBeers, and I'm afraid you'll find that you couldn't be any more mistaken about that. The modern demand for diamonds is entirely artificial, the supply is incomprehensibly vast yet prices remain artificially high, the business practices associated with them would make Microsoft blush, the mining practices are medieval in their brutality, and the money spent on them funds violence and warfare in an unusually direct way. The diamond business has been controversial precisely because it's so entirely exceptional.

I also don't like the basic thesis that people are sheep. African diamond miners know the AIDS risk of consorting with prostitutes, and some of them choose to do so anyway. American women know that they could get a big plasma television for the cost of modest diamond ring, and some of them choose the diamond over the plasma screen.

Large groups of people make the same irrational decisions together, and this proves that people are not like sheep? What?

People are social creatures, and that means that yes, they absolutely do act like sheep, at least some of the time. What's so incredible about that?
posted by Western Infidels at 7:49 AM on January 10, 2006

People are social creatures, and that means that yes, they absolutely do act like sheep, at least some of the time. What's so incredible about that?

I think that what gets people's goat about the sheep thing is that the person proclaiming people to be sheep usually considers himself an exception, which is sanctimony and hubris of the worst kind.

just a theory.
posted by jonmc at 7:52 AM on January 10, 2006

Hey, no one really gives a shit if you bought your diamond through some sort of "ethical" channel. Might as well let everyone know the fur stole you wrap yourself in is from roadkill. You are still perpetuating the allure of the thing.

That said, the sanctimoniousness on this thread is awe-inspiring. How about acknowledging the fact that ultimately it's the DeBeers Corp. that decides on the treatment of it's workers. How about cheap Chinese goods? Any less tainted?

On preview:
She just wants the diamond. She wants someone to spend a tremendous amount of money on a useless bauble just because she's such a beautiful and unique flower - exactly like every other bride-to-be. It's as much about showing off to and fitting in with her peer group as it is about delight with sparkly things or the mawkish and stunningly effective DeBeers ads.

Wow, dude, generalize much? I agree your average bride probably doesn't know the backstory on diamonds, but I might posit that quite a few women feel the diamond engagement ring say more to them as a symbol of commitment as opposed to the cartoon/hollywood version of bride you've created for us here.
posted by docpops at 7:55 AM on January 10, 2006

jonmc: I think that what gets people's goat about the sheep thing is that the person proclaiming people to be sheep usually considers himself an exception, which is sanctimony and hubris of the worst kind.

That sounds reasonable. I hereby declare that I am no exception. Baa! Baaaaa!
posted by Western Infidels at 7:56 AM on January 10, 2006

screw you too. - posted by sic

oh I got screwed. when she saw it, I got screwed big time.
posted by Frasermoo at 8:07 AM on January 10, 2006

Ok now I'm curious - how widespread is this tradition of the engagement ring in the US? nevermind buying a diamond ring? Starting from which classes? ages?
posted by funambulist at 8:08 AM on January 10, 2006

oh I got screwed. when she saw it, I got screwed big time.

Women have never needed diamonds to screw me. I feel sorry for you.
posted by NationalKato at 8:13 AM on January 10, 2006

how widespread is this tradition

Short of teenagers eloping or the lazy six-time divorcee, you would be hard pressed to find where a diamond doesn't come into play at some point. It's penetrated into our culture that much.
posted by shawnj at 8:15 AM on January 10, 2006

Women are petty, venal creatures just as much as men are.

Yes, jonmc, nobody ever denied that. But HTuttle didn't say "No one ever went broke overestimating the greed and gullibility of the human ego," he said "No one ever went broke overestimating the greed and gullibility of the female ego." I'm sure once you take off your hey-we're-all-mooks glasses you'll be able to see the difference. Or would you defend someone who said "Jews are greedy" or "blacks are dumb" because hey, we're all greedy and dumb?
posted by languagehat at 8:18 AM on January 10, 2006

I like this argument that everything from diamonds to jeans made in China to keyboards made in Taiwan to pistachio nuts from Iran is supposedly on the very same level of cruel exploitment (and practical useleness?). It's a given, right? ok then, let's declare all concerns about anything completely useless. The Chinese are all one billion slaves, the diamond trade is always going to be exploitative, the environment is doomed already, and humans are imperfect, so why bother at all? Who cares?
posted by funambulist at 8:20 AM on January 10, 2006

docpops: Wow, dude, generalize much? I agree your average bride probably doesn't know the backstory on diamonds, but I might posit that quite a few women feel the diamond engagement ring say more to them as a symbol of commitment as opposed to the cartoon/hollywood version of bride you've created for us here.

Sorry if I've offended; that's not my purpose.

This isn't a "cartoon/hollywood version of [a] bride [I've] created," this is what several women (including my own fiancee) have actually explained to me, in real-life, face-to-face discussions on the merits and demerits of diamond engagement rings. They want to show the ring off to a circle of oohing and aahing admirers, who will then (so the "reasoning" goes) see that someone obviously loves the ring-wearer very much, because he was willing to waste tons of money on the ring.

I know perfectly well that not every woman feels this way. My experience has been that a whole lot do, though - more of them than I ever would have guessed, in fact. I don't see any reason to think that this is because of some inherent female personality trait, either. I think it's just evidence that 100 years of cunning DeBeers marketing has shaped people's desires and expectations.
posted by Western Infidels at 8:20 AM on January 10, 2006

Or would you defend someone who said "Jews are greedy" or "blacks are dumb" because hey, we're all greedy and dumb?

No, but I'm fairly sure (like I said) that if someone had made a similar comment about the male ego, it would have been greeted with indifference or amusement rather than reflexive offense, which seems strange to me.
posted by jonmc at 8:22 AM on January 10, 2006

The only time I've been proposed to, my (now-)wife didn't offer me a diamond. We're neither teenagers nor divorcees. At some point my mother did give her an old( >50 yrs), small diamond ring that came from some aunt or other. She doesn't wear it much. I don't like to think we're exceptional, but of the half-dozen or so weddings I've gone to in the last few years, i think about 2/3rds involved a diamond.
posted by sohcahtoa at 8:24 AM on January 10, 2006

What a great thread this is turning into... so, as a few other have already asked...

Are there any gems that WOULD be considered a good investment?

and reversing funambulists question... how prevalent are diamonds in the engagement ritual in other countries of the world? I figured it could only be an excessive American thing... am i wrong?
posted by cusack at 8:26 AM on January 10, 2006

oh I got screwed. when she saw it, I got screwed big time.


heehehehehe good one Frasermoo.

Just another topic that the Saints here on mefi can wring their collective hands over imo.
posted by a3matrix at 8:27 AM on January 10, 2006

My wife has gotten far, far more satisfaction at telling the story of her engagement ring than she would have gotten had I given her a diamond. Of course, anyone who doesn't know the story sees a fairly nondescript silver ring, so strangers are unimpressed. But, guys, believe me, you don't need to give a diamond for your betrothed to get oohs and aahs.
posted by MrMoonPie at 8:28 AM on January 10, 2006

(and just for the record, I find diamonds pretty boring to look at, too. They look like cut glass to me basically. big whoop)
posted by jonmc at 8:29 AM on January 10, 2006

DeBeers' marketing is pure evil genius. I saw a DeBeers ad at a bus stop last week that sayssomething like "Diamonds: More Romantic Than Writing Her a Song. More Special Than Singing It Yourself." It's laughably manipulative, but it works.
posted by brain_drain at 8:33 AM on January 10, 2006

jonmc: No, but I'm fairly sure (like I said) that if someone had made a similar comment about the male ego, it would have been greeted with indifference or amusement rather than reflexive offense, which seems strange to me.

I'm confused. Does that make the original comment OK? And if not, then why bring up a hypothetical situation that seems to have no other purpose but to derail attention from the original poster's motivations behind his comment?

a3matrix: Just another topic that the Saints here on mefi can wring their collective hands over imo.

I didn't realize it required sainthood to be concerned about how ethicless corporations shaped one's consumer attitudes, to the great detriment of a large percentage of a country's population. Silly me, for thinking caring about child soldiers and hands getting cut off and whatnot was basic human decency!

funambulist and cusakc, the online book mentioned by Staggering Jack touches on the history of the engagement ring (and the diamond engagement ring) in American culture, as well as others. A Google search for "ethical gem mining" brought up these articles from Co-op America.
posted by schroedinger at 8:39 AM on January 10, 2006

No, but I'm fairly sure (like I said) that if someone had made a similar comment about the male ego, it would have been greeted with indifference or amusement rather than reflexive offense, which seems strange to me.


That's an unproven assumption. And if someone HAD said that in this thread, which they didn't, perhaps if it bothers you so much, YOU would be the one to speak up? Or would you step back and wait for someone else to do it?

Don't blame people for objecting to misogynistic speech simply because there was no equal opportunity to object to anti-male speech.
posted by agregoli at 8:41 AM on January 10, 2006

whatever, schroedinger. you're (un-gen-studded) halo is in the mail.
posted by jonmc at 8:42 AM on January 10, 2006

I worked with MrMoonPie's wife at the time, and I can verify that there were lots of oohs and aahs (and some of them came from me).

If my hypothetical financee bought me an expensive engagement ring, I would wonder if he knew me at all.

Romantic surprises aside, it never make any sense to me that the guy has to pay for the ring on his own, anyway. I mean, it's a decision that they're both making, right? If a woman feels that she needs to have an engagement ring, they should both pay for it.

MrMoonPie, please tell your wife that Johanna says, "Hi!"
posted by amarynth at 8:44 AM on January 10, 2006

agregoli, even you can't be that dumb. comments like "men are scum," and jokes about men "thinking with their dicks," are fairly routine here and elsewhere, and I'm fine with that. I just see no reason to buy into the cherished societal myth of women as either evil bitches or pure angels.

People are equal. Especially in the fact that we're all shit.
posted by jonmc at 8:46 AM on January 10, 2006

Re: jonmc in this thread.

See: Trolls, non-feeding of.
posted by you just lost the game at 8:46 AM on January 10, 2006

reflexive offense

Nice assumption. It is of course inconceivable that it was reasoned offense.

which seems strange to me.

Why don't I believe this? Oh, wait, were you just looking for a bullshit reason to chime in?
posted by Skot at 8:48 AM on January 10, 2006

I think that what gets people's goat about the sheep thing

i enjoy seeing people have a cow over the sheep thing. ;-)

on topic: i would so love to print out the list and put up flyers near the all jewelry shops in the old neighborhood (aka "the hood", "the inner city", "the ghetto", etc.). i get the feeling it'd mostly be a waste of time and resources, but i'd be happy if even a handful of people decided not to buy bling because of it.
posted by lord_wolf at 8:49 AM on January 10, 2006

but I might posit that quite a few women feel the diamond engagement ring say more to them as a symbol of commitment

That may be true, but surely it is evident that very few people, men or women, know or care much for the origin of diamonds, and even among those that do, it often would make no difference in their purchasing the item.

If the woman you have fallen in love with expects a traditional diamond engagement ring, most men are likely to purchase one. It is a tradition, it is expected, and it most certainly is social plumage and demarcation.

Speaking very carefully, not everyone is as "sophisticated" as many of the posters in this thread, and this sort of thing simply does not register in their lives at all.

My wife is quite bright and not at all materialistic. I feel lucky that I found someone not pretentious. She has her own style, and is quite frugal with things such as jewelry and clothing, etc. Our wedding was a modest, affordable affair.

But, if I had told her I wasn't going to buy her a diamond engagement ring because it would be supporting an oppressive worldwide diamond cartel, I feel confident she would not have responded positively.

An engagement ring is decoration. For it to serve its purpose, it has to follow the prescribed form. For instance, for someone for whom tradition is important, you can't have a Christmas compost pile. It must be a Christmas tree, otherwise, why even do it? Same thing for engagement "rubies" or similar.

If you have the good fortune of falling in love with an enlightened political-economy aware woman well versed in international rights and trade cartels, then by all means, make her happy by not buying a diamond. She will thank you.

For us mere mortals, making the wife feel happy, worthwhile, and accepted is worth purchasing a good that is already on the market.

Another thing I would want to point out is this could possibly change over time. When I engaged my wife, she was 20. Today, at 31, she might be more open to such a viewpoint. But at the time, while we were still students at college, she would have been profoundly disappointed.

Also, BIG diamonds are rare, and should be expensive. Regular-sized diamonds are plentiful, but everyone is conditioned to believe since they are smaller versions of big diamonds, they should still be valuable.

Also, I don't believe the marketing or ads have even a fraction of the influence that peers or tradition do. Most women want an engagement ring because all the women they know who got married got one. Again, it's tradition, and today it is irrelevant if it is a 60 or 600 year tradition.

Women have never needed diamonds to screw me. I feel sorry for you.
posted by NationalKato at 10:13 AM CST on January 10

True for practically all of us. However, odds are very, very high that if you choose an American bride, you will need a diamond to get her to marry you.

Also, understand that at least some of those women screwed you in hope of attaining a diamond later.

In my case, I would say practically all girls that were not one-night stands or equivalent.
posted by Ynoxas at 8:50 AM on January 10, 2006

I didn't realize it required sainthood to be concerned about how ethicless corporations shaped one's consumer attitudes, to the great detriment of a large percentage of a country's population. Silly me, for thinking caring about child soldiers and hands getting cut off and whatnot was basic human decency!


I wonder how you can even sleep at night. Surely the despair you feel and your inability to affect change in a world gone so wrong will drive you over the edge.
posted by a3matrix at 8:52 AM on January 10, 2006

A guy in my office a couple months ago proposed to his girlfriend, and got a diamond ring. I tried to talk him out of it, told him to get a synthetic one but he's like "why not just get a cubic zerconia". Like he thought synthetic ones were somehow worth less, even though they were exactly the same.
posted by delmoi at 8:53 AM on January 10, 2006

Two more reasons I don't want a diamond:

1. I don't wear jewelry. I don't like the feel of metal touching my skin and rings always get caught on things.
2. I'd much rather have something that I'd use. Like an engagement Ipod, or car, or book.

Both my ex and my current boyfriend understood that if the question ever got asked, if a ring was attached, the answer would be no. My current boyfriend says it makes life a lot easier to have a girlfriend who's much more pleased with a good book or dvd collection than shiny baubles. My ex, being a jewerly maker, felt that it was annoying that while I thought his work was pretty, I'd never wear it. Plus, he said it made holiday presents more of a pain in the ass because he actually had to think about what I might want instead of just the default of giving me something shiny.

There's a reason he's the ex.
posted by teleri025 at 8:58 AM on January 10, 2006

So, it's good to know that fair trade standards and ethical practices are being applied to the industry... but still, are any gemstones a sound investment? it seems to me that the potential for finding more of these rocks diminishes their eventual value. That being said, I also never understood the gold standard... how can it even have value when we keep digging up more of it from the ground?
posted by cusack at 9:00 AM on January 10, 2006

delmoi, my understanding is that synthetics are not yet readily available and affordable, at least not in "white" form. There are very good diamond-like stones that are hard to distinguish from real diamonds -- moissanite for example. But it ain't a diamond, and if a lady wants a diamond, that means your colleague can either (i) lie, or (ii) pony up.
posted by brain_drain at 9:04 AM on January 10, 2006

My wife and I both have wedding rings but they are small, cheap (<100 each) and have no value other than the vale we give them. Neither of us has ever wanted to show them off to a gaggle of girls and both of us cringe when some other woman assumes we would care about her "rock." But I admit, we are in the minority. Although I know a few other women (some of them straight, even!) who feel the same, by far, most of the women I know want the giant diamond ring and the "Princess Wedding." Blech. Conspicuous consumption, Veblen goods, and ethical problems... we really have been socialized into diamond desire.
posted by arcticwoman at 9:05 AM on January 10, 2006

Hah! I swear this was not a setup.
posted by MrMoonPie at 9:08 AM on January 10, 2006

an engagement-ipod?

i need a break from t'internet.
posted by Frasermoo at 9:13 AM on January 10, 2006

I'm a gemologist and was a jeweler for years. In answer to the question posed above about which gemstones hold their value: the answer is pretty complicated. As a general rule, unless a stone has some significant provenance (as in it used to belong to someone famous or infamous) it loses a great deal of value as soon as you walk out of the store. This is particularly true of diamonds. The sad truth is that diamonds are plentiful, and the mark-up for them is huge. DeBeers' recent loss of their stranglehold on the market has meant better deals for the consumer, but the average one-carat diamond is still marked up over 150% from the diamond dealer to you - and that's not counting the huge markup it's seen from the mine onwards.

That being said, the average jeweler has absolutely no control over the pricing of stones, since they're forced to be competitive in order to survive. Complicating this is the huge overhead that's taken on by most jewelry stores - insurance premiums are immense and employee theft is all too common.

There recently passed legislation that is supposed to ensure that diamonds sold are "conflict free" - but, again, the average jeweler has no control over the market at all, and it's entirely likely that the conflict diamonds end up in your local jewelry store. Canadian diamonds are available (there are two brands out on the market), and they're laser-inscribed. If you have doubts, ask the jeweler to put the stone under the miscroscope to see the inscription on the girdle.

As for colored stones - the mining operations for those gems are just as brutal. However, since the market is not so tightly controlled, prices tend to be more reflective of their rarity. For instance, a fine quality ruby is more expensive on a per-carat basis than an equivalently sized diamond because fine rubies - especially untreated ones - are so very rare.

For whatever it's worth, I wear an estate Old European cut diamond that was cut at the turn of the last century. I think that it has more character, and is reflective of a time when stone cutting was an art-form and not a mega-business. But I do prefer colored stones over diamonds. They're more interesting gemologically and you can find domestic stones (such as tourmaline and peridot) that don't exploit workers to such a large extent.
posted by Flakypastry at 9:14 AM on January 10, 2006

Careful, if women lose the illusion that they need to be given a lump of blood-soaked glass to prove their worth, they may start to shed other illusions, like that they need husbands at all. This one symbolic illusion is the culmination of the brainwashing that's keeping our society from falling apart completely. You troublemakers with your concerns for people who don't even live in this country are just going to ruin it for everyone.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:15 AM on January 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

How many things in your house were made in China? Diamonds don't exactly have a monopoly on the "meaningless crap purchased with human blood and sweat" market.
posted by EarBucket at 9:15 AM on January 10, 2006

But, if I had told her I wasn't going to buy her a diamond engagement ring because it would be supporting an oppressive worldwide diamond cartel, I feel confident she would not have responded positively.

Huh. You see, if I told a woman that and she said "I don't care; I want a fucking diamond even if I have to wash off the blood myself" I wouldn't marry her. I don't want to have kids with a selfish, amoral person. I don't want to have kids with someone so willfully ignorant that they can read the truth about the history of diamond engagment rings and still say "but what will my friends think?!" Fuck your friends, then.

For what shall it profit a woman, if she shall gain a big fat diamond, and lose her own soul?
posted by Optimus Chyme at 9:22 AM on January 10, 2006

I would rather spend about £50 on metalworking evening classes and make my wife a ring from plain sterling silver than buy her a diamond ring. The effort of making it myself (IMO) should vastly outweigh the "Oh I spent £1,000 on this hunk of rock - hope you like it" aspect of a diamond ring. Colour me unimpressed by people who like to show off their money - if anything marks someone as a fool in my mind it's ostentaciousnessocityituditiness. I'd rather someone made me a birthday card than just spent £2.00 on it - shows that they actually, you know, care and stuff.
posted by longbaugh at 9:24 AM on January 10, 2006

I have to say, I'm not sure I find this list all that compelling. I already knew that diamond prices were kept artificially high by a cartel, so buying one is a rip-off, and that the idea of "a diamond is forever" is used basically to restrict the resale market.

A number of these objections are vitiated simply by buying a Canadian diamond, which, despite this site's best attempts to persuade us otherwise, helps First Nations communities rather than harms them.

And if you're comfortable with the fact that you're being ripped off in the sense that it's not a free market, then who cares? I mean, yes, it's a lot of money, but it's something you'll have for the rest of your life (so you may not care about the resale value). And if it's beautiful to you, and a symbol of committment, then what the hell? Why should we feel guilty or hesitant about desiring something beautiful? I'm not saying people should want a diamond, just that this list gives no good reasons not to buy one if you do want once (so long as you buy Canadian!).
posted by Dasein at 9:25 AM on January 10, 2006

Diamonds are the perfect metaphorical way for people to lie to themselves about their nasty little hearts: you take something dark and dirty and common and apply enough pressure to make it blossom into something bright and clear and precious.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 9:26 AM on January 10, 2006

So those diamond cartel creeps got to you, too, huh?
posted by you just lost the game at 9:27 AM on January 10, 2006

"Just another topic that the Saints here on mefi can wring their collective hands over imo."

Quite a few of the victims lack that option, so we're taking up the slack.
posted by tyro urge at 9:29 AM on January 10, 2006

For us mere mortals, making the wife feel happy, worthwhile, and accepted is worth purchasing a good that is already on the market.

Or, to put it another way, the appeasment of an uninformed, greedy, or callous female makes it necessary to purchase an item whose sale perpetuates some of the worst the world has to offer.

Sounds like you need a new wife and some higher standards.
posted by shawnj at 9:39 AM on January 10, 2006

schroedinger (& Staggering Jack): thanks, that is a very fascinating read. I'd missed that while skimming the thread.

I'm not really used to the tradition of the engagement ring, I don't think it's the same as in the US. I'm more familiar with the money being spent on the wedding reception, clothes and honeymoon.
posted by funambulist at 9:51 AM on January 10, 2006

Sounds like you need a new wife and some higher standards.

Political zealots often sound a lot like religious fundamentalists to me. Statements like that are one reason why.
posted by jonmc at 9:55 AM on January 10, 2006

Or if your significant other loves goatse, you can always buy him/her this instead of a diamond ring.
posted by NationalKato at 10:03 AM on January 10, 2006

Dasein, I think the main objection to conflict diamonds is not of people's willingness to waste their money on overpriced pretty rocks, but that the wasting of money perpetuates the arms dealing, war crimes, and horrific human rights abuses that arise from the production of those pretty rocks.

When the connection between the stone on your finger and the blood on the ground is so overwhelmingly blatant, I cannot understand the person who is able to justify purchasing the stone anyway to satisfy their impulse for a shiny thing.
posted by schroedinger at 10:07 AM on January 10, 2006

Political zealots often sound a lot like religious fundamentalists to me. Statements like that are one reason why.

Take a look in the mirror there, jon. You aren't alone in making those kind of statements.

Besides, if feeling passionate about not promoting an industry that exploits their workers and fuels wars on a regional level is wrong, I don't want to be right.
posted by shawnj at 10:07 AM on January 10, 2006

niiiice, NationalKato.
posted by MrMoonPie at 10:08 AM on January 10, 2006

Yeah, that came out a bit different than it was in my head:

Read:

Take a look in the mirror there, jon. You make those kind of statements, too. As do most people with an opinion and a post comment button to publish it.
posted by shawnj at 10:09 AM on January 10, 2006

Or, to put it another way, the appeasment of an uninformed, greedy, or callous female makes it necessary to purchase an item whose sale perpetuates some of the worst the world has to offer.

Huh. You see, if I told a woman that and she said "I don't care; I want a fucking diamond even if I have to wash off the blood myself" I wouldn't marry her. I don't want to have kids with a selfish, amoral person. I don't want to have kids with someone so willfully ignorant that they can read the truth about the history of diamond engagment rings and still say "but what will my friends think?!" Fuck your friends, then.

Careful, if women lose the illusion that they need to be given a lump of blood-soaked glass to prove their worth, they may start to shed other illusions, like that they need husbands at all. This one symbolic illusion is the culmination of the brainwashing that's keeping our society from falling apart completely.

Sounds like you need a new wife and some higher standards.

Wow, what a level-headed, rational analysis of a complex international issue from a handful of spittle-flinging, BPD-affected bitter casuists.

Really, it's why I keep coming back. It's just so hard to find quality invective elsewhere, and besides, they keep banning me from Little Green Footballs.
posted by SweetJesus at 10:11 AM on January 10, 2006

A moment of comic relief (I can't tell if it born as conditioning for male or an attempt at making some woman feel like sluts)



And of course many males are blamed of having this mentality..well I guess some do, they meet their kind of woman :)
posted by elpapacito at 10:16 AM on January 10, 2006

Dasein : "this list gives no good reasons not to buy one if you do want once"

Let us see: we informed people buy a Canadian diamond, so everyone else who does not know the real story can be in peace and keep their comfy illusions that their commitment piece of carbon is not washed in blood, greedy and oppression all the way from the mine to the finger? Yeah. Let us do it.
posted by nkyad at 10:18 AM on January 10, 2006

A lot has been made in this thread of how women are conditioned to want a diamond engagement ring, but men in the US have bought into it just as much; Look at how many ads are targeted at men, such as the one above suggesting buying a diamond is more romantic than writing a song for your girlfriend, or the ones suggesting that you are a cheap bum if you don't blow two months salary on a diamond (thus pressuring some men into thinking they'll spend 3-4 months salary and be a really great guy.

There are a lot of women out there who are open to alternatives, though. I have bought 2 engagement rings-one ruby and one emerald-and both were well received by the recipients and their friends. Obviously, the first marriage didn't work out, but I don't think a diamond ring would have changed that.
posted by TedW at 10:29 AM on January 10, 2006

Not all women want or like jewelry, or feel the need to have diamonds, or a set of china, or matching flatware, or any of those trappings that everyone keeps telling us that we need.

Hear, hear.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:32 AM on January 10, 2006

Or, to put it another way, the appeasment of an uninformed, greedy, or callous female makes it necessary to purchase an item whose sale perpetuates some of the worst the world has to offer.

Sounds like you need a new wife and some higher standards.

Dude, I totally fucking agree. That's why I just dialed up the missus and told her to pack her shit and get the fuck out. I'm gonna go cruise the coffee shops fer some enlightened-type cooz...
posted by docpops at 10:33 AM on January 10, 2006

docpops, you can't imagine how much better your sex life is going to be.
posted by MrMoonPie at 10:45 AM on January 10, 2006

Optimus Chyme: You know that's not how it works. Engagement rings are commonplace, damn nearly ubiquitous. Do you make such pronouncements about washing the blood off the steak your date orders? Or washing the sweat and drugs off the coffee beans of your latte?

shawnj: you can fuck off. Based on your embarrassing livejournal, I expect you're going to need both a diamond and a plasma tv. And a tolerance for being a cuckold.

Oh, nice necklaces by the way. You might want to point out in this thread that you are an amateur jeweler. At least I hope you are an amateur. Glad to see your time at 4-H camp was well spent.
posted by Ynoxas at 10:46 AM on January 10, 2006

I'm feeling a group hug coming on.
posted by horsewithnoname at 10:48 AM on January 10, 2006

An interesting and informative thread.

I am not one to excuse the excesses of our consumerist economy and culture, but I'm not sure the 'poor oppressed' peoples struggling to feed their families want everyone to stop buying diamonds. I'd bet the mining job is very attractive to the 'indigenous peoples.' Nice to sit in the warmth and safety of our homes, snuggled up to our laptops, and opine on the morality of 'everyone else.' Isn't it a little (well-intentioned) form of racism to think that the little brown indigenous peoples NEED us to do anything?

While this is not to say that some of the reasons discussed don't have some validity. (e.g tough to resell etc) I question whether the fact that mines are located in remote areas, where wives cannot find jobs, is due to a conspiracy of profiteers or the fact that mines are tough to locate in cities, and obviously you have to have the mine where the material is. While it may be fun and fashionable to attribute the entire phenomenon to effective advertising, the attractiveness of diamonds (maybe of diamond engagement rings) is not a 65 year old artifact. Diamonds have been sought after for centuries or millenia.

Honestly, the competition for my moral outrage in today's society is furious, and I am not sure that this makes the top 10.

Now, if the Center for Popular Economics wants to propose a workable, practical solution, then THAT would be a wonderful thing. Somehow, I think not. Its those pesky details, always those damn details.
posted by sfts2 at 10:49 AM on January 10, 2006

This is my fiancee's engagement ring.
posted by dogwelder at 10:56 AM on January 10, 2006

oh I got screwed. when she saw it, I got screwed big time.

But not as well as you were when you actually bought it.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 11:01 AM on January 10, 2006

And not as well as the Liberian kid with no arms.
posted by horsewithnoname at 11:03 AM on January 10, 2006

sfts2- re: the location of mines - is purely a question of geology. Unfortunately, most gemstone sources are located in remote/barren/hostile geographic areas that make it very difficult to extract them. As you can probably guess, each gemstone is associated with a particular type of geologic formation (in the case of diamonds, kimberlite), so mining companies often open speculative holes where there are deposits of associated minerals. The country of Myanmar (formerly Burma) is a particularly rich source of colored gemstones.

And you're right, the love and lust for diamonds and colored stones goes back thousands of years. The history of stonecutting is pretty interesting, actually. The invention of the laser used for cutting stones really revolutionized the industry when it was introduced.

You know, if you really want to demonize someone/something, then try the huge retailers like Walmart and the former Service Merchandise. The latter revolutionized the jewelry industry 25 years ago when it opened jewelry sweatshops in Asia, used low karat gold and low quality stones, and voila - jewelry for the masses was born. Before this time, jewelry was pretty much sold by high-end specialty stores. The industry has changed forever due to this, and whether this can be called a "more egalitarian" setup or whether we've just succeeded in exploiting more workers all across the spectrum is a toss-up.
posted by Flakypastry at 11:04 AM on January 10, 2006

Interesting that so many people here are blaming women's greed for continuing the tradition of diamond engagement rings, when, as far as I can tell, it's so far been only men posting photos and descriptions of the engagement rings.
posted by occhiblu at 11:23 AM on January 10, 2006

shawnj: you can fuck off.

Glad to see you didn't totally overreact to what I said earlier.

Yes, I make jewelry as a hobby. I sell a few here and there, but I don't claim to make anything special or elegant. It's fucking costume jewelry made with cheap beads and cheaper wire. What relevance this has to do with anything in this thread escapes me. Do you think somehow because I dabble in jewelry that I have a vested interest in whether or not people buy diamonds? That's some pretty twisted logic if you do.

Based on your embarrassing livejournal I expect you're going to need both a diamond and a plasma tv. And a tolerance for being a cuckold.

Hit a nerve, did I? I haven't seen projection like that since the last time I went into Circuit City.

It's like what Optimus Chyme said earlier: "if I told a woman that and she said "I don't care; I want a fucking diamond even if I have to wash off the blood myself" I wouldn't marry her. I don't want to have kids with a selfish, amoral person. I don't want to have kids with someone so willfully ignorant that they can read the truth about the history of diamond engagment rings and still say "but what will my friends think?!" Fuck your friends, then. "

And I'll buy the plasma TV for myself, thanks.
posted by shawnj at 11:23 AM on January 10, 2006