• DavidGarcia@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    The minority of all people think like this. people love scarcity even if it’s completely artificial. It’s just so they can show off their “wealth”.

    The sneaker resale market is the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard of, yet it’s a billions of dollars industry, just because people are dumb like that.

    Same reason why De Beers or Luxottica make so much money for seemingly no reason, because people love it.

    Moissanite and artifical gems will forever be a knockoff in the eyes if these people.

    Diamonds are the NFTs of commodities.

    • Corkyskog
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      1 year ago

      As I understand it the artificial diamond industry has gotten so good, they can now even create diamonds with imperfections that mimic natural diamonds. To the point where the only way they can tell the difference is to micro etch something on the natural diamonds.

  • itsonlygeorge@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    Lab grown diamonds/gems are also pure as fuck. Who wouldn’t want that?

    No I want my impurities and child labor with my diamonds!

    Also, diamonds are worth nothing in a pawn store. The only valuable part of your engagement ring is the gold, which is often not the highest quality anyway.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, I love how marketing guys have come up with “the faults prove that it’s real leather! Not like that flawless fake stuff!”

    • TheOneCurly@lemmy.theonecurly.page
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      1 year ago

      There are a couple of online retailers that specialize in it. That’s what we ended up doing for my wife’s engagement ring and wedding band. It noticeably sparkles in direct sun, she gets comments on it pretty often.

      • Squanchin' it@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Geez the couple sites I found are still way more expensive that I expected! I’d love to see it in person, it looks way more sparkly

        • spaysi
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          1 year ago

          I found my moissanite engagement ring on Etsy for a reasonable price, maybe check there? Lots of small time jewelers list their stuff on the site for really reasonable prices.

          • Squanchin' it@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            Oh wow, yeah those can be more in my range, I’ll have to learn the grading scale though 😅 thanks a lot!

            • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Moissanite can become cloudy if you don’t clean it often. And the extra sparkle means people may judge you for having a “fake” ring. Like a polyester suit, people who know can tell by how bright it is.

              Lab gems are relatively cheap and look exactly like the “real” ones. I mean exactly the same. People would only know it’s a lab diamond if you had a ring the size of Elizabeth Taylor’s at Applebee’s.

              Rarecarat and Ritani have some good prices.

              • ponfriend
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                1 year ago

                Moissanite is a nonporous stone, so it doesn’t get cloudy. It can get dirty on the surface like a diamond, but you can just rinse it off. On the other hand, a diamond will turn cloudy if it is in a house fire, while moissanite will not.

                Naturally occurring moissanite is extremely rare, while naturally occurring diamond not so much. A geologist might judge you for wearing something that isn’t real moissanite but a knockoff with a lower refractive index.

      • jballs
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        1 year ago

        My wife lost her engagement ring and wedding band recently. Might have to look into this as a replacement.

  • MrBusinessMan@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Well they’re not as valuable because they didn’t have to be dug out the ground. The amount of work that goes into something is what makes it valueable. That’s why I only buy the toughest to reach diamonds from the most brutal mines in Africa, now those are valuable!

    • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      The amount of work that goes into something is what makes it valueable

      Hello, I’m Tim Cook and let me tell about all the hard work that went into this monitor stand

    • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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      1 year ago

      Just realized that was satire, but anyway I already started writing so I’m posting it lol.

      Labor theory of value was outdated to centuries ago.

      Labor sets a minimum value when stuff is in demand, but without demand the value can be zero despite how much effort was put into it.

      • MrBusinessMan@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Two* and no, sorry. It’s not my fault you don’t understand what socially necessary labor time is, and hence don’t understand LTV and have mistaken your own ignorance for an argument. You’ll never be a big boss top dog businessman like me with such a feeble understanding.

  • noseatbelt@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I’m trying to disabuse my husband of the notion that moissanite looks “fake” because of its refractory properties. I just like the sparkles, I’m not trying to pass it off as a diamond. It’s an entirely different stone.

  • xantoxis@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If you actually turned lead into gold it would still only be worth as much as lead. (Also the global gold market would collapse into dust, so that would have some consequences.)

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Something like this actually happened. There was a super rare element that was shiny and light weight and incredibly rare. They made the crown jewels of France out of it so the King could show off the wealth of the country to everyone by having this unique and rare element in his crown.

      Then they discovered a chemical process to extract this incredibly rare element from bauxite.

      Now we make pop cans out of it. Yep, aluminum was at one time a precious metal.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      Cheap and plentiful gold would be a boon for a lot of applications that require resistance to water corrosion, so even after the initial collapse, its price would slowly creep up again.

    • InfiniWheel@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Technically, isn’t it possible to turn lead into gold already? Its just an insanely expensive task (the whole adding protons to atoms) with no real benefit (since the result will be way more expensive than even regular gold).

    • OpenSourceDeezNuts
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      1 year ago

      A lot of jewelry boutiques sell both these days. When I bought an engagement ring, most places I looked have both lab grown and mined diamonds as options when you pick a diamond for the ring.

      Most reputable dealers claim to have cruelty-free sources, but synthetic diamonds were about half the price, so I still think buying mined diamonds is a bit silly.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Naturally horen diamonds are almost always Inferior in quality but hey, we have a fake Industry responsible for child labour and suffering to hold up, so we made. Shit. Up. "Naturally formed diamonds are, eh, more beautiful! Yes, yes, that’s why they are more expensive!

  • starman2112
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    1 year ago

    Why are lab grown diamonds spilling out of factories like the closet in Zaboomafoo but I can’t find a single artificial Phosphophyllite for less than a billion dollars

    • Erika2rsis@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      This happens sometimes for me too. You can try opening it in browser, but I’ll write a transcription for our screen-reader-using friends, too.

      Transcription:


      tlirsgender | Nov 6, 2020

      Weird peeve time. Calling lab grown gemstones “fake” is stupid because it’s the same shit just not formed naturally. An artificially grown diamond is the same shit as a natural diamond it is the exact same material bro it’s all fuckign carbon


      spacefroggity | 45m ago

      It’s carbon it’s pretty and it didn’t involve slave labor what’s not to love??? Hi I’m having geology opinions tonight apparently. And I’m right


      spacefroggity | 45m ago

      There is so much bullshit in the diamonds industry to be mad about tbh. It also ties into the bullshit of the wedding industry as a whole but we don’t have the time to unpack all that


      val-ritz | Nov 29, 2020

      not even going to lie, the day i learned i could get like 15 lab grown rubies the size of dimes for $20 is the day i spent $20 on rubies, and i have never once said to myself "man, i wish this cost $1,600 and the lives of eight children to produce


      fuckyeahmineralogy | Dec 8, 2020

      We are a pro-lab-grown mineral blog here, not only is it massively cheaper but massively more ethical as well in many cases.


      thegreenpea | Mar 8, 2021

      another very cool lab grown gem is Moissanite. It has a 9.25 on the mohs hardness scale where diamond is a 10. Moissanote also has a 2.69 refractive index in comparison to diamond’s 2.419 and here is the difference

      Diamond on left and moissanite on right: moissanite's refraction consists of long, thin beams almost in rainbow colors, whereas diamond's refraction has shorter, thicker, whitish beams

      and the best thing about moissanite? It is all lab grown and it costs only a fraction of what diamond costs. So fuck the diamond indsutry and buy lab grown gems which cost significantly less


      rubixpsyche | Aug 6, 2021

      Also it’s just cool to think of some mad scientist lookin person doing shit against the law of the universe and making pretty gems for you. Like cmon. This shouldnt be allowed probably. But humans really be like on gOD i want some shiny an just started MAKIN em


      dadzathechaosgod | 46m ago

      for years people wanted alchemy, well now we have alchemy and we’re making gemstones out of it and suddenly “it doesn’t count” anymore

      • can
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        1 year ago

        Thank you. I wouldn’t have been able to describe the image as well.

      • Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Doing fine work there.

        While this picture does load for me, I also frequently run into those that don’t on Connect for Lemme. I’m not tech savvy, but I suspect it’s related to different instances or something like that.

        • Erika2rsis@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 year ago

          For me, when a picture doesn’t load on my Lemmy app (Liftoff), if I go back to the post about an hour or so later, it loads just fine. And as said, clicking on “view post in browser”, then the picture will load just fine there, too. So it’s a really weird problem that in my impression is specific to Lemmy apps.

          • Laticauda@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            For me viewing on browser doesn’t seem to work either. Idk if it’s the app I use or something else.