Right? A dime is a touch over 18mm, and prices I’ve been able to nail down on a couple sites for artificial rubies of that size, while way less than terrestrial rubies, cannot be considered ”cheap” - we’re still talking thousands of dollars.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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).
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.
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!
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
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
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
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.