Diamonds Suck

I, as a European, cannot fathom how anyone would spend a significant amount of money on an engagement ring! The engagement rings we got ourselves cost 18$ and were made from wood. After all, they only need to last a few months, or maybe 1-2 years, until the wedding.<p>Regarding the wedding ring, I can understand slightly better how someone would put a bit more money into that, considering that you wear it for life. But there are so much better options than buying a shiny rock. Why not go to a goldsmith and pay 1000$ for a workshop where you forge your own rings? That will result in a lasting memory of a nice event, for a fraction of the cost, instead of throwing thousands of dollars out the window for a shiny rock that you simply buy at the store. Or maybe you don&#x27;t even need gold? In my opinion, silver, titanium or maybe something like steel combined with carbon fibers looks better anyways.

The diamond tradition became a ridiculous cultural trait, buy lab-grown diamonds can help greatly mitigate the wastefulness of regular natural diamonds. I don&#x27;t think Moissanite is the right replacement - they have too much of the so-called &quot;fire&quot;, almost too sparkly as the article shows. I think Moissanites are inferior to diamonds in appearance in my personal, subjective opinion.<p>Lab-grown diamonds, however, can be had for as low as 20% of the price of natural diamonds (for large sizes), often less than Moissanite, and absolutely look the part. You simply can&#x27;t tell the difference between a lab-grown diamond and a natural diamond without highly specialized equipment because they are, well, the same thing and differ only in minute growth &quot;marks&quot; in their fine structure. If I&#x27;m not mistaken, there is regulation preventing companies from calling competitors&#x27; lab-grown diamonds &quot;<i>fake</i> diamonds&quot;, and retailers can call them &quot;<i>real</i> diamonds&quot; (but NOT &quot;<i>natural</i> diamonds&quot;).<p>I got my wife of 15 years a large lab-grown diamond ring from Ritani for ~2K and she <i>loves</i> it. She won&#x27;t take it out. Everybody is blown away by it because an equivalent natural diamond ring would go for ~10-15K.

I have an even cheaper solution: just don&#x27;t buy a ring.<p>It all depends on what your partner wants obviously. If it&#x27;s important for your partner to get a diamond ring and you value your partnership more than the cost of a diamond, then buy a diamond. If your partner wants a &quot;I&#x27;m married&quot; sign (as my wife did), just buy a simple wedding ring without a stone. If it&#x27;s not that important for her, don&#x27;t buy a ring.

My partner and I specifically avoided diamonds (and ultimately all gemstones) for our engagement rings. We went for unobtrusive silver rings, then shelled out for good quality gold wedding rings from a craftsperson we both knew. I think we spent about $1500 on rings in total and, can you believe it, our marriage has not fallen apart because we didn&#x27;t spend thousands of dollars getting shiny rocks for our fingers.

To an engineer&#x27;s eye this might make sense, but the significant cost of a diamond is actually the very point of buying it. And it&#x27;s hardly an odd thing - the history of human civilisation is littered with examples of spending for the sole purpose of being able parade the purchase.

This is wrong:<p>&gt; 3. A diamond is an illiquid asset, not an &quot;investment&quot;. Don&#x27;t believe me? Try to sell a second-hand diamond ring on eBay or at a pawn shop. Do you really think you&#x27;ll get anything close to what you paid for it?<p>Yes you&#x27;ll get close to what you paid for it if you buy it the same way jewelers buy it. There&#x27;s an ultra liquid market for diamonds: a friend jeweler showed it to me. He needs a diamond to make a ring? He goes on a website where diamonds are sorted by their four Cs (clarity&#x2F;cut&#x2F;color&#x2F;carat) and their price and all guaranteed legit. And he buys it at market price.<p>Of course if you overpay 3x the price by buying the diamond as part of a complete ring, you&#x27;re sorry out of luck.<p>Now the diamond <i>market</i> may crash too, but that is another topic.<p>If your wife&#x2F;fiance <i>really</i> insists on having a diamond: find a reputable jeweler and tell him you want to pick the stone with him, on such a site. And that you&#x27;re willing willing to pay for the ring and his craftmanship but that you don&#x27;t want to pay the stone 3x the price for what is actually two clicks for him.<p>Heck, you can even bring your own stone to the jeweler (I did it, with a family heirloom diamond). You can <i>even</i> bring a picture of a famous brand and say you want the same shape of ring: they&#x27;re not supposed to do it but they&#x27;ll gladly copy the famous ring (I didn&#x27;t do that but I know someone who did).<p>BTW while you&#x27;re at it buy a diamond that comes with a certificate.<p>And if you want to pay 1&#x2F;5th of the price: then buy a lab-grown diamond instead of moissanite for 1&#x2F;10th of the price. To me moissanite is a bit too shiny.<p>While a lab-grown diamond or a &quot;real&quot; diamond are the exact same thing.<p>See user <i>glimshe</i> &#x27;s comment in this thread.

One of the extremely frustrating things that I experienced when purchasing my wife&#x27;s engagement was the pressure from my family to buy diamonds:<p>When I was a teenager in the 1990s, and moissanite came out, I listened to my older cousin go off on how she would dump any man who tried to pass off a moissanite to her.<p>Then my mother kept confusing moissanite with cubic zirconia, and kept telling me stories about cheap men who bought their fiancées rings that broke.<p>I bought my wife a moissanite, but I was so afraid that she was just saying that she wanted a moissanite to merely humor me. What I did was give her matching moissanite earrings a month before I proposed to her. She loved the earrings, so I knew she&#x27;d love the ring.

Some thoughts from a mineral collector. There is considerable variety in naturally occurring diamonds. Colors, such as yellow, green, brown, black and famously a few blue and pink ones. Plus many crystal forms (Cubic, Octahedral, Dodecahedral, Tetrahedral, Trapezohedral, Tetrahexahedral,Trisoctahedral, Hexoctahedral, and some triangular Macle forms). An appeal of natural diamonds to some mineral collectors is the interest their unique crystal forms. These are expensive and tiny: a niche that I don&#x27;t have in my collection. However, I did purchase a large cluster of what I think consists Moissanite crystals, not transparent; it looks like some failed industrial experiment.

Not to hijack the thread, but weddings are significantly suckier. The cost is several multiples more than a diamond (natural or lab), only lasts one night, and is typically a large source of stress. Just have a party at a restaurant and use the $50k-$100k saved for student debt or rent or kids school.

This site is mentioned in the top comment of another thread on diamonds today at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38245762">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38245762</a>

This is a socially engineered marketing racket. The earth diamond peddlers came out with a laser mark&#x2F;blemish visible under a microscope to create a non fakeable brand for earth diamonds and are trying to hold those as a premium &#x27;natural&#x27; product. A desperate rear guard action to preserve their racket - that is what it is, - a racket <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Racketeering" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Racketeering</a>

Before diamonds were the go-to for engagement rings, color stones like ruby, sapphire, and emerald were the thing. So why should it be mossianite and not going back to other gem stones?

This person either doesn&#x27;t get laid, has an atypical understanding partner, or no partner at all.<p>While DeBeers and Madison Ave. crafted a tradition to artificially inflate the value of this specific gem, create a monopoly cartel around it, and established it as a material standard of love and &quot;suitability&quot; for marriage, it&#x27;s been subsumed by culture as much as children demand Christmas such that the odds of escaping this manufactured foolishness are scant. For example, what % of women would date a man if they heard he was a Cornell grad vs. a self-employed electrician?<p>The individual has a Hobson choice to either follow a convention, pretend to follow it, or ignore it altogether. Without being subject to these peer pressures, I would prefer to allocate to coin to investments and reducing debt, and instead carve a ring from a wax blank to be cast in a metal like platinum or silver.<p>The non-salaried working man trying to enter marriage with the demands of a large wedding party and an expensive diamond ring bought on credit would be economically foot-gunning themselves. It still happens everyday and keeps the diamond business in business.

The real question is, Josh are you still married? This was originally written in 2006.

Diamonds suck indeed. They are easily reproduced and are artificially kept at a high price by big business<p>Gold on the other side, is impossible to reproduce and is a very rare metal that will have many fine uses. You can do anything to it and it won&#x27;t lose its value. I will never understand why some women require worthless diamonds. It&#x27;s a crystal, it reflects and will lose its value if broken.

My favorite quote by someone on a forum a decade or two ago:<p>&gt; Man-made diamonds are forged from the will and brilliance of man.<p>&gt; Millions of years of loving relationship have lead up this point and have been distilled into 2 carats of sparkling magic,<p>&gt; brought forth from the ether of the universe by man&#x27;s desire to express his love.<p>&gt;<p>&gt; Or you could dig up some dirty rock from the ground, like an animal would do.

&gt;&gt; it&#x27;s actually crazy we figured out how to grow real diamonds that are cheaper and better quality than the real thing and so many people are still like, no thanks the suffering is what makes it special.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;missmayn&#x2F;status&#x2F;1612892354624786444" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;missmayn&#x2F;status&#x2F;1612892354624786444</a>

Me and my fiance read this some years back. I ended up getting her a massionite ring and she absolutely wows everyone with it. And it was less than a grand. Even people wealthier than me get impressed because the diamond industry is indeed a cartel with vastly over-priced costs.<p>In any case. She&#x27;s extremely happy. I&#x27;m happy. My wallet is happy. It&#x27;s honestly the best decision.

women should refuse diamond ring as engagement ring.

I got my partner a platinum ring with a YAG stone grown and cut to my speficiations. I also designed the ring, and had it made.<p>The YAG stone is bright blue-green, and just as shiny as diamonds.<p>And on the upside, the local jewewer made it from the 3d printed wax cast, and the stone was grown by scientists.<p>No slave labor or child labor was used in any way.

You need to factor in the game theory implications: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;royalsocietypublishing.org&#x2F;doi&#x2F;full&#x2F;10.1098&#x2F;rspb.2005.3152" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;royalsocietypublishing.org&#x2F;doi&#x2F;full&#x2F;10.1098&#x2F;rspb.200...</a>

My wife and I bought a titanium ring with a wood inlay for our wedding. Would buy again.

Also applies to wine, audiophile grade gear, and similar kind of goods - most people can’t tell the difference.<p>Then there’s designer brands, which openly sell products of inferior quality. And with success too.<p>I guess diamonds are similar to both.

Related discussion (probably why this was even posted, again):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38245762">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38245762</a>

Previous discussions: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?query=diamondssuck" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?query=diamondssuck</a>

The [artificial] scarcity and [unjustifiably] high price are properties of almost all luxury goods. And those are exactly what makes them (watches, handbags, diamonds etc.) so desirable to many.<p>I fully agree that spending two months&#x27; gross salary on an engagement ring is way too much though, and I would never ever get into debt for that. But, similarly as I enjoy wearing a relatively useless but expensive watch daily, I didn&#x27;t mind dropping approx. 2&#x2F;3 of a month&#x27;s net salary on my fiancé&#x27;s diamond engagement ring, which she got to choose and now cherishes and admires every day.

There is a bit of a cultural signaling to your future wife to say you are financially competent&#x2F;stable that you were able to buy a diamond ring. Now you need to switch the narrative to say actually I didn&#x27;t spend so we could buy an index fund instead.<p>I don&#x27;t buy the flawless argument in the article. I think people look for some flaws in diamonds. A perfect rock would look &quot;fake&quot;.<p>The big change since 2006 when the article was written is that there are manufactured diamonds now.

On Netflix there is a nice documentary about this: Nothing Lasts Forever

Why not buy her a gold bar instead? They can be as expensive&#x2F; valuable as you like and she can see it as an investment. It can&#x27;t be worn on a finger of course, but where I&#x27;m from, people only wear the engagement ring before their wedding.

If you can get people to stop buying diamonds you could turn religious people into atheists. So, by and large, it’s not happening.

lol, I forwarded this article to my girlfriend, and she immediately responded: absolutely not!<p>I guess some things are not meant to be optimised. She mentioned that you can buy a lab-grown diamond for much cheaper, and keep the same shine as a &quot;real&quot; diamond.

Reading this while listening to &quot;Diamonds Are a Girl&#x27;s Best Friend&quot;

Orrrr you can do what my wife and I did: just get those silicone rings. They come in lots of styles, you can wear them while working out or diving or any other physical activity, and they&#x27;re much cheaper than actual jewelry.

2006

Diamonds are a good tool.... Not so much a good jewelry

Imagine wanting to marry someone and buying a ring with a rock that pretends to be a diamond but is worth &lt;10% of what a diamond costs.

But my wife is really happy with her $250k diamond. Saved my ass on many occasions!