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On 12/20/2003 5:49:09 PM fire&ice wrote:
Where's Lawgem when you need him? He wrote a brief disertation on this very subject when the 'Wired' article was published on PS. He shot down many of the 'claims' in the article. ----------------
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On 12/21/2003 1:23:48 AM Toska wrote:
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On 12/20/2003 5:49:09 PM fire&ice wrote:
Where's Lawgem when you need him? He wrote a brief disertation on this very subject when the 'Wired' article was published on PS. He shot down many of the 'claims' in the article. ----------------
Shot them down or shot himself in the foot?
The article is correct, white man made diamonds are on sale mid 2004.----------------
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On 12/21/2003 4:46:57 PM strmrdr wrote:
Having seen these lab diamonds is there anything about them that would make you turn people away from them?
Discounting origin and resale value.
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On 12/20/2003 5:49:09 PM fire&ice wrote:
Where's Lawgem when you need him? He wrote a brief disertation on this very subject when the 'Wired' article was published on PS. He shot down many of the 'claims' in the article.
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Lawgem has been busy with his new offspring. Consequently, I'm too sleep-deprived to repeat everything I said before. I'll stick the highlights:
-The $5/ct figure is totally bogus, and this is per the folks at Apollo.
-Relatively simple methods exist to identify both Gemesis and Apollo stones, and more are being developed as we speak. Both companies are working very hard to make sure their products are sold with proper identification and disclosure.
-Neither company is any threat to the diamond market. At most, their production will total no more than a few hundred thousand carats per year, and they won't hit that figure for years even if everything goes right. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the 130 million carats of natural diamonds being mined this year.
One can gauge the real impact of these synthetic diamond by looking at the reaction of the wholesale market. If there were any real weight to all this hype, there would be total panic among diamond merchants, most of whom these days are carrying millions of dollars in heavily leveraged goods. In fact, there is no such panic. The majority of them are focusing on getting enough rough to polish after the uproar De Beers has created with its Supplier of Choice program; these synthetics are barely on the radar screen.
Personally, I cannot imagine ever paying $7,000 for a synthetic stone, and I seriously doubt many consumers would either. Any retail jeweler will tell you that there is just no traction at all in the synthetic market above $500 or so. For 99% of the buying public, who don't understand all these nuances, synthetic = fake, and nobody pays thousands of dollars for fakes.
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Lawgem has been busy with his new offspring. Consequently, I'm too sleep-deprived to repeat everything I said before. I'll stick the highlights:
Yes, and on that point, I am informed that Apollo's near future production is a whopping 5-10,000 ct/year. Gemesis's planned capacity is going to top out at less than 100,000 ct/year. That's just not enough to create even a blip in the market.----------------
On 12/23/2003 1:38:07 PM derekinla wrote:
Whether or not the synthetics will make a significant dent in the diamond market will likely depend on future availablity and supplies of synthetics
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On 12/23/2003 11:42:09 PM pqcollectibles wrote:
I have to wonder if there will be a blip in the market to start with.
People loved the color and clarity and Chatham, aka lab created, was not effectively conveyed to the general consumer. ----------------
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On 12/24/2003 4:05:25 AM Caratz wrote:
Given the size of the market for diamond simulants (which is far greater by several orders of magnitude than the market for simulants of other gems), I think we may be underestimating the potential size of the market for synthetic diamonds. Of course, it all depends on how they are priced.
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