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Cross link to Lab Grown Diamonds topic

I am not surprised, there is just too much money involved for the crooks to stay away.
What is sad is it is harming the legitimate mmd market as well as mined diamonds.
It may very well prompt government action that kills the mmd market.
 
I suspect deeper shenanegans than that. There’s a LOT of handwringing going on about the possibility of synthetic melee sneaking into the manufactured jewelry business. Things like watch bezels or tennis bracelets. Way too much handwringing given that there’s no evidence that it’s never actually occurred. The cost of melee is heavily in cutting and distribution and not really all that much in mining. Cutting synthetics is no cheaper than cutting mined goods. That is to say, there’s little if anything to gain by cheating here. Even so, a scandal over this would be an unprecedented disaster for a company like Rolex or even Citizen. They NEED plausible deniability. So how do they get it? Labs. . They need to pay to get things certified. That’s where the money is and, as is oft said, follow the money.

This test is the very first, and currently only, service available from the Rapaport laboratory, aka RapLab. It’s fast and reasonably priced. For all practical purposes they have no competitors at this. So who is fanning the flames of distrust? Rapaport. I have great admiration for Martin Rapaport, but does anyone else see a giant conflict of interest here? This sells magazines so you sort of expect it, but more importantly it’s the camel’s nose into the lab business. That’s a billion dollar industry that the Rapaport Group hasn’t touched … yet. The hydra is growing a new head.

http://www.raplab.com/Info/AboutRapLab/Default.aspx#report
 
Neil that reminded me.
There have been rumors of synthetic melee in 1 to 2 pointers for at least a decade out of Russia.
I remember discussing it when I first joined PS.
No one cared much because of the low cost of the goods.
 
They sure care now. =)

One of the first rules of successful marketing is to have a product or service that solves a problem. If you invent a new problem, let's say 'ring around the collar', you have no competition because people weren't even aware they had a problem. The field is wide open. :appl:

Is synthetic melee somehow worse than mined melee? If people think it is than I suppose it is. 'Better' is in the eye of the beholder after all and the amount of BS in the marketplace around the whole topic of synthetics makes it a hot topic. I'm not saying it isn't a possibility, nearly everything is possible, but I can't help but see this as a toehold on a revenue stream that leads directly to Rapaport. Given the size and apparent success of GIA, IGI, and EGL, it could be an extremely lucrative revenue stream indeed. There are some severe entry barriers to the gem lab business, one of which is Rapaport themselves, and it's not an easy thing to get into, but if there's anyone on the planet who can give GIA a run for their money, it's them.
 
To be fair the synthetic diamonds found this time were much larger than 1 or 2 pointers.
When you get to 20 pointers+ the cost of the goods reaches the point where more people will care.
 
Hey Guy's, I called this thread a Cross link and I expect the moderators to get cross because we are not having this discussion in the correct place.
 
OK. They'll move us if they want. I'm talking about labs, not really synthetics but I'll defer to the admins if it belongs somewhere else.

Big stones get lab work anyway and for other reasons. The real labs can do this easily and do it on every stone that crosses their threshold so we're talking about where the line is drawn. The lower the line, the better it is for the labs, but the current set of stress is about melee. GIA services on a 0.01 makes no sense at all. They simply don't offer a service that's appropriate for the question at hand. Perhaps they should, and maybe some day they will, but that's where RapLab is coming in. The customer base is solid. A scandal on this would be disastrous to one of the large watch makers and although Rolex could probably survive it, there are plenty for whom it would be a death sentence. It's not that the product is necessarily inferior, it takes a lab to tell the difference for goodness' sake, but the press has created enough of a frenzy that it would be a bigger deal than a New Jersey traffic jam.
 
As so often, very good analysis, Neil, and thank you for alerting me to the Raplab.

To further your analysis, it is sad to see Chaim Even"Zohar, another "well-respected' industry-analyst, go completely wrong and overboard in his estimation of the synthetic-diamond-market. His last analysis, which kind of sparked the current frenzy about the 'problem' was full of incorrect mathematics and inside-information completely contrary to official and publicly available info.

Live long,
 
I'd like to add that there's been much less hand wringing about the hundreds of vendors (some fly-by-night, some pretty large) who resell $5 CZ as lab diamonds. It makes it harder for the real growers to charge a fair price. I like the bit at the end where he accuses Gemesis of being unfair because they label their diamonds conflict-free. It's a term applied to numerous mined diamonds as well.
 
denverappraiser|1390003167|3595049 said:
Is synthetic melee somehow worse than mined melee?
Click to expand...
1 and 2 maybe even 10 pointers I don't care but 20 pointers and up I would be pissed if it was not disclosed and I bought mmd sold as mined.
I don't mind mmd and if they were better cut might consider one(love the oranges) but it has to be sold for what it is with full disclosure.
 
It should likely be a separate thread but do I find the idea of a raplab to be a huge conflict of interest and would not consider at this time trusting anything they put out.
 
Individual lab grading on a 0.20 costs about $40. Some people would do it, some wouldn’t. Bulk grading on a parcel of 0.20’s could be done fairly cheaply but there’s no way for the end consumer to match the stone they bought to the parcel it used to be part of other than by 100% trusting the seller. That’s ok but if they’re trusting the seller than the lab isn’t providing any value (to the consumer). In any case, that’s my point. You put the line at 0.20. Someone else will put it somewhere else. NO ONE would put it below 0.05 because the economics get ridiculous. That’s what’s in a lot of watches, halo rings, tennis bracelets and so on. For manufacturers it’s a different sort of problem. A scandal on MSNBC, here on Pricescope or even Wired magazine that a sample stone taken from an item manufactured by XYZ was found to be synthetic and therefore EVERY stone in EVERY item EVER made by XYZ should be examined for free for ‘consumer protection’ purposes, is a corporate death sentence. Don’t’ think it could happen? We’ll see. It sounds like a plausible risk to me and if I owned a major watch brand, I’d be on the phone with RapLab as soon as I finished reading this. Even if one slips through they have someone to point the blame at and Rap can point to the terms and conditions and say oops.

Do I trust Rap to do a good job? Absolutely. They are highly capable people. That’s not actually my problem here. The lab business is big money and big power. GIA has gone from an obscure college for gemologists to one of the most recognized brand names in the world, all within the last 20-30 years or so. They don't have a cloud in the sky. They now sell upwards of $150M dollars a year in lab services. (they publicly file some of their accounting because they’re a non-profit but the IRS is a bit slow in publishing them. Below is 2010, the most recent one I could find). I’m suggesting that Rapaport has a giant incentive to create and/or blow out of proportion a problem for which they offer the only cure. That gives them credibility in the lab business. What will they do with that credibility? Well, the RapLab website says that diamond grading reports are coming early in 2014. Who cares? How about Rapaport Auctions for example? Currently, out of the hundreds of labs in the world, the only ones accepted as causing a stone to be ‘certified’ are GIA and AGSL. All others are lumped into the category of ‘other’. That’s not completely unreasonable but where do you suppose RapLab is going to fall on this list? What about RapNet, the world’s largest wholesale diamond trading platform? There are 13 labs with the Rapaport stamp of approval. All others are in the dreaded ‘other’ and ‘uncertified’ categories. Anyone want to bet on which list RapLab is going to be on? How about China? China is all about partnerships. GIA doesn't DO partnerships, and that's one of the things Rap does best.

So why is IDEX playing? In many ways they’re a direct competitor of Rapport after all. Their biggest names have chimed in on this, including the article that started this thread. Personally I think it’s because of the tendency of the press to follow each other. IF this turns out to be a legitimate story, and someone failed to report on it, they look like fools. On the other hand, if everyone is doing it, and it turns out to be malarkey, it just gets swept under the rug along with last year’s scandals. Go with the flow and there’s no downside --Go against the groupthink and you risk being called out as a fool.

https://bulk.resource.org/irs.gov/eo/2011_11_EO/95-3797687_990_201012.pdf
 
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