Diamond price increase?

[yoonny]

My jeweler told me that DeBeers is not releasing diamonds so it can increase prices. Is this true?

 

[Iceman]

He's pulling your leg

and with the other hand your wallet

We usally hear this 6 months before it happens and I have not heard anything? Has anybody else?

 

[niceice]

This from Rapaport Diamond News, Friday, June 20, 2003:

"Rough prices in the secondary markets are dangerously high and unsustainable as polished prices have not risen to match recent increases in rough prices. Smaller manufacturers are killing themselves to stay in business. Shortages of rough expected to create severe availability problems for better quality 2 carat and larger polished this holiday season."

Also reference this thread which we posted awhile ago:

https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/debeers-did-indeed-raise-the-price-of-rough.7259/ and be sure to follow the link referenced by us on that thread to the original thread where we indicated that this increase was inevitable...

We don't know what time Iceman responded to your post, but it seems to us that he misread it or something... We know that we sometimes don't make sense when we've responded to a post late at night when we're feeling kind of gummy

DeBeers has restricted the amount of rough that they have released on a five week schedule for the past two hundred years in an effort to maintain the stability of diamond prices and increase the price of diamonds on a steady schedule. DeBeers releases specific mixtures of clarity and color and size combinations at various times in an effort to control how much of any particular combination of characteristics is available at any moment in time to ensure that there is not a glut of any combination that would cause prices to fall... This is why two carat, D, VS-2 ++ "anything" has been extremely difficult to locate for the past two years and has been fetching a premium in the market when it does appear... Back in the eighties, we were selling one carat, F, VS-2 stones for less than $3K and today those stones are selling for $7K because of scheduled price increases implimented by DeBeers. You decide whether your jeweler is yanking your chain and your wallet at the same time, we think he's on the right track.

 

[mike04456]

yonny, it's not an understatement to say there is chaos in the rough market right now. De Beers has implemented a lot of changes recently, and few people know what may happen. It's not so much that they are holding back rough as that they just don't have as much as they used to, especially in the top stones. There is likely to be a lot of fluctuation in retail prices over the next year or so, but where it will all end up is anyone's guess. Odd that this is happening when there are more rough diamonds coming out of the ground than at any time in history.

Oh, and R&T:

----------------

DeBeers has restricted the amount of rough that they have released on a five week schedule for the past two hundred years

----------------

I think you mean "past 100 years." De Beers was only founded in 1888.