Having non-labs sent to me while considering lab...

[McGinnis]

Hello, fellow PSers. I've been on and off lately because I'm currently working on an upgrade. While I'm having ID and JA send me stones to check out, I can't help but lurk on BE to check out what I could be buying right now with the same amount of money. I know that lab-grown diamonds are only about 10% cheaper today but isn't it inevitable that they will only get cheaper as science and technology improves? I'm not purchasing a stone for it's investment value (lol) or thinking about divorcing one day, knock on wood, but I do want to get a stone that has the most fulfilling value. If I'm buying a diamond, I want to buy a stone that will be worth the closest to its original cost (given that I bought the original diamond like a PSer). While neither method guarantees a certain percentage, natural diamonds have a long track record of a certain % while technological advances have proven to make things for affordable as it improves no? I guess what i'm looking for is someone to convince me that lab grow is the way to go, now, for the future, and for value. If you've made it this far, thank you so much. I appreciate all and anything you have to say!

 

[foxinsox]

If lab grown is only 10% cheaper now but the price will drop over time as technology improves, why would you buy lab grown now? Won’t that mean in 10 years or 20 years, you’ll have a lab grown which won’t fetch even depreciation levels of what you paid for it and if it’s been overtaken by better tech, maybe not even that? Look at the C&C 4H moissanites next to the newer 6H ones that are available now. The newer stones are whiter with no weird tints and the older ones aren’t nearly as desirable. Your argument actually seems to argue for buying natural if you’d like to retain some value.

 

[McGinnis]

I wanted to present a fair argument and possibly be swayed into buying lab grown by someone that might have some non obvious pros

 

[valeria101]

.

One Pro argument:

I find CVD fascinating enough (prenucleation clusters !) to possibly consider owning an artly piece of all that science ... Especially by GemConcepts.

This is my only Pro argument.

Have not thought as far as price (that of diamonds originates with a market - millenia old, not with the beautiful physics which is tricky to price ,) ...

Enduring value is certainly part of the definition of a Jewel in my book.

Just a thought

 

[denverappraiser]

I’m with Valeria. They’re cool. It’s not like some dirt diamond that just got picked out of the mud, someone MADE it.

The ‘value’ argument is a mixed bag. Selling diamonds (mined diamonds) is hard and it’s not actually correct that you can easily predict how much you can get based on a percentage of cost. There are a lot of elements like fashion, time, and your own sales skills that come into play. Luck even counts. Buying well is relatively easy, selling is not. How people do versus how they expected to do varies quite a lot but usually, it’s worse. Occasionally it’s quite a lot worse. The market for ‘used’ synthetics is even worse, and that’s often one of the criticisms of the whole industry, but these things change over time. I’m going to guess that in the next 10 years as the total number of synthetics in consumer's hands goes up, the secondary market will become more stable.

 

[foxinsox]

I think lab made diamonds are super cool - like if custom cut is neat, imagine a stone custom-made from scratch and cut just for you. Talk about unique

 

[ChristineRose]

Long post here, hopefully not too ranty.

Prices of items are not determined by the cost to make them. Prices are determined by supply and demand.

The usual economics is that when sale prices exceed costs, more people start making items, until costs just equal price. (Costs in this case include profits to pay off investors, interest to pay off loans, royalties, salaries to experts, costs to expand and modernize. It's not like no one is making a profit.)

However with some businesses the barriers to entry are very high. Diamonds are definitely one of these. There are a limited number of diamond mines, and you can only dig so fast. The mines are not in my backyard, and the local governments want a fair share of the proceeds from their natural resources. The equipment to make lab diamonds is a press the size of a small house.

When barriers to entry are that high, you end up with something called monopolistic competition. When you have monopolistic competition, the sellers can actually make more money by selling fewer products, but at higher prices.

Since mined diamonds dominate the market, mined diamonds actually set the prices. So unless there's a truly dramatic drop in the costs to make lab diamonds, we can expect the cost of lab diamonds to be just enough below the cost of mined diamonds to be attractive to people who don't have a strong preference for mined stones.

High quality lab sapphires and emeralds have been made for over a hundred years, and that's when people started trying to make diamonds. And failed. Gem quality diamonds are still a pretty new thing. I don't see the dramatic drop coming in the foreseeable future. Unless you're an expert in lab diamond technology and know something the rest of us don't, don't base your investment decisions on that.

As far as resale prices, diamonds typically resell for about 10-70% of their cost, which is a crummy investment. Had you bought diamonds in the early 1980s and held them until today, you'd still be in the red, and that's before taking the resale discount and inflation into account. (https://www.pricescope.com/communit...rices-at-their-peak-a-historical-view.193491/)

Superideal stones have a high resale value right now, but the first H & A stones, so prized when they came out, would not be part of that category. Pink diamonds had a moment when a number of celebrities wore them. Diamonds with strong fluorescence sold at a premium, then at a deep discount, and now SF increase the price in high colors, and decreases it in low.

The point being that by picking your favorite subcategory, you can make the appreciation of diamonds look excellent or horrid, and about all we know is that we don't know.

Buy what you want. Don't play the market unless you really are an expert.