Not only is it linked in the article, it is very much a replay of the original Atlantic article. I didn't see a lot of added value in the article posted here, so just go read the Atlantic's.

Yup. I just read the Atlantic article a few days ago. This piece gave me the feeling the priceonomics author did too.

I'm not much of a fan of simply rewriting content for one's blog.

There have been some interesting discussions about disrupting the diamond market as well e.g.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4522922

It's funny to see how that article recirculates. One of my first comments on HN was a link to the same The Atlantic article (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4523063)

From my perspective (as someone who spent 2 years running a startup that tried to disrupt the diamond industry), I think the most difficult thing to do is to change the entrenched consumer sentiment. Without a shift in how they view these expensive purchases, there won't be disruption. This usually means spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing the idea.

I've studied and analysed what we did wrong / why we failed to gain traction - and might try to attack the problems from a different angle if we decide to give it a second shot.

Noting that the Atlantic article is 30 years old. More recently I was able to sell a diamond for approx. what someone paid for it roughly 10 or 12 years ago. It didn't appreciate but it didn't exactly loose value over the retail purchase. ymmv for sure but this is one data point from my personal experience. (Gave the diamond ring on consignment to a jeweler and after 2 years it sold not sure what the retail buyer paid but that is what we received for the ring.)

Sure it did. There's been inflation over the last ten years. That amount of money has less buying power than it did.

Indeed. If you had invested $10,000 in the total US stock market 10 years ago, you'd have $20,000 now. (And that's with a major market crash in the middle!) So the diamond has actually lost 50% of its value.

"Have you ever tried to sell a diamond" is an amazing read that will change your view on most consumer products.