Especially the '"emperor has not clothes" random splotches' part ; )
There are however great differences between gold and diamonds: liquidity of the market and buy/sell price. As TFA points out you're getting scammed everytime you buy a diamond and you're getting super-scammed everytime you buy one. Not so much with gold: you buy gold at price X, you sell it 6 months later when it took 3%, you're still making a benefit (even with the margin taken by the professional vendor / buyer). With diamond if you buy one at $2000 you're lucky to be able to sell it at $600.
The other difference is can we can synthetize diamonds now. Gold not so much: the only way we know how to create synthetic gold is to start from an even rarer metal (which is hence guaranteed to be always more expensive than gold).
Unless a major discovery in physics --so important that the world as we know it would profoundly change-- we can't create gold.
If suddenly we could synthetize gold from a lower-grade metal, it means we could also synthetize silver and then copper etc. The implication in various industries would be more than major: it would be a revolution.
Now my great-grandmother gave me a nice, never mounted, one-carat diamond that I've tested and that is true: it got hidden in Europe during WWII so that the nazis wouldn't confiscate it. I love it because I know it's a real one (tested) and I know it's history. So it's "sentimental" and one day my SO shall wear it and one day my daughter... And then my daughter's daughter.
If all goes well ; )
I don't care much that it would take me anywhere from $5k to $12k to buy one. I know that if I were to sell it I wouldn't make anywhere near as that and I'd regret it anyway.
Especially the '"emperor has not clothes" random splotches' part ; )
There are however great differences between gold and diamonds: liquidity of the market and buy/sell price. As TFA points out you're getting scammed everytime you buy a diamond and you're getting super-scammed everytime you buy one. Not so much with gold: you buy gold at price X, you sell it 6 months later when it took 3%, you're still making a benefit (even with the margin taken by the professional vendor / buyer). With diamond if you buy one at $2000 you're lucky to be able to sell it at $600.
The other difference is can we can synthetize diamonds now. Gold not so much: the only way we know how to create synthetic gold is to start from an even rarer metal (which is hence guaranteed to be always more expensive than gold).
Unless a major discovery in physics --so important that the world as we know it would profoundly change-- we can't create gold.
If suddenly we could synthetize gold from a lower-grade metal, it means we could also synthetize silver and then copper etc. The implication in various industries would be more than major: it would be a revolution.
Now my great-grandmother gave me a nice, never mounted, one-carat diamond that I've tested and that is true: it got hidden in Europe during WWII so that the nazis wouldn't confiscate it. I love it because I know it's a real one (tested) and I know it's history. So it's "sentimental" and one day my SO shall wear it and one day my daughter... And then my daughter's daughter.
If all goes well ; )
I don't care much that it would take me anywhere from $5k to $12k to buy one. I know that if I were to sell it I wouldn't make anywhere near as that and I'd regret it anyway.