learn me: real and manmade diamonds

In reply to 1988RedT2:

like a new car...

If you buy a quality stone it will be worth what you paid for it for many years. If you buy what Zales or Kay tell you is quality it will be worth nothing.

I hated diamond shopping, but I really enjoyed learning about them.

That being said, real or fake (aside from industrial diamonds) they're all worthless to me. Buy a car.

wearymicrobe wrote:

RossD wrote: I remember hearing that the man made ones need to have a ID number or something etched on the edge so that jewlers don't cheat you. Anyone hear this?

Most non conflict diamonds have this ID system as well. My wife's came from Canada of all places. If the synthetic stuff was available when we were looking we would have done that but it was more expensive at the time.

The Canadian mines are what helps to bring you "Ice Road Truckers." They are way north, and are fly-in only for the majority of the year.

I had no idea man-made diamonds were so cheap. That could make future holiday gifts cheaper and give me a bigger payout

I am not into natural diamonds though, for the obvious reasons. I hope that who ever I find to marry will not be infatuated by them. I think there are a lot of better stones out there anyway.

xd wrote: If you buy a quality stone it will be worth what you paid for it for many years. If you buy what Zales or Kay tell you is quality it will be worth nothing.

Then I suspect most engagement rings are not quality stones.

xd wrote: If you buy a quality stone it will be worth what you paid for it for many years. If you buy what Zales or Kay tell you is quality it will be worth nothing.

hmmm... this seems like a fun experiment.

buy diamond from Zales. go to Kay to get appraised. return diamond to Zales. repeat with other one.

Conquest351 wrote: The ring my wife wears has a .78 carat man made diamond in it. It will cut glass. It shines like, well, a diamond. I took it to Jareds to get it cleaned up and polished before our wedding and they had to really REALLY look at it to see that it was manmade. It is chemicaly and really a solid carbon diamond, just not naturally occouring. It's made by a company called Diamond Essence. Cost me a whopping $10. I told the wife about a year later and she said, "Whew, now I don't have to stress about it falling out." I'll have to search and find a good pic of her ring. It's tension set titanium with white gold and sterling silver mokume inlay.

Only problem is, those aren't man-made diamonds. They're cubic zirconiums.

http://www.diamond-essence.com/articles.asp?ID=136

"Chemical composition of Diamond Essence -- ZrO2- Zirconium oxide plus yttrium or calcium. "

Now, I think it's awesome that your wife isn't so caught up on material things that she doesn't mind wearing a "fake" diamond (that is probably sparklier than a "real" diamond.) Problem is, most women aren't like that...

I must have been confused with another company I was looking at then. That was 6 years ago. LOL

SCARRMRCC wrote: In reply to 1988RedT2: like a new car...

Well, a little, but it's really an order of magnitude worse than that.

Conquest351 wrote: I must have been confused with another company I was looking at then. That was 6 years ago. LOL

I'd be very curious to know where you can get inexpensive, man-made diamonds.

Just think how much less stressful proposing to a girl would be if you didn't have to worry about being out $5,000 if you later had to cancel the engagement!

Sky_Render wrote:

Conquest351 wrote: I must have been confused with another company I was looking at then. That was 6 years ago. LOL

I'd be very curious to know where you can get inexpensive, man-made diamonds. Just think how much less stressful proposing to a girl would be if you didn't have to worry about being out $5,000 if you later had to cancel the engagement!

Ugh, did that before. Then when I took the ring back, they said they could only give me store credit. I was like, I don't need credit, I need my f'ing cash back.

Haven't been in the market for a while, but teh googles seems to have a few sites with them.

That is why I cam here to ask.. as aside from CZ, I have not SEEN any in person.. (they just don't sell manmade diamonds around here.) and what what people can tell by the what they have owned, and seen in person.

I will get a good pic of the wife's tonight and post it up here. You can be the judge.

FYI - Creating actual synthetic diamonds is a slow process utilizing very expensive machinery. There only a couple of labs in the world who do this for jewelry-quality stones (which up to about a carat and a half, uncut) and De Beers has purchased one of the most successful so that it could control production and their patents. Good luck finding these on the open market.

Honestly, if you want to make a statement about not using real diamonds (and I don't blame you), wouldn't the message be a lot clearer if you chose something that didn't look exactly like a real diamond?

In reply to Nathan JansenvanDoorn:

I never said statement. And this is her choice.. I am just looking for the best bang for the buck.