Anybody collect gemstones?

It is a bit of a story. Diamonds were usually valued for purity, having no color at all, as they are mined in africa by deBeers and others. A 'perfect' diamond is one that has no inclusions, no color, your perfect cut of choice and such, which is pretty rare in nature.

Then there are 'fancy diamonds' that retain perfect cut and no inclusions, but have color to them. This color comes from elements other than carbon in the lattice, for example nitrogen. In nature these are very rare, but as synthethics not that hard to produce since you have perfect control over the elements that go into the diamond. You could make it yellow (generally seen as lower value) but also pink or blue (generally seen as more valuable compared to perfect tansparent).

This is a pretty crazy industry though: people go as far as putting clear natural diamons in nuclear reactors to get some of the carbon to transmutate into nitrogen, yielding a blue diamond in the end.

I'd strongly advise against using diamonds as an investment that would be worth something in 20 years. If you want one of a wedding ring consider the value solely sentimental.

The gold in a ring is probably more steady in value really: it is possible to make gold (from some mercury isotopes) with nuclear reactions, but at the current gold price that is very far from being economical.

One difference is that noone would care about gold being 'natural' or 'synthetic' - they both work exactly the same in things like bond wires, contact coatings and what not. An given how well it is recycled and recast any synthesised gold would mix in with the naturally occuring stuff quickly too.

It is possible that my memory about fluorescing was incorrect in as much as the effect was intentional. It is a fact that they do fluoresce and phosphoresce and this is the way they can tell the difference. Seems to totally discredit your claim that they are totally indistinguishable, but you have a history here of doing that around here. I suspect it is a way of life for you. It wasn't until I posted a link to the fluorescence that you started to try to pick apart my argument by claiming it wasn't intentional. A poor argument at best and doesn't answer the larger question of how you could be soooo very wrong when everyone knows you never are. :crackup:

claim that they are totally indistinguishable

Click to expand...

I may no such claim ? Where did you get "totally indistinguishable" from ??? All i said there doesn't seem to be any "isotopes" dif mentioned and "fluorescent ion" seemed to be made up, I wasn't picking apart your argument as it was flawed from the start, I suspect the straw man is a way of life for you :crackup: but by all means try and discredit something i didn't say BUT it was your argument not mine and you claimed "fluorescent ion" was common knowledge But there is no such thing or is there any isotopes difference ? And i doubt there is is thermal conductivity difference between the two as well

Not one thing you said about synthetic diamonds was correct as the video showed, Sorry if i pointed that out but i hate to see nonsense past off as knowledge, If anything is a is a way of life for me that would be it.....

If your whole argument is they glow and it doesn't matter how or why then you nailed it !

Accutronitis said:

Sure this one very informative source.....


NOVA S27E11 Diamond Deception

It's funny if anyone thinks they could tell the dif when it took DeBeers quite a large effort to be able to tell the dif.......

Click to expand...

"It's funny if anyone thinks they can tell the difference"
And it wasn't De Beers that looked into lab stones, but the GIA and people who make their living appraising all gems that found early in the history of lab created diamonds when all of them were yellow and fluoresced orange. As the technology grew it was still shown that they still fluoresce and phosphoreesce. It wasn't that hard to accomplish. it still isn't. The equipment might be expensive for a lay person to afford, but not that much to anyone in the business. That is the way of all test equipment. I don't particularly care about this. I thought it was an interesting piece of trivia. You are the one with the hard on for De Beers.

And what the hell is that NOVA S27E11 crap? Where's the link?

"It's funny if anyone thinks they can tell the difference" is in response to "I've seen both synthetic and real, and haven't seen a difference in quality. Visual quality, that is."

Context is everything and i still don't see how you make the leap to "totally indistinguishable" ?

I don't "have a hard on" for deBears, I'm just aware of how they created and cultivated that market, And how they maintain tight control of that market even to this day.....


NOVA S27E11 = PBS NOVA season 27 episode 11

Benm said:

diamonds...certainly are not indestructible. Mechanically it may prove difficult

Click to expand...

All you need is a tap with a hammer. There are several youtube videos - have a peek.

There is a plane at which diamonds will cleave, but if you miss it........they shatter.

Well, hitting a diamond with a hammer to break it... it could work.

If you have a perfect monocrystalline diamond you'll be whacking at it with a hammer for the rest of your life, but if there is some imperfection in the lattice you could break it into smaller pieces.

This is the point where artificial diamonds actually are better than mined stones: if grown perfectly they are mechanically stronger. This is mostly useful in scientific application using diamond anvils for high pressure experiments.

As far as the diamonds used in wedding rings and such, the price is just artifical and synthetic could be much more affordable. Then again it's only sentiental value, people overpay a lot on such things. Consider the price of a gold wedding ring to it's value in scrap gold value and you'll probably find a 2 to 3 time discrepancy there too.

The scrap value of gold is far less than that. 24K gold is pure gold and the other Karat numbers are a fraction of gold in the alloy. 10K gold is 10/24, 18K is 18/24 and 14K is 14/24 or 58.5% gold. I had a wedding set in 1982 that cost $600.00 and weighed maybe half an ounce in total. That would mean that the amount of gold in the set was ~0.3 ounces. If the price of gold is $1300/ounce then it contains $390.00 worth of gold. But, the scrap price is far below that value. MMUUUCCHH less. You'd probably do well to get $75.00 for it. Even less depending on the place you sold it too. Selling your gold for scrap is as big a scam as buying diamonds are, except the 1 carat emerald cut diamond I gave me first wife cost me $1500.00 in 1976. She sold it for $3600.00 in 1985, just nine years later.

Benm said:

If you have a perfect monocrystalline diamond you'll be whacking at it with a hammer for the rest of your life

Click to expand...

Source, please.

Find one and start whacking at it

As for the price of scrap gold: purifying it to pure gold is a bit of a process, so 12 carat gold, which is 50% gold by weight, will be worth less than half the value of 24 carat fine gold. Also ther are margins to be made by gold traders and such, so unless you have your gold in .999 fineg old bars, the price it will fetch is (much) lower than what you calculate on the gold content and current gold price.

Diamonds are something entirely different: There is no intrinsic value to diamond as it is just carbon. Diamonds can be very expensive gemstones, but that value is only based on perception.

You could basically 'make' tons and tons of diamond for practical application in tools and such without astronomical costs. Gold as an element is, on the other hand, extremly expensive to 'make'. I can be done using particle accelators and such, but at the moment mining it is still cheaper.

Refining gold is not that complicated at all. In fact there are a number of ways to do it. They easiest is probably just to melt it all and the mass of the gold content will sink to the bottom of a cone shaped ceramic forge. It seems like a ridiculous arrangement that gold when sold is less valuable than the paper money one exchanges for it. Even 99.99% pure gold is sold at a loss. I wouldn't do it that way. If I can't get the market value for it I wouldn't sell to that individual.

paul1598419 said:

Refining gold... melt it all and the mass of the gold content will sink to the bottom of a cone shaped ceramic forge.

Click to expand...

No. Melting alloys does not separate them. Think about it. Alloys are cast from a molten state in the first place.

Cyparagon said:

No. Melting alloys does not separate them. Think about it. Alloys are cast from a molten state in the first place.

Click to expand...

100% correct ! If you melt a alloy you'll have a molten alloy and when it cools you'll have a alloy again......

Melting will not do you much good, but boiling could. Specifically in the case of gold that is alloyed with mercury, you can boil the mercury off leaving the gold behind to some degree.

There are plenty of other ways to recover gold from an alloy, like the one with silver (electrium) which are done chemically.

As far as gold market prices go: there is an active market for it with selling and trading prices and a margin between those.

Even if you have a known-good pure gold coin that weights an ounce, the price you can sell it for instantly is lower than the price to buy one. This is also true for stock, currency, and many other things.

Gold is a very actively traded metal and the buy/sell prices are usually very close (to within 0.1% or so).

Diamond prices are very different from that: all diamonds are different, and the price you fetch or pay for one can very wildly. It's hard to tell what you could get for a specific stone right here right now.

Personally i'd accept payment in fine gold but not in diamonds. Gold is not legal tender here, but if you want to pay a bill with it and i'ts known good gold i have no problem accepting it, perhaps at a bit of an extra margin over the mean price.

You can sell any gold on ebay for over melt value easy, No mater what the Kt it is all gold sells on ebay above melt value of the day !

I've sold gold over melt value twice on ebay and it went quick !