Why diamond engagement rings are a scam (1 Viewer)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5kWu1ifBGU

LOL so true.

RobertR said:

LOL so true.

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That's funny and like you say it's so true.

I wasn't aware of this and Yeah, sure that made a lot of sense.

"even knowing all that doesn't get you out of buying an engagement ring"

This is more true than all the other truths.

The original authority on the subject at hand:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/

A word to the wise tho, people do not like to hear this truth. Be careful how you proceed with these conversations...

Everything is intrinsically worthless. Why should diamonds be any different? Everything is intrinsically meaningless too (unless we assign it meaning the way we assign objects worth).

Yawn.

This is a truth that every young man must discover in his own time. Then he must learn a greater truth: his young woman cares not and so he shan't if he wants to get married.

At one time I would have been annoyed by that, but it would be no different than telling your mom you're not celebrating Mother's Day because it's really a ploy to make money by greeting card companies. See how well that goes over.

I believe PBS did a NOVA episode on this years ago, have to see if I can dig up the link. De Beers essentially created a completely phony market that they had a monopoly on.
Not sure how much truth to put into this, it's from Wikipedia, but says their "monopoly" has now dropped from controlling 90% of the market down to 40% as of 2012.
What's also sad is they're now shifting a lot of their marketing tactics to China and India as those countries' economies grow. Same phony market, but now a whole group of new customers.

Several African countries with dubious government control have abandoned DeBeers for their own direct supply chains.Sadly...everybody uses DeBeers pricing.The funniest part. The only category really worth anything are industrial use diamonds...which DeBeers doesn't even distribute.

schan1269 said:

Several African countries with dubious government control have abandoned DeBeers for their own direct supply chains.Sadly...everybody uses DeBeers pricing.The funniest part. The only category really worth anything are industrial use diamonds...which DeBeers doesn't even distribute.

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Like drill bits.
The video was hysterical. When he said "and we bought that sh**", I was on the floor.

I guess the inherent value of diamonds explains why this dude was so worthless.

De Beers no longer has monopoly on the diamond trade ever since the issue of blood diamonds became known to public. They had also actively tried to rebrand themselves from a diamond distributor into a jeweler in recent times.

Anyways, there's a nice documentary about blood diamonds found here. It's about 40 minutes long and you can scroll towards the bottom of the page to find it if you are interested.