Posted on 04/07/2018 3:58:36 AM PDT by C19fan
Recently at a Heilzberg jeweler the staff let me “play” with a few of these synthetic diamonds. They are awesome. A 1 carat solitaire was $12,000. I love looking at bling, and I’m not bad at spotting the really good stones. This was like a high-beam headlight, most beautiful that I’d ever seen, with a slight steel-blue “wash” to the color. Divine. But diamonds are only an investment in pleasure.
I have a few pieces of jewelry that I call “important” and I’ve been buying more lately, most recently some good Japanese sea-pearls. Jewelry is a consolation to the older woman. I also enjoy looking at the bling women wear—I like seeing an elegant woman decked out with jewelry and sometimes wonder why Melania doesn’t wear more. I’ll bet she has some nice stuff! She has an emerald-cut solitaire, about 4 carats...
I’ve made over 5000% return on BTC so far.
All available evidence indicates that USD 100 won’t buy a single BLT in 50 years.
I suppose it’s another way that you can employ prayer in your life. You can pray that God will intervene and prevent the USD from losing its value so rapidly. Why would God ever turn his back on the US?
I used to go to Times Square , in a crappy building , take the old 1940s brass cage elevator to the top and go into a room wh, guarded by some of the meanest NYC offduty cops where they would cut diamonds with lasers and intentionally insert different grades of flaws into them. Its not the old jeweler with the monocle anymore chisling them with his little jewelers hammer.
My beautiful and beloved wife of 45 years insisted on no diamond - ever. Simple very feminine gold band. I was penniless & unemployed when we married and tried to get her a diamond when we could afford one later - she is forever adamant - never.
She is priceless. Her values are all in the right place.
But the big thing is she didn’t want any children, and I wanted 5. Game-stopper. She came back with a pre-nup offer: “I’m willing to try for 5, but if we ever have twins - we quit.” Close enough for me.
Got our 5 & she comes home from an afternoon with a childless missionary and informs me God told her we would have 8 children. Huh?!?! Well, we’re out of control & drowning already - so why not?
At 7 I said no more. She said, “No - God promised me Michael Aaron...” He is now an Ensign in the Navy, degree in Mechanical Engineering, and has just started Flight School in the Navy.
Oh - she’s still a size 6.......
Me too. I've had a running joke with my kids about converting my ashes after I'm gone into diamond jewelry.
I’m still trying to figure out why you abbreviated lettuce and tomato in your post.
A witless and fact-free rebuttal. Have a good day.
That's his salary for half a year - I don't think that will land him in the poor house.
Diamonds, like gold, are a hedge against bad times.
True, but this appraisal was much later for a selling price.
No problem. If you really want to be serious, two points:
1. Never said a word about U.S. currency. Not a thing. In fact, a USDLT would taste horrible. Bacon is a better investment in value and taste.
2. Ponzi’s first 20 investors raved about their returns. It was his next few hundred investors who had issues. But I’m happy for you. Ground floor is often good. But I’m guessing you didn’t spend any USD on BTC recently, even if it is a good “lettuce and tomato” investment.
Exactly.
Diamonds are the worst investment ever. DeBeers warehouses truck loads of diamonds just to keep the price high.
De Beers Agrees To Guilty Plea To Re-enter the U.S. Market
"De Beers, the world's largest diamond producer, has agreed to plead guilty to criminal price fixing, a court official and a lawyer involved in the case said on Friday. "
Actually I sold higher and have been rebuying at these relatively low prices.
It isn’t a Ponzi insofar as no one entity controls the issuance of new bitcoin. Further, there is a fixed upper limit to supply.
Because of its low correlation with other asset classes and unique value drivers, it is a good investment in my view. But it is primarily a hedge, and like any hedge it should not be a major component of one’s portfolio. I.e., one should periodically rebalance the allocation to less than 5% (or 10% if one is very aggressive).
Also, although “bitcoin” is often used to refer to all cryptocurrencies, I believe that there are other cryptocurrencies with greater potential and use value than bitcoin, namely, Ethereum.
Why would anybody intentionally insert flaws into a diamond?
Diamonds...another name for coal.
Seems wise.
I get that it's limited in supply, but being that it's an intangible (just like full-faith-and-credit), seems smart to keep it as one portion of a portfolio.
I just wonder who these folks are who are buying on the high end.
perfect reproductions, chemically and physically identically identical to the natural version
From the early days of synthetic diamonds, and a very enjoyable read.
https://www.wired.com/2003/09/diamond/
“This is very rare stone,” he says, almost to himself, in thickly accented English. “Yellow diamonds of this color are very hard to find. It is probably worth 10, maybe 15 thousand dollars.”
“I have two more exactly like it in my pocket,” I tell him.
He puts the diamond down and looks at me seriously for the first time. I place the other two stones on the table. They are all the same color and size. To find three nearly identical yellow diamonds is like flipping a coin 10,000 times and never seeing tails.
“These are cubic zirconium?” Weingarten says without much hope.
“No, they’re real,” I tell him. “But they were made by a machine in Florida for less than a hundred dollars.”
Glad you liked it, but it was a careless failure to proofread after I revised the sentence.
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