synthetic gems

Where do I find these dime sized rubies for 20 bucks?
- Right? A dime is a touch over 18mm, and prices I’ve been able to nail down on a couple sites for artificial rubies of that size, while way less than terrestrial rubies, cannot be considered ”cheap” - we’re still talking thousands of dollars.
  
  Maybe they mean ruby infused grinding wheels?
  https://www.travers.com/product/radiac-ruby-surface-grinding-wheels-71150
  Or maybe they were exaggerating a little bit and thinking about ruby bearings.
  https://www.renishaw.com/shop/Product.aspx?Product=A-5000-3611
- This post is so old the price has gone up since.
- Yeah, if anybody finds these cheap rubies do let me know, I'd love to buy them
  
  I've seen youtubers that bought reject sapphire from the f-35 cockpits that had some minor flaw in some place that disqualified it.
  I think you can buy reject batches of artificial ruby for indilustrial applications too.
- https://cascadejewels.com/
  I searched lab grown rubies and these guys seem to be pricing near to that cost. They seem legit from a cursory search but i haven't looked that deep.
  
  That's awesome, thank you!

The minority of all people think like this. people love scarcity even if it's completely artificial. It's just so they can show off their "wealth".
The sneaker resale market is the dumbest shit I've ever heard of, yet it's a billions of dollars industry, just because people are dumb like that.
Same reason why De Beers or Luxottica make so much money for seemingly no reason, because people love it.
Moissanite and artifical gems will forever be a knockoff in the eyes if these people.
Diamonds are the NFTs of commodities.
- If the "peasants can afford it" it's not desirable.
- As I understand it the artificial diamond industry has gotten so good, they can now even create diamonds with imperfections that mimic natural diamonds. To the point where the only way they can tell the difference is to micro etch something on the natural diamonds.
  
  yeah it's ridiculous

Lab grown diamonds/gems are also pure as fuck. Who wouldn’t want that?
No I want my impurities and child labor with my diamonds!
Also, diamonds are worth nothing in a pawn store. The only valuable part of your engagement ring is the gold, which is often not the highest quality anyway.
- That's why I got her a platinum ring with no stones. Much better pawn value.
- Yeah, I love how marketing guys have come up with "the faults prove that it's real leather! Not like that flawless fake stuff!"

20 USD for 15 dime-sized rubies? Motherfucker, tell me where!
- article: https://bruh.news/?article/are-lab-grown-gems-the-answer-to-child-labor
  
  That was a surprisingly good read
  
  I wish they used this version of the video in the article instead
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfC6ey0MYGY
  
  F
- I would also like to know this.

Did not know about moissanite, but that is super cool and I'm going to see if I can find some
- There are a couple of online retailers that specialize in it. That's what we ended up doing for my wife's engagement ring and wedding band. It noticeably sparkles in direct sun, she gets comments on it pretty often.
  
  Geez the couple sites I found are still way more expensive that I expected! I'd love to see it in person, it looks way more sparkly
  
  My wife lost her engagement ring and wedding band recently. Might have to look into this as a replacement.

Well they’re not as valuable because they didn’t have to be dug out the ground. The amount of work that goes into something is what makes it valueable. That’s why I only buy the toughest to reach diamonds from the most brutal mines in Africa, now those are valuable!
- The amount of work that goes into something is what makes it valueable
  Hello, I'm Tim Cook and let me tell about all the hard work that went into this monitor stand
  
  How many slave children were spent to make each stand?
  
  A lot of work went into building the brand name into what it was for that to be valuable.
- Just realized that was satire, but anyway I already started writing so I'm posting it lol.
  Labor theory of value was outdated to centuries ago.
  Labor sets a minimum value when stuff is in demand, but without demand the value can be zero despite how much effort was put into it.
  
  Two* and no, sorry. It’s not my fault you don’t understand what socially necessary labor time is, and hence don’t understand LTV and have mistaken your own ignorance for an argument. You’ll never be a big boss top dog businessman like me with such a feeble understanding.
- forgot the /s

I'm trying to disabuse my husband of the notion that moissanite looks “fake” because of its refractory properties. I just like the sparkles, I'm not trying to pass it off as a diamond. It's an entirely different stone.
- I love the sparkle of my Moissanites so much better than my diamonds.

I like last comment. And suddenly it doesn't counts.

If you actually turned lead into gold it would still only be worth as much as lead. (Also the global gold market would collapse into dust, so that would have some consequences.)
- Something like this actually happened. There was a super rare element that was shiny and light weight and incredibly rare. They made the crown jewels of France out of it so the King could show off the wealth of the country to everyone by having this unique and rare element in his crown.
  Then they discovered a chemical process to extract this incredibly rare element from bauxite.
  Now we make pop cans out of it. Yep, aluminum was at one time a precious metal.
- also the global gold market would collapse into dust
- Cheap and plentiful gold would be a boon for a lot of applications that require resistance to water corrosion, so even after the initial collapse, its price would slowly creep up again.
- Lead (II) iodide is the closest we have
- Technically, isn't it possible to turn lead into gold already? Its just an insanely expensive task (the whole adding protons to atoms) with no real benefit (since the result will be way more expensive than even regular gold).

How do I find these lab grown minerals? Where can I buy them? I'm in EU
- A lot of jewelry boutiques sell both these days. When I bought an engagement ring, most places I looked have both lab grown and mined diamonds as options when you pick a diamond for the ring.
  Most reputable dealers claim to have cruelty-free sources, but synthetic diamonds were about half the price, so I still think buying mined diamonds is a bit silly.

Naturally horen diamonds are almost always Inferior in quality but hey, we have a fake Industry responsible for child labour and suffering to hold up, so we made. Shit. Up. "Naturally formed diamonds are, eh, more beautiful! Yes, yes, that's why they are more expensive!

Image transcription:
https://lemmy.ml/comment/3550718
- Where do you get rubies the success of diamonds for like a dollar each? Or 20 dollar each... I couldn't understand if it was 20 for 20 or 20 for 1...
  Either way I want it....
  
  A dime's around 18mm across, here's three 18x9mm ruby kites for $36. Same site has seven 14x10mm rubies for $23 and ten 10x10mm rubies for $30. But a dime-sized round ruby is gonna run you $71 a piece on there. No clue how legit this site is.

Why are lab grown diamonds spilling out of factories like the closet in Zaboomafoo but I can't find a single artificial Phosphophyllite for less than a billion dollars

...picture does not load.
- This happens sometimes for me too. You can try opening it in browser, but I'll write a transcription for our screen-reader-using friends, too.
  Transcription:
  tlirsgender | Nov 6, 2020
  Weird peeve time. Calling lab grown gemstones "fake" is stupid because it's the same shit just not formed naturally. An artificially grown diamond is the same shit as a natural diamond it is the exact same material bro it's all fuckign carbon
  spacefroggity | 45m ago
  It's carbon it's pretty and it didn't involve slave labor what's not to love??? Hi I'm having geology opinions tonight apparently. And I'm right
  spacefroggity | 45m ago
  There is so much bullshit in the diamonds industry to be mad about tbh. It also ties into the bullshit of the wedding industry as a whole but we don't have the time to unpack all that
  val-ritz | Nov 29, 2020
  not even going to lie, the day i learned i could get like 15 lab grown rubies the size of dimes for $20 is the day i spent $20 on rubies, and i have never once said to myself "man, i wish this cost $1,600 and the lives of eight children to produce
  fuckyeahmineralogy | Dec 8, 2020
  We are a pro-lab-grown mineral blog here, not only is it massively cheaper but massively more ethical as well in many cases.
  thegreenpea | Mar 8, 2021
  another very cool lab grown gem is Moissanite. It has a 9.25 on the mohs hardness scale where diamond is a 10. Moissanote also has a 2.69 refractive index in comparison to diamond's 2.419 and here is the difference
  and the best thing about moissanite? It is all lab grown and it costs only a fraction of what diamond costs. So fuck the diamond indsutry and buy lab grown gems which cost significantly less
  rubixpsyche | Aug 6, 2021
  Also it's just cool to think of some mad scientist lookin person doing shit against the law of the universe and making pretty gems for you. Like cmon. This shouldnt be allowed probably. But humans really be like on gOD i want some shiny an just started MAKIN em
  dadzathechaosgod | 46m ago
  for years people wanted alchemy, well now we have alchemy and we're making gemstones out of it and suddenly "it doesn't count" anymore
  
  Thank you. I wouldn't have been able to describe the image as well.
  
  Doing fine work there.
  While this picture does load for me, I also frequently run into those that don't on Connect for Lemme. I'm not tech savvy, but I suspect it's related to different instances or something like that.
- It loads for me, that's weird